APRIL 13, 2020 – We are deep into the era in which millions of Americans can’t hear Cassandra say, “I told you so.” Even when irrefutable evidence and ironclad proof fill the eyes, ears, mouth, and nostrils of a naysayer or human ostrich, the truth of her prior warnings is denied or ignored.
When Bush Two ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Cassandra shouted from history books and newspaper accounts, “You are headed for an endless war that will bring untold misery upon millions of lives and cost you trillions in loot.” Every day thereafter, Cassandra has been saying, “I told you so,” but into a vacuum where sound waves don’t travel. As she cries on today’s sidelines, how many Americans could locate Iraq or Afghanistan on a map? How many could cite the number of deaths, the numbers wounded? The rise of ISIS—a consequence of our folly?
Of the horror, Cassandra’s warning was loud and clear, but to this day, and most certainly in this day, millions of Americans can’t hear her say, “I told you so.” Millions more don’t care.
Fast forward to the Naked Emperor. When in 2015 he announced his candidacy for president, Cassandra warned again. Her prediction, however, was hardly that of a forecaster. It was the report of an on-location reporter describing the darkening sky overhead as lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and winds whistled. Only the rain itself had yet to fall. By 2016, torrential B.S. was flooding the land, as the drenched Cassandra screamed into the mike, “It’s raining so hard I can’t see my camera man!”
By Election Day, 63 million voters ignored Cassandra and waded waist deep into wastewater. Despite the awful stench, they voted to go all the way in.
No sooner had the 63 million put us all in sewage up to our necks, when the snakes, the piranha, the blood suckers appeared. The fathomless waters filled with boldfaced lies, diarrhetic sleaze, patent distortions, and gross incompetence. The frontal assault on foundational principles of American democracy by those sworn to defend them was well beyond flood stage.
And there was Cassandra with voice amplified shouting from a rooftop, “I told you so!”
Not with the prowess of “a businessman” (let alone with the eloquence of an inspired leader), but upon the impulse of a playground bully, Trump tweeted “FAKE NEWS!” With warped, sycophantic vengeance, FoxGoebbels told its viewership what to think. And the 63 million shouted, “MAGA!” as they lowered their chins, their mouths, their nostrils, theirs eyes and ears into the flood of wastewater. The added displacement threatened to drown us all.
Which brings us to the latest sludge report: Trump’s re-tweet of the call to fire Fauci.
Bound by untruths and gagged by misinformation, Cassandra signals with her eyelids, “I told you so!” We who’ve heard and read Cassandra all along must now come to the aid of our country. We must act now. We must pull the plug on the wastewater before America becomes a wasteland.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
