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Millions of People Happy
Apr. 18th, 2011 01:53 amWith the pre-campaign speeches flying around in anticipation of the 2012 presidential election, I caught some of a Donald Trump speech tonight, followed by an Obama speech. The Trump speech was nothing but conspiracy theories based on made-up facts that are easily disproved - that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and can't be the president, that his autobiography was written by Bill Ayers (of the Weather Underground, whose own autobiography was not enthusiastically received), that we have lots of oil, that despite having lots of oil we should take over most of the middle east, that Iran is behind various political movements around the world, that undocumented immigrants are all child molesters (and probably hiding oil and manipulated by Iran), etc.
Nothing I could make up is further from reality than what he was saying and people were cheering. It sounded like a complete break with reality, like an early stage of schizophrenia - impostors everywhere, vast conspiracies involving everyone in power, hidden secret wealth that only you can access but which these people are preventing you from accessing. It's very strange to hear it taken seriously and not institutionalized. There are even the usual delusions about what God wants and is saying.
I'm not afraid of this stuff, because I find it implausible that it will catch on with a broad audience, and I'm not fascinated by this stuff because it involves bad conspiracy theories with completely implausible narratives. You want to tell me about a coup by the CIA in the 1960s, I'm there. You want to tell me that the entire world is the secret puppet of Iran, even groups working at cross purposes to Iran, a country with the political influence of maybe Monaco, and I don't buy it. It's just tedious, like, again, schizophrenic rants about secret microphones dentists hide in your teeth, and the list of all the license plates of all the people who are secretly dentists or agents of dentists.
But it makes me pity these people, when I know I should probably be angry at them, because I feel fortunate in a way I never expected to be in my lifetime to live through the Obama presidency. It's amazing to me that I am living at the same time as a person I admire more than perhaps any figure in history, someone I aspire to live up to, someone who embodies everything I want the word American to mean. If I had to choose between living through this moment and living through the moon landing, I'd pick this. I wake up every day and whatever bad things are going on I get to be filled with joy that I am living in a country governed by my president, my president in a way I never though a president could or would be mine, a president who with kindness and integrity turned the economy around from a great recession, reformed the student loan program, created national healthcare, wound down two wars, restored our standing in the world, accepted a Nobel peace prize, coped with environmental disaster, appointed two women to the Supreme Court, guaranteed equal pay for equal work, ended Don't Ask Don't Tell, and dozens of other things I can't remember now. It must be horrible to feel that such a person is an impostor controlled from afar by sinister forces.
Nothing I could make up is further from reality than what he was saying and people were cheering. It sounded like a complete break with reality, like an early stage of schizophrenia - impostors everywhere, vast conspiracies involving everyone in power, hidden secret wealth that only you can access but which these people are preventing you from accessing. It's very strange to hear it taken seriously and not institutionalized. There are even the usual delusions about what God wants and is saying.
I'm not afraid of this stuff, because I find it implausible that it will catch on with a broad audience, and I'm not fascinated by this stuff because it involves bad conspiracy theories with completely implausible narratives. You want to tell me about a coup by the CIA in the 1960s, I'm there. You want to tell me that the entire world is the secret puppet of Iran, even groups working at cross purposes to Iran, a country with the political influence of maybe Monaco, and I don't buy it. It's just tedious, like, again, schizophrenic rants about secret microphones dentists hide in your teeth, and the list of all the license plates of all the people who are secretly dentists or agents of dentists.
But it makes me pity these people, when I know I should probably be angry at them, because I feel fortunate in a way I never expected to be in my lifetime to live through the Obama presidency. It's amazing to me that I am living at the same time as a person I admire more than perhaps any figure in history, someone I aspire to live up to, someone who embodies everything I want the word American to mean. If I had to choose between living through this moment and living through the moon landing, I'd pick this. I wake up every day and whatever bad things are going on I get to be filled with joy that I am living in a country governed by my president, my president in a way I never though a president could or would be mine, a president who with kindness and integrity turned the economy around from a great recession, reformed the student loan program, created national healthcare, wound down two wars, restored our standing in the world, accepted a Nobel peace prize, coped with environmental disaster, appointed two women to the Supreme Court, guaranteed equal pay for equal work, ended Don't Ask Don't Tell, and dozens of other things I can't remember now. It must be horrible to feel that such a person is an impostor controlled from afar by sinister forces.
