TV News LIES

Most people know when something is missing.  Sometimes, it's a perfect word to finish a thought, or else a certain condiment to take the sandwich to "perfect."  Me, at this odd moment at the crossroads of the American Experiment?  I am missing certain writers.

Some writers are compasses of their eras, helping us find our way forward.  Others are beacons, to illuminate where we are, where we might want to go, or avoid going. Some are just comfort and solace --good company during whatever storms and strife we hapless, knot-headed humans have stumbled into this time.

We used to make fairly regular advances in our culture.  Some were dubious, many were trivial, but, overall, we seemed to be tracing a generally positive pathway forward.  Now, it seems we're just stalling -- unable to get a grip on things, so to speak.

This is not news.  Way back before the Earth's crust cooled and dinosaurs appeared, we used to go get coffee.  Cream and sugar were the only tricky, ponderous variables which might throw us off our games -- especially, first thing in the morning, before we'd had our coffee.

There came a sturm und drang-y time in the nation when the old myths, tales, and dreams no longer applied for 99 percent of the people.

And so, the great mass of people gnashed their remaining teeth and cried out for help, pleading and beseeching into all corners of the land, seeking a new champion to set things right -- to have new stories constructed, which would then help the People survive their overly restrained and heavily-regulated lives at the hands of a cruel and unjust emperor, called the President.

Both Conventions are over … the presidential candidates are set in stone … and as Stephen King wrote, “The moon is down and the hour is none.”

Bernie Sanders received more votes and more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton did in the primaries. But the Zombie Queen emerged victorious from the shitshow the DNC staged in Philadelphia. How?

Hillary Clinton stole the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders.

The End.

So far, the conversation about real extremism in America has been underwhelming, ranging on the low side of things, pinging in the ones and twos on the Overall Awareness Meter.

Such is the reward when focusing the energies and efforts of all hands, and all eyes, on the ugly, snarling surface issues espoused by extremists.  If you trick people into noticing only the incoherent policies and speeches made by your candidate right now, however crazed or crass they may be, you can get these same people to blow past the lowest-gravity spots where previously inconceivable thoughts and verbalizations really start to bubble and bake.

Wonderful.  We've managed to get through another set of political conventions.

Frankly, this is tantamount to celebrating a fleeting victory over jaundice,  a temporary flare-up of malaria, or an ongoing resurgence in hemorrhoids.

If I didn't know better -- and I'm not sure that I do, not anymore -- I'd say someone slipped some blotter-paper acid, or mind-warping alien spores, into my preventively-medicated, yeast-enhanced beverage.

Of course, it could also be that the candidates themselves have divvied up the hallucinatory goods, right before each one got off their respective Gravy Trains, for their respective stops at Podiumville.