In the spirit of Halloween, I present our haunted house of a country…..
Growing up in America as a kid during the 1960s was a frightful experience if you paid attention to the news, which I did. Our house had two newspapers delivered to the door daily – one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. The television set was usually tuned to a national news telecast during the early evening hours, either the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite or the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC.
To my young self, it seemed like you were assaulted by some kind of grim headline whenever you opened the paper or watched the TV news. I’m not talking about the screaming, horror-drenched headlines and clickbait you find today, with a media that is obsessed with making us all quake in fear, and can therefore turn an article about egg prices into the very essence of Armageddon.
No, back in the 1960s, the horrors were real, and the news reports were delivered in a straightforward manner, without dialing up the drama. It was a decade of violence and strife in the United States, marked by an escalating war in Vietnam, anti-war protests and civil rights marches that often turned bloody, urban riots, racial discord, Jim Crow murders, and a string of high-profile political assassinations (JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy).
Oh, and this: the threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Red Menace.
We were thisclose to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when I was a wee toddler. I’m not sure I remember that event, but I do remember the proliferation of Civil Defense fallout shelters designed to protect Americans from radiation in the event of a nuclear attack. If an attack happened while you were in school, you were advised to hide under your desk (duck and cover!). This would buy you an extra second or so before you were vaporized into dust.
I just figured the prospect of nuclear attacks were part of the everyday fabric of life during my childhood, along with war, assassinations, violent uprisings, and civil strife. The United States seemed to be in constant upheaval, and the threat of a civil war seemed very real. Things were quiet and idyllic in our suburban neighborhood. But out there in the rest of the country? The horror, the horror….
As it turned out, the civil war never happened. The 1960s became the 1970s, and things calmed down. People turned inward, a general boredom and malaise set in, and the nation turned its lonely eyes to disco.
*****
More than half-a-century later, civil war threats are once again de rigueur in the US of A, although much of it just sounds trite and pretentious and fake. I’ve blogged about this before, because it’s an ongoing theme in our ever-dysfunctional country.
Part of the population seems hell-bent on cannibalizing the other part of the population, for reasons I still can’t figure out. They are angry and bitter and resentful and hateful and largely full of shit. BUT: They have a 2024 presidential candidate (and former president) who not only shares their anger, but is more than happy to kick it up to a fever pitch when the mood strikes, which is every day, all the time.
About that candidate: He’s a little rich boy with orange hair who never grew up, never got used to the idea that the world does not revolve around him, and never met a lie he couldn’t repeat ad nauseum. He’s openly admitted to sexually assaulting women, been convicted of felonies, might be slipping into dementia – and could be the next president of the United States.
I won’t mention his name. You know his name.
He just hosted another in an endless series of political rallies designed to put him in the spotlight, letting him prance around the stage like a geriatric and psychotic male runway model. This rally was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, his hometown – the hometown that wouldn’t let him into the elite circles, which is a slight he’s never quite gotten over. The nice folks gathered there enjoyed some nice racist humor and some nice Third Reich fever dreams.
*****
Much of the country is exhausted by this silly old man, and just wants him and his whiny-ass followers to go away. But that ain’t happening. He’s like the tumor that keeps coming back and coming back, because too many cells can’t resist it, and the cells that do try to resist it are not focused or organized enough to launch an effective counterattack.
So here we are, once again, having to deal with the spoiled rich boy and his rabid flock for a third straight presidential election. Four years ago the voters booted him out of the White House, and it looked like the end of the line for him. He was so pissed off that he made up lies about the election being stolen and helped instigate a riot at the nation’s capital.
Today, the oddsmakers and pundits give him about a 50/50 shot at winning the election. America is the land of second chances – and this douchebag has been given about 148 second chances over the course of his privileged life.
Personally, I think he’ll lose – again – because America simply cannot be stupid enough to give him back the keys to the White House.
His presidential opponent is a woman with brown skin who is not an aggrieved, corrupt idiot. That alone is enough to convince many of us to vote for her. She also seems to want the country to move in a more positive direction, which is what all presidential candidates used to do before things got so warped and off-kilter.
The United States can be a scary and brutal country. It was when I was a kid and it is all these decades later. In the 21st century, mass shootings have become so commonplace here that we barely even bat an eye at them anymore. That’s maybe the scariest thing – the notion that you could walk into a shopping mall or school and find yourself in a hail of bullets courtesy of some damaged psychopath who can buy a gun easier than he (always a he) can buy a prescription medication.
Many Americans are scared these days, scared of the election and its potential fallout, scared of the uncertainties surrounding a political movement that openly embraces fascism and Nazism.
We live in the richest country in the world, home to vast resources and greater wealth than any nation has ever experienced. And we’re constantly putting ourselves in peril, for reasons that make no sense, and that always turn out wrong.
If you’re looking for frights, begin there.
Photos: Google
Vance Cariaga 