Conscription

It’s a mental illness. An inability and refusal to confront and address the obvious. Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump won. In the few weeks Obama has taken every side on every position.  Russia did, Russia didn’t.  Hillary was robbed, Hillary screwed up.  I failed, I was a success.  I have brought hope, there is no hope.  Everything is wonderful, everything sucks.  The FBI is right, the FBI is wrong.  
Hegel is very impressed.  But he’s still waiting for the synthesis.

It’s lonely knowing you’re right. You’re met relentlessly by the simple-minded and trite. They never seem to wonder what’s right or wrong. We just know. 

Create the meme. And keep repeating it. Don’t worry, Americans don’t read, research and have the attention span of a gnat. They don’t question connections alleged as to Putin and Russia somehow affecting and throwing the election. Why would a voter care what Podesta’s emails contained or alleged? It’s preposterous and redefines specious. And your MSM question not and nothing. 

Verity. Donald Trump will likely be one of the greatest Presidents of our republic. And Obama one of the most ineffectual. Meanwhile, Hillary apologists are trying to reconfigure the logic anent Trump’s appointees. They’ve nothing to say since abandoning the Russian hack bit.

Prolegomenon. Let us begin with an immutable fact of human behavior, specifically contemporary American behavior. Americans simply hate the truth. The troublesome truth, the uncomfortable and (dare I remind you) the inconvenient truth. Truth that bristles and frightens and awakens and piques. Truth that confronts us with the lie of contemporary fable masked as history. History, as Tolstoy reminds us, would be a wonderful thing if only it were true. Truth would be a wonderful thing if only it were pleasant.

Fake News? That’s redundant.

Fake News and Alt-Right are the latest incantations of the attempt to reroute discussion and illumination of fraud and governmental deceit. Before them was the granddaddy of deflection: the conspiracy theory. 

Learn to work the saxophone • I play just what I feel • Drink Scotch whiskey all night long • And die behind the wheel
In my years I have never seen anything quite like this. And for good reason.
Who am I? I spell out simply.

A soldier with the Minnesota National Guard’s 1/34th Brigade Combat Team buttons her chin strap before heading out on a mission in Iraq, May 2006. (Photo/Minnesota National Guard via Flickr)

The most beautiful words ever enunciated and the most surely under threat of extinction. Broadly inclusive yet exquisitely imprecise. Magnificently vague in coverage yet the first line of defense against tyranny of expression and thought and the expression of the simple idea. The troublesome idea. The noxious and noisome. This is the essence of who we are as a republic. Let me explain and give examples accordingly.