Self-Deception Is A Cruel Mistress

A near-assassination and a coup, and we're all supposed to just move on to the next story? It's national self-deception and it's the sign of a seriously unhealthy nation.

Events seem to move fast in these days of the 24-hour news cycle, but we can please step back and process what happened over the nine-period that started on July 13 and ended on July 21?

*A former president of the United States, currently leading in most polls in his bid to return to office, was almost brutally murdered on national television. The assassination, had it succeeded, might well have triggered massive civil unrest. At best, it would have opened societal wounds that would never been healed in our lifetime. And the number of “security lapses” are far too great for any reasonable person to think the shooter acted alone.

*The sitting president of the United States, having repeatedly expressed his determination to stay in the race, suddenly “announced” the end of his campaign. This “announcement” took place via a screenshotted letter on X (Twitter), only hours after his surrogates were on the Sunday morning talk shows saying he was in it to win it. And this president would then be seen only briefly over a three-day period before making a pre-recorded 13-minute speech affirming his withdrawal but providing no explanation as to why.

Let’s pretend that these exact same events happened in some Central American country on just months before they went to the polls. The United Nations would already have observers converging on the scene to make sure everything was done on the up-and-up.

Or let’s pretend that these exact same events happened in Russia. Can you even imagine the self-righteous froth the war hawks in Washington and the corporate media would be in? We’d probably already be at war to “save democracy.”

Just as important, if it happened in “other countries,” no one here would have any problem accepting that this sequence of events was indicative of something gravely wrong with the entire government, and the need to start asking questions. But because these things only happen in “other countries,” we’re all basically nudged to just move along and start talking about Trump vs. Kamala as though this is some normal election cycle.

I’m sorry, but I find this need to just keep “moving on” from everything to be a sign of a seriously dysfunctional society with a deep mental health problem.

As human beings, we all want to feel safe and secure. That’s normal. When it becomes unhealthy, is when you take obviously abnormal situations and try and normalize them. It’s what happens in gravely dysfunctional families. And it is happening here in the United States on a large-scale societal basis. No one wants to talk about it. Everyone just keeps drifting along, either in a state of denial, or too afraid to be the one who asks the first question.

This is in spite of the fact that everyone—regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, and regardless of your opinion of the particular individuals involved—has a vested interest in getting answers to these questions.

The questions start here:

*Why is it that the two presidents of the post-World War II era that have had the most strained relationship with the intelligence community—John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump—each ended up in the crosshairs of a gunman on a roof?

Even someone who wants to spend their days spluttering about Trump better figure out a way to make peace with the need to ask this question. Because the answer goes directly to who runs our foreign policy and who is really deciding where and whether we go to war. Is it our elected officials? Or is it people whose names we don’t even know. If you really care about democracy, you’ll want to know the answer. Long after Trump is gone, the consequences of how this question is answered—or not—will live on.

*What exactly is the reason that Joe Biden decided to end his campaign? Who pressured him? What was the nature of that pressure?

Even if you’re someone like me, who thinks Biden is a warmongering pedophile, we need answers. Whatever some us think about how the 2020 election went down, the facts are state legislatures certified the results, the Electoral College voted, and Congress accepted those results. This year, 15 million Democratic voters went to the polls in their primary and chose Biden to run again. After his disastrous debate performance of June 27, when his cognitive decline became apparent, he repeatedly affirmed his commitment to staying in the race. Then, without explanation, he was gone. And has barely been seen since. You don’t have to like Biden or care who the Democrats put up as their nominee to be concerned. This should all be considered completely unacceptable if we’re going to pretend to be a self-governing people.

*Who is running the country anyway?

Many of us have never thought Biden was cognitively with it and have wondered that question from the very beginning. Now that Democrats, by forcing him out of the race, have tacitly admitted the same thing, don’t we deserve an answer to this question? If Biden can’t campaign, he certainly can’t govern. Why won’t they invoke the 25^th Amendment and get him out? Why was Harris the one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this past week?

Furthermore, exactly how out of it has Biden been, and how long has he been this bad? Who knew what and when? Regardless of what side of the political aisle you’re on, we need a Commander-in-Chief who can at least control their own bowels. It looks we haven’t had that for four years—and, since Biden hasn’t resigned, we still have it right now, with wars raging in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

You can be like me and find the prospect of Kamala Harris as president to be a complete disaster, but the reality is that’s the only alternative to this bizarre situation we have right now. The buck has to stop with someone. Or, at the very least, a populace that was serious about self-governance would at least demand to know which unelected people are calling the shots between now and January 20.

*Why did the Republican House decide to leave D.C. early?

In the aftermath of July 13 in Butler, there was no shortage of GOP performative art, as House members vowed to get to the bottom of what happened. We got our usual result—they put on some outrage during hearings, got the resignation of the Secret Service director, but no real answers. Then they decided to go on recess until after Labor Day. I’m glad they won’t let their summer vacation be interrupted by some little thing like the near-murder of their own candidate.

All of which bears to mind my first reaction when we heard Trump was shot. I noted the timing—two days before he was officially to become the GOP nominee. His death would have meant the Republican Party higher-ups would have had control of the convention and the eventual candidate. The question of who benefits the most from a crime is considered an essential part of any investigation. The Republican Establishment certainly stood to gain from an assassination. Maybe there’s a reason their House members are in no hurry to investigate.

Just like with the Democrats, the answer to that question matters to everyone. You certainly don’t have to like a party’s chosen candidate or even care who that party puts up. But if we are to be self-governing within a party system, murdering a nominee (or forcing one out via a bloodless coup) to elevate a different candidate impacts everyone.

Thus, these are the six questions that should be completely dominating the news cycle:

·        Who was involved in the attempt on Trump’s life?

·        Why is the Republican House so disinterested in the truth?

·        Who forced out Biden?

·        Has Biden ever been running the country?

·        Who knew that he wasn’t?

·        Who’s running the country now?

Habitual Denial

Yet we’re not asking these questions. Maybe it’s because that, as a populace, we’ve developed the habit of just “moving on” and pretending everything was okay when it really wasn’t. Because we never demanded answers to these questions either:

*Why did we lock down the economy over a virus that everyone, at least by the summer of 2020, knew had a survival rate of over 99 percent? Even if you were pro-lockdown at the time, don’t you at least find it concerning that large corporations were allowed to stay open, while mom-and-pop business were not? That’s a lot of money (trillions actually) that changed hands. Yet Democrats—notably people like my own home state senator Elizabeth Warren, who regularly fulminate over the wealth disparity, can’t be troubled to ask the question.

*Why are people who have taken the COVID-19 vaccine still getting COVID? In fact, why does there seem a correlation between taking the vaccine and still getting the virus? Don’t tell me that you get a little less sick if you took the vax. Maybe that’s true, but there’s any number of video montages out there of people, from political leaders to media, saying flat out “if you take this vaccine you won’t get COVID.” Are we even remotely interested in finding out why this vax is obviously not what it was sold as? Or is everyone too embarrassed to ask? And yes, this absolutely includes President Trump. Donald, in this space, we love you, but you better start demanding some answers.

*Do we plan on investigating why, since the COVID-19 vaccine hit the market, life insurance companies are showing a spike in early deaths? And why do we seem to hear about more younger people having heart issues? We actually don’t even need to investigate this. We can just look at the clinical trial reports from Pfizer. They knew this vaccine wasn’t effective, and that was likely unsafe. And yet—just like with opioids—they foisted it on the public anyway. Maybe it’s time to start asking our doctors what they knew and when they knew it. We already know Blue Cross was paying them per vaccinated patient. We need more answers.

*On November 3, 2020, why did every battleground state all stop counting votes at the same time, say they were quitting for the night, and yet have results that changed by 8 AM the next morning? You don’t have to share my view on late-night ballot drops to ask this question. We all saw the count stop. We know that a sudden stoppage in the count is listed as one of the telltale signs of fraud. One of those things, I guess, that only applies in “other countries.”

Even if you’re happy with, or indifferent to, the ultimate outcome of that election, the failure to be asking the question—or at least acknowledging the question’s legitimacy--is the sign of a populace that isn’t serious about self-governance.

I just rattled off 10 questions that all go directly to our status of a self-governing people and our right to good medical information. All of those questions have arisen in just a four-year period. Everyone, regardless of where they stand on the underlying issue, has a vested interest in getting honest answers.

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As we go through our national purgation, my friend John Tuturice joined me for a discussion of the Catholic dogma of Purgatory. You can watch that video here.

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A Time for the Truth

As regular readers and long-time friends know, I enjoy a good political horse-race discussion as much as the next person. I’d love to start talking about how the presidential race shapes up. I’d like to just root for Trump to get over the finish line, and for Kari Lake to win her Senate race in Arizona, thus setting the stage for Vance/Lake in 2028. I want those things. But they aren’t enough. Not even close. Those things—or whatever your things are—don’t matter if we don’t start getting answers to bigger questions.

You know, my wife and I have often said that the last four years have seemed so surreal that it feels like we’re living in a movie. Right now, I feel like I’m in the last courtroom clash of A Few Good Men. You have Jack Nicholson’s character—a perfect embodiment of the Deep State by the way—just insisting “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall” and bellowing that I’d be better off just not knowing what’s really going on. But, like Tom Cruise’s character, I want the truth.

A National Tipping Point

The biggest truth—even bigger than the answer to any of the questions above—is this—I want to know whether or not the political framework and narrative I have lived my entire life under has been a lie. And I am no longer willing to normalize the abnormal in the interests of preserving that lie. If it can happen in other countries, it can happen here. It is happening here. It’s happening now.

I’m not even sure what “it” is. I have generalized thoughts that involve some type of regime collapse, but I don’t even know what that looks like. I guess we’ll know it when we see it. And seeing it will be a lot easier if we refuse to normalize the abnormal, regardless of how painful or scary that process might be. We don’t have a lot of power. But we have the power to refuse to accept the lie. No more “moving on”. Enough self-deception and dysfunction.