The Reality of Make Believe

Dear George,

Isn’t it wonderful living in the greatest country the world has ever known? We are a country of Main Street ideals where kindly, white-haired owners of local Mom and Pop stores radiate warmth and wisdom, and where the laughter of clean-cut teenagers rolls from the local soda shoppe.

We are a country where racial tolerance fills the air with all of the purity of driven snow, where every Sunday mom, dad and the kids walk to church, resplendent in their Sunday best. We are a country frozen in time by the paintings of Norman Rockwell.

We are, above all, a country grounded in an imagery created by the best minds Madison Avenue can buy.

The truth is that life sucks! The local Mom and Pop store is boarded up, the soda shoppe closed decades ago and was torn down to make way for a McDonalds, racism is our national pastime and families, if they even bother going to church, head for the nearest mega church with its message of fear and paranoia.

Mind you, we are still the greatest country in the world, but we are so because we have snuffed the reality that once informed Rockwell’s paintings. We have taken the fragmented reality that was once small-town America and consolidated it into a totalistic whole whose oppressive reality is concealed by a fog of small-town imagery.

As one sage explained it, “There is a god, he is a nice fatherly-looking Caucasian fellow with a big snowy beard (if the resemblance to the god of American children—Santa Claus—doesn’t by itself tell you everything you need to know about religion, you’re still not paying attention!) And he’s quite angry at Muslims and other people who didn’t get the memo on who to worship.”

And every four years this imagery is reinforced by a gaggle of sociopaths who want to punish themselves by becoming president of the United States of America so they can keep us the greatest country in the world by rolling out a whole new set of weapon systems.

Politics isn’t theater; it’s a Saturday morning cartoon show, resplendent with cuddly characters and happy endings. And like the cartoon show, no political campaign would be complete without a nasty villain to keep the children frightened. And the darker the villain’s skin, the more frightening he is.

And like the cartoon show, neither reality nor truth has any place in the political arena. Were they to raise their ugly heads, the whole system would unravel.

Every time HillBill opens her mouth, I am reminded of the song, “It’s Only Make Believe.” She’s the kind of leader America needs who will carry us to a new plateau of infamy.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones