APRIL 2, 2020 – Raise your hand if you want to live in a country where decades after Stalin’s excesses had been suffered by millions and revealed to millions more, people would demonstrate their adoration of the man by posting his portrait publicly, ringed with flowers.
Or signal approval if you’d wanted to live in a country where tens of thousands of your neighbors lined the streets, overwhelmed with emotion in adulation of Der Führer, as his motorcade drove through the heart of the city, circa 1936.
How about living in a country that for years went head over heels about a guy who, calling himself Il Duce, strutted around in jackboots, stuck out a fat lower lip as he flashed a Charlie Chaplin salute (Oops . . . it was the other way around!) and with delusions of grandeur, launched aerial bombardments of . . . Ethiopians?
Anyone in favor of living in a country that was manipulated into believing the “emperor” was truly, honestly, actually divine? (I show you Japan during the run-up to and during World War II.)
Or how about . . .
. . . living in a country of 330 million people where between 40% and 50% of all adults—grown-ups!—think a pompous (cr)ass with no brains, no heart, no soul, no clue, no clothes is “doing a great job.” This after nearly four years of full-view, non-stop defecation on every norm, every standard of decency and fact-based thinking that all responsible parents would strive to instill in their children?
And just for good measure, if by upbringing, conversion, cultural indoctrination, or by some inner spiritual spring, you subscribe to the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth or simply to his teachings, how do you feel about living in a country where the overwhelming majority of Christian Evangelicals fall prey (“pray”?) to the likes of Jerry Falwell, Jr. and other “Christian” demagogues and where conservative Catholics will flush all else down the toilet in order to gain a Supreme Court that will reverse Roe v. Wade?
And now, in my daily cheat-read of the headlines, I learn that Dr. Fauci has been assigned beefed-up security in light of threats by rightwing conspiracy agitators. Dr. Fauci is head of the NIAID, not a member of Al Qaeda or ISIS or band of Central American immigrants—the groups that not so long ago those same rightwing fanatics insisted posed the biggest threat to our way of life, and therefore justified all measures of “security” ahead of reason, liberty and humanity.
As we ride through the current storm, it seems that no amount of evidence, measured by weight, height, width, or depth will change blind eyes, deaf ears, empty heads, poisoned minds, or hypnotized hearts.
This is the country in which we live. Strike that. It’s the world in which we have to survive.
Goodbye Jesus (Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Hindu gods). Hello Darwin (Herbert Spencer)?
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
