The Price Isn’t Right: The Cost of Playing “Let’s Pretend” in Politics
It’s hard to even grasp the enormity of the grift that selling a pretend world generates. A few years back there was a mind game kind of thing where people paid good money to spend a weekend “in character.” That meant that they all showed up at a spacious place where everyone in attendance pretended to have arrived through a mystical means of their own choosing. It appears that falling through a hole in the matrix or some such was ever-so-popular. Imagine the disorientation should one happen to suddenly find oneself in such a pretend world.
What if you were a drunk wedding guest from a nearby conference room who got lost returning from a call to relief? What if everyone you encountered insisted the pretend world they were pretending to be real was real? How long would it take for you to believe you were also in their pretend world? If you were to be enthralled by their pretend world, would you not be prone to want to believe pretend was real? If everyone around you believes in a pretend world, then you are extremely likely to believe in the same pretend world. It’s the process we use to convince ourselves that we belong to any group.
The problem with believing in pretend realities is that they never fit with actual reality. As a way to illustrate this idea, let’s take the phrase, “I love America” as our example. First, let’s all get on the same page and look at the fact that America exists. It already exists. It is what it is right now. But when people say they love “America,” quite often they mean they love their own personal view of how they think America should exist. They often do not account for how America exists at this moment. Therefore, they are saying that they love a pretend America. I don’t care which side of the aisle you’re on. Unless you can accept America as it exists here and now, you — by definition — are loving a pretend America.
I don’t think that accepting what actually exists means anything more than saying that the sky is blue, water is wet, ice is cold, the sun is hot or even saying that sex sells. This is a fact among facts. Nothing more and nothing less. It is not political, nor religious nor even secular. It just is. None of us have the brain capacity to identify all that America is to all the people for whom America exists. We all are limited to the parts we have in our experience.
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to be all righteous about the parts of America they experience. Some people like to feel all safe and secure because they’re carrying a gun around for God and everyone to see. Some people like to never think about being shot or a shooting and they might run around pretending to exert their will on those who do like to carry guns. And of course those who like to carry guns will have to react to all the running around and exerting. No need for either side to get all het up. There’s nothing righteous about either side of that issue. America just doesn’t care how righteous anyone is. America exists in spite of all the righteousness that can possibly live in people. None of that righteousness actually exists. Oh, it’s a real thing for the people who believe it’s real, but America exists how it is no matter what any of us say or believe about it. America has mass and it is going to continue in the direction it has been moving since it started, no matter what the ClockWork Orange contingent of the Congressional Freedom Caucus says about debt. Why? Because America exists.
The reality that is America will slowly but surely grind away the Margies and the Kevins and the Brandons too. It will grind away at anyone who resists its directional progress. It will be especially hard on those who attempt to impede its progress forward. Maybe it would be handy to note that history does not go backwards. It may repeat itself if we don’t learn from our experience of events, but it can not go back. Time only moves forward for us three-dimensional critters. But it could be that we want to look at the idea that we build on our experiences. We learn and adjust because we can remember our experiences. We even have a name for our collective remembered experiences. We lump them all together and call them History.
Well, that’s what people with common sense do. However, there exist people who are not aware of History, it would seem, and behave as though they have an obligation to be the center of attention at any cost. Some of those people may be exhibiting a dark side and some of those people may be exhibiting mere ignorance. The end result is the same in either case. If a politician, for example, makes his or her goal reelection, then he or she must attract attention to him or herself at all times in order to make a name that people remember.
Josh has to play-act his sham of disgust at how he supports the police, but we remember his fist pump. Margie has to wear a skirt with a slit up to there while she talks about butt plugs and dildo shopping at Target. The Big Guy has to claim and reclaim he is perfect and that he has done nothing wrong. It’s all performative for all of them. They have nothing of substance they can propose or make real because their focus is on their own celebrity status.
Everyone has the right to focus on whatever the object of their hearts desire is. We can all be down with that idea, but that does not mean that we have to trust people who perform for name recognition. In fact, it might indicate that we may not ever trust performances as opposed to addressing reality. Coach Jordan didn’t find the collusion between government and social media that he thought he could find. Why? Because he didn’t address reality. Matt didn’t find the arms shipments to Ukraine that he thought he had found and the gotcha he set up was for himself. Mountain Lauren forgot that the President of the United States is Joe Biden and tried to be all righteous about the last guy, only to be called out on the floor of Congress for her impudence. How hard can it be to address real issues as opposed to addressing pretend issues just to call attention to oneself?
Consider that Americans pay attention to accomplishments. We know shooting percentages in the NBA. We know batting averages in the MLB. We know and pay careful attention to the work ethic of our sports heroes. Do politicians actually think that we do not know what is real and what they actually do for us? They can lie and tell us all kinds of stories but we know if a politician or a ball player or a movie actor is real or not. We know because we notice the effort they put into what they do. That’s why we have to admire Bernie even if we think he’s a little too much. We have to grudgingly give old Joe a nod simply because he’s done some pretty spectacular stuff in his time in office. So I don’t worry much about America because I don’t see anything real in all these performances and stories. I don’t understand what I’m seeing any more than the folks in Washington understand what they’re seeing.
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