The Heights of Drama

The drama of the news of the last few days has been astounding. Is there a reason to watch anything else? No other dramas, scripted or unscripted, have been quite so compelling as the news. It is like the whole country has become completely unhinged. The flagrant disregard for truth has turned everything into a side show. George Bush and his administration had such disdain for the truth that it has permeated the very fabric of our beings; John McCain has taken it one step further by branding the media as fabrication-mongers when he and his campaign have completely disassociated themselves from any truth-telling whatsoever.

Somehow, the American people are supposed to parse all of this “newspeak” for the truth, the desire for which has spawned a myriad of fact-checking organizations each with their own non-partisan claim to truth. The pieces may fall where they may for the time being but, at the end of the “real” day, which will occur sometime between election day and inauguration day, the pieces are really going to fall and the outcome of this bloodbath of lies will be upon us all. All I know for the moment is that there is no logical reality, no objectivity, and no meaningful discussion of the facts; it is all spin all the time glorified by stunts. Into this climate we will choose a President, fortify our economy, and chart a 21^st century course to prosperity?

When loyalty causes one to champion stupidity; and integrity is only as good as what you said the previous day; and comedy is reality is comedy without irony and Wall street soars on irrationality; the shovels are calling each other spades. When Gwen Ifill falls down the stairs, breaking her ankle while apparently carrying documents for the most contentious Vice Presidential debates in the history of American politics…oh, she did and if anything else could possibly go wrong and it will, we only have to look forward to one of those falling pieces clunking us in the head with a big dose of reality; then and only then can we renew our faith in America.