Sancho Might be Proud

Do actions really speak louder than words? Not this electoral cycle, the pen is mightier than the truth. A test of whether Lincoln, the wily old dictator, was right. You can fool all of the People some of the time and if it’s during an electoral cycle, all the better. Swords clang happily in the background, glad to be freed from the contest, the nightmares of plowshares now forgotten amidst the music of the drones.

Having been largely successful in the destruction of mainstream journalism and in doing so, effectively exposing democracy as a charade, its tattered shreds whipping in the wind, colors so faded none can recognize the rainbow they once were, the cold calculating faces of evil cackle, unbothered by truth or other imposed restraints, secure in their ability to corrupt almost anyone and anything in this 2016th year of the so called Common Era. Sauron lives!!! Sauron lives they shout! Oh the wonderful power of money liberated from all restraints. Who says there’s no God or that God is dead, she’s just a little green, and manifesting in billions of beautiful bills. Next on their agenda, the long prayed for WW III.

Watching obliviously in one corner, happy underfed crowds shout “lie to me, lie to me some more, I love the song and the sweet melody of the saxophone” as they sway back and forth and forth and back, pain forgotten as if in hypnotically induced deliria. Some are missing, … actually, quite a few, … but they’re safely ensconced in prison cells enjoying the delights of three squares a day. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, and, please, please, lie to us some more”.

In another corner, the tattered remnants of discarded Americans, reacting to provocations just the way their cynical provocateurs planned, led by an incoherent, egotist incapable of articulating even his few decent ideas intermixed with xenophobic and delusional ravings, well, … they rave, … albeit impotently. Their God is a bit different, not quite as blithe, in fact, perhaps a bit severe, perhaps dreaming of mushroom shaped nightmares. But this group of self-perceived patriots are well stocked with weapons and prepared for dreamt of invasions by hordes of poor rapists and robbers and bears, oh my. Where or where is the yellow brick road that leads back to the wonderful fifties?

A large, almost impenetrable wall is built by demagogues; no, not on the Mexican border, around their compounds to keep the rabble out of country castles in Hyannisport and Long Island and Palm Beach and Hollywood, money and promises changing hands, undocumented of course (documentation is bad), but those damned emails, damn, damn, damn, but, …. The Russians!!! Blame the Russians, it’s worked well before. Yea, that’s it, the Russians, the Russians, the Russians, and somewhere, the corpse of someone named McCarthy smiles.

On the other side of a purportedly open door, watching in the midst of it all but portrayed as party crashers are the only decent options, not yet dismayed and still fighting the odds, faith in the inherent wisdom of the American People perhaps shaken but not yet destroyed (although from the shadows echoes of scheming minions in tuxedoes and gowns ready to slam the door shut on Improbable Dreams whisper “ … yet is the operative word”).

Somewhere, some time, windmills turn, giant arms, or is it sails, billowing. A tattered old tin man looks up and his eyes light up. The dark clouds gathering are ignored.

Sancho might be proud.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2016; all rights reserved