You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught

Temporary Resident Trump is just that: temporary.

This is a nightmare which we will all wake up from.

In the meantime, instead of endlessly fixating on him, which is what he craves (hate and love are the same thing to him. It’s all about being lavished with attention, either good or bad, in order to compensate for his feelings of self-loathing which is based on his knowing what a life-long, talentless fuck up he is) it is time for us to move on before he does.

But how?

Let’s dig deep.  Don’t worry.  I’ll hold your hand.

We the people, spend most of our lives doing secret battle with the ghost feelings of abandonment, whose aftermath is more often than not, a crippling feeling of loneliness (which theoretically should guarantee anyone a handicapped parking sticker), which is a condition that even the best of partners can soothe and reassure, but never eliminate.  

Not even the diamonds of our collective engagement rings can cut through the glass of our broken hearts.

Most of our lives are a silent, rotating movie diorama: a spinning distraction from the psychic pain which follows us everywhere, like Peter Pan’s hastily re-sewn shadow.

The grown up world feels, more often than not, like a grotesque fun house mirror version of our own self-destructive matrix.  

We gravitate magnetically, moth to flame, towards the primitive things which we fear the most.

When we don’t get what we want, we rant.  And road rage.  

We do hand to hand combat with images that are nothing more than pixels on a screen or ink on paper.  We pick on people who do not think or look like us. Act like us.  Love like us.  Because the truth is we would rather fight for the right of our own discomfort than live a life that is free of it.  Discomfort takes us back to childhood which way too many people pick as their ideal vacation destination.

Since our country is a theoretical family, we spend most of our waking hours, battling with symbolic siblings and parents.

After  a long day of raging, when we finally lay down our swords and take a respite from the inquisition du jour, that is when we, however briefly, allow ourselves to float down the river of amniotic daydreams until we are suddenly caught up in the mad rapids of heartache whose each and every rock is all that we have love and lost.

We pick our politicians I think, in a kind of reverse adoption process.  Annie picking Daddy Warbucks instead of the other way around.  Who will make the best surrogate parent?

The ultimate question is: do we want someone like Lincoln, Roosevelt or Kennedy who is soothing, sublimely educated, savvy, courageous and capable to take care of us? 

Or do we want someone who gives voice (or fake, pandering imitation) to our infantile rage whose own tantrums will assure that no one puts baby in the corner?

With the elimination of the middle class, the worst division of this day care country of ours, is between the haves and have nots.  It’s the private jets vs. the sharks, who have to swim upstream or die.

It is clear who gets to play with the best toys and that can be infuriating especially to honest, hard working people who get little in return for their best efforts.

Unfortunately, it also antagonizes the jealous, the uneducated, and the hate-filled part of the American nursery whose prayers have experienced a lower response rate than the buy-now click button on Amazon.  

The lottery and the Publishers Clearing House have not come through as the miracle ordered and since they do not take returns, all that is left is to do is to pick a destructive asshole who will randomly attack anyone who has more than you.  

The El Gallo price for that?  He gets everything he can rape and pillage while you get nothing, which is the grand illusion of having it all, which sadly, has become this generation’s American Dream.  

For now, the best we can do is accept the now as a form of having a traumatic childhood.

But like the hero in Hillbilly Elegy, that does mean that this current condition is a death sentence.  It’s just a badly spelled death sentence.

Truth, which is the closest thing we have to God on earth, can be disfigured, manipulated and distracted, but it ultimately cannot be contained any more than a vengeful, biblical storm.

There is a moral power to honesty.  It is pure.  It is just.  And it is inevitable.

So instead of just looking for immediate answers, I suggest you turn to those who presaged all this.  Who have for centuries before, left us direct messages on how to deal with our clear and present danger.

Like Rodgers and Hammerstein who decades ago said this:

You've got to be taught

To hate

And fear

You've got to be taught

From year

To year

Its got to

Be drummed in your dear little ear

You've got to

Be carefully

Taught

You've got to be taught

To be

Afraid

Of people

Who's eyes are oddly made

And people who's skin is a different shade

You've got to

Be carefuly

Taught

You've got to be taught

Before it's too late

Before you are six

Or seven

Or eight

To hate all the people

Your relatives hate

You've got to

Be carefully taught

You've got to

Be carefully taught

Emile De Beque -

This is just the kind of ugliness I was running away from

It has followed my all this way

All these years

And now it has found me

I was cheated before

And i'm cheated again

By a mean little world

Full of mean little men

And the one chance for me

Is this life I know best

To be here on an island

And to hell with

The rest

I'll cling

To this island

Like a tree or a stone

I'll cling to this island and be free

And

Alone