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Shiny Things

For several months now we have been in various stages of lockdown (that’s Latin for: Arbitrary mass house arrest) throughout this great nation. We have seen businesses meekly shutter their doors and windows. We have seen people refuse to emerge from their homes without masks, gloves, and “social distancing.” The U.S. has been on a starvation diet, as it were, since March.

During this time there was no ambiguity about the proper thing to do. Each person must stay at home as much as possible. He or she must keep distance from other dangerous human beings.

Until a man died while a police officer knelt on his back. At that point there was no worry about viral transmission. There was no hyperventilating over the lack of masks or the proximity of angry, violent, mindless mobs of screaming people. The media told us that what was happening was good. It was “beautiful” that free speech was rising in the face of danger and oppression. The burning buildings were the sick and sinister evil twin of our Fourth of July sparklers. While the flames burned on camera…They told us that it was good.

The dazzling of viewers has been a staple of entertainment for as long as entertainment has been around. Shoestring and chewing gum stage shows, prestidigitation from the overly dramatic magician, and clever camera tricks by film makers lure us into an alternate reality. In this reality whatever they are selling must be true. It simply has to be. See? It is right there on television! So, they get their jump scare. They get the standing ovation. They get the accolades.

As the shattered glass lay on the debris strewn streets of America, fire glittering off of its facets, the media presented a brilliant image of hopelessness. They conveyed, no, they sponsored the horror film of America under Trump. It was not a movie about how Trump was working to get our resources aimed at the heart of COVID19. That would not require clever wording and selective image cropping. It would require telling the true story. So called journalists rushed to their laptops to pound out propaganda that would make dear old Stalin get all warm and bloody. Sadly, for them, Stalin has been deceased a while. The stand in’s were  barely emerged children that have absorbed the dazzling show of network news and pop culture myth spinning since the days of diaper rash. They had been taken in by the program. Now, they got to play a part in reality TV. 

Mustn’t it have been fun to be lawless? Here, these people that had been constrained for years by schools that had told them that, under no circumstances would they be allowed to step off of the thin yellow line of social acceptability. They had been told that they were not boys and girls. Anyone using such archaic and abusive language was to be considered social poison. Reality is, of course, to be rejected. In the chaos, simply do as you are told. When we say that you are not free to say things that specific power brokers do not find pleasant, you will cease and desist. When we tell you that you are to tell the faculty if your parents own those dangerous firearms, you do it. No questions. Just obedience. All of which was gone in the blink of our collective eye.

The suppressed boys saw the excitement and the release of energetic violence as an invigorating change from the lockdowns they had endured for weeks. The girls saw the action, fun, and frolic. Who cared if property was destroyed? Who would shed a tear over people being hurt and killed? A guy on television had been reported killed by a white cop. We all saw it. There it was. Proof positive that looting, rioting, torture, and murder were amply justified. Right? Such a shiny pretty, enticing image, isn’t it? 

Then Hollywood, wrapped in the cloak of false charity and heroism they so often wear, ran to the aid of those poor, poor rioters, looters, and violent offenders. It was “America coming together to fight oppression!” 

This salt in the eye of the American public turned many people toward Trump.

Store owners wept bitterly, openly as bands of violent thugs reduced cities to movie sets of post apocalyptic desolation. Those clever networks managed to crop out these unpleasant, dull, anti-Revolutionary types. They were bad optics. If you want a really good movie, about really good revolution, you have to make the small oppressors, you know, the oppressors that never really oppressed anyone, into mindless demonic drones. They have to be faceless, nameless, unrecognizable beings…How convenient that the victims wore masks…While the looters had faces, real faces, that laughed, cried and spoke like we all did before the lockdowns. Those kill-joys were ruining the seminal moment in broadcast revolution. They could not have that. So, they didn’t. They just turned their lenses back to the shiny riots, with their shiny fires, and all of the shiny broken glass. It turned many toward Trump.

Then, those crowds got a little out of hand. Oh, but didn’t they! They dared to terrorize Democrats! They accosted liberal news reporters! They damaged the property of the people that really do matter. And just like that, the plot twisted like the knife the media rammed in America’s back. Now it was time to settle down. It was time to reunite America. It was the hour of brotherly love again on TV screens across the fruited plain. 

What ever could pull this Nation back from the edge of oblivion? I mean, clearly, it was plummeting into ruin! COVID19 had killed how many? Well, that is not helpful…How many people have been tested? Ah! There is the answer! Testing! Shiny needles, everyone! Look at this! Not enough of these shiny needles! Trump does not love you. He will not get people tested! It is the testing that matters! 

When testing was done in massive quantities the media debated the number of tests. They insisted that testing numbers were inflated. The truth was so dull. It was so lackluster. It was so…True. Better stick to vilifying Trump. 

Testing did not work for the media. Those shiny needles, like the shiny glass shards and the shining light of cities aflame had driven people to Trump. What would they do? They needed something that did not shine. They needed something that could not glitter and gleem brighter than the hope of getting rid of the riots, and the lockdowns, and the draconian regulations laid down on the backs of American citizens. We have to find something dull.

 In a great coincidence, they managed to find the one candidate that everyone could ignore. After all, the American people had ignored him during the eight years of Obama. The people of Delaware had ignored him throughout his endless years in public office there. No, this was not shiny. This was a backdrop so difficult to see that the shine of false hope would allow him to nap his way into office.

When Biden said to an African-American talkshow host “…you ain’t black!” nobody saw it. It was hidden behind a brilliant glare of staged community. When he called a room full of American servicemen and women “Stupid bastards” the dazzling light of some sweet day finding a vaccine outshined his faux pas. When he called someone a “dog faced pony soldier” the sparkle of Phase two or three state mass parole has previously free people dancing (albeit at safe distances) in the streets. It is such a pretty show, isn’t it?

Now, we have been through the initial portion of the election and, wonder of wonders, the Faux Pas Prince has been crowned. What? Not legally President yet? Look at this shiny new office! It looks just like Obama’s office of the President elect, doesn’t it? Shiny! Look at it! It’s true because we tell you it is true. 

“We do not want to have to bring out the shiny glass, and shiny flames of criminal activity again, you mere Americans.”

And while all of this happens, the glitter, the glare, the shiny, shiny light of media still has much of this country fixed in fear and confusion…Except for those bright enough to look past the shiny things.

 

 

 

16 replies on “Shiny Things”

“In a great coincidence, they managed to find the one candidate that everyone could ignore. After all, the American people had ignored him during the eight years of Obama. The people of Delaware had ignored him throughout his endless years in public office there. No, this was not shiny. This was a backdrop so difficult to see that the shine of false hope would allow him to nap his way into office.”
Joe Biden is so not-shiny that he should change his name to Matt Black.

Yeah, I took three years of Latin. By the third year we were translating Caesar from the original. I remember encountering his famous line: Nigrum Vitae Res.

and Album Vitae Res,
and Caeruleus Vitae Res,
and Omnis Vitae Res,
and ….
But then, I’m just a racist, bigoted, islamophobic homophobe according to pajama boy.

As in corbis deplorandi?

Or how about e deplorandus unum?

Neither of those is quite right. I can’t find an exactly parallel construction in Latin. I think the first one might translate as a basket which deplores, rather than as a basket of things (or people) which are themselves deplorable.

My dictionary gives an example from Livy: deploratur in perpetuum libertas. Very depressing.

Where is Henry Beard when we need him?

I never took Latin but I did learn one phrase . . .
“Illegitimus non carborundum est” which means
Don’t let the bastards wear you down.

Can you imagine what the unthinkers would say if the read that bit of Latin?

I over use that particular device. “That’s Latin for…” precedes a lot of buzzword, catchphrase, political language.

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