I had an urge to try something new on this global communications colossus. It’d be an irregular, repeating feature herein that I was thinking of calling somethings like “Good America.”
I wanted it to be a series of posts on triumphs, decencies, compassionate acts, inventions, societal advancements, cultural and artistic landmarks, and all other sorts of positive things happening in this holy land. We need, I reasoned, an alternative to the corporate and social media fixation on terrifying, enraging clickbaits. Go to CNN, for instance, and every single day, seemingly, there’s another virus or foodborne illness that’s spreading like wildfire. Or some heretofore ignored poisonous creature is now creeping toward our suburbs. Or our homes are toxic, our kids are suicidal, and our spouses are cheating on us.
All this on top of real looming perils like the thousands of nuclear weapons that still exist around the world, the runaway wealth disparity, the threat of AI, the simmering, nearly boiling atmosphere and ocean, and, of course, the transformation of the United States into Li’l Duce‘s personal fiefdom. (BTW: a George Will opinion piece in the Washington Post today is headlined A President Who Treats Washington Like His Chew Toy. Perfect.)
It all makes you want to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills.
I wanted, in other words, balance.
We — individuals and the collective gang of us — cannot survive, or at least thrive, living on a constant diet of panic and fury. We’re not all bad. This life isn’t hell. And, for all its rotten sins throughout history, not everything about the United States is evil.
I was going to start this feel-good thing this week.
Now it ain’t gonna happen.
Nope. No way. Not yet at least. Not after that heavily-armed, camouflaged, masked bunch of thugs gunned down Renee Good. Her murder is as abominable as that of Breonna Taylor and others, but since she was a pleasant-looking white woman, it’ll resonate within the hearts of many more “middle” Americans. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the tipping point for the Caligu-lite phenomenon.
Taylor (L) & Good
It was, after all, that 15 percent slice of “middle” Americans who put the Mad King over the top in the goddamnedest presidential election of your or my lifetime. Those non-MAGA-ists who were turned off by the whole Joe Biden is too old so let’s just crown Kamala Harris our candidate and be damned with primaries and the will of the people. Well, they and the Dems who found repugnant Biden’s defense of Netanyahu’s scorched earth policy in Gaza and reacted by not voting at all. Li’l Duce‘s election was a perfect storm — okay, imperfect storm, but you know what I mean — that led to the dismantling of a federal government that operated since FDR’s New Deal for (sorta) the people. Now, there’s no more sorta. There’s no more pretense. America’s government is no longer in any way for you or me.
That 15 percent is now surprised and disappointed and they’re not only going to turn on Li’l Duce but also the entire Republican Party. (Of course, if you hadn’t foreseen what was going to happen in Trump Redux, you were, in James Carville’s words, “a goddamned idiot.”)
Yeah, I’m vibing that the Trump Magic Show is on the way to being cancelled. Nevertheless, the present moment remains ugly with his private ICE-stapo flooding Dem-controlled cities and all the cultural, scientific, artistic and flat out compassionate programs and departments of the federal government being annihilated. Citizens are being killed in the streets. The corporate media have been leashed. The internet has been flooded with goons and loons. And the truth has been paltered with so much it almost doesn’t exist anymore.
No, this is no time to play the positive card. That’d be a lie, and I leave lying to the likes of Noem, Hegseth, Miller, and all the rest of the lickspittlers who work for the Ugliest American President Ever.
Maybe I’ll revive the idea some time down the road. But I can’t find it in my heart to crow about a Good America right now.