What Will Murphy do for Chuckles when we’re Gone

For me, the hopeful side of Trump involved the possibility that he would be able to resist neoliberal, Zionist and military industrial complex pressure to keep the world balanced on the razor’s edge of an apocalypse by rejecting Joe McCarthy’s anti-Russian propaganda and neoliberal interventionism and state building, generating a fiscal reservoir from which funds to rebuild America’s physical and social infrastructure might be drawn. The dark side involved his Israel (not America) first promises, especially with respect to Iran and the Palestinians. The hopeless side of this triangle involved his pandering to our theocratic instincts and the resulting loss of civil liberties and his environmental blinders.

The hopeful side was a long shot and the massive Clinton – Obama – mainstream media generated surface pressure, combined with the more subtle but also more powerful “dark state” pressure, has apparently overcome President Trump’s initial instincts, although his caution to Israel concerning settlement expansion (too weak to qualify as a warning) was a surprise.

I take solace in the myths that the darkest clouds have silver linings, that it’s always darkest before the dawn, etc., and in resonance with the foregoing, note that the massive media attention and protests over sins glossed over during the Clinton – Obama era (horrible problems and injustices always swept beneath the rug during Democratic administrations) are now objected to in passionate protests, calling to light endemic injustices concerning the US – Zionist led worldwide antimuslim campaign, the value of immigrants (I’m one) and the importance of the environment.

Murphy glances at me and chuckles.

The civic awareness that might result in promising solutions only takes place when the power is in the hands of those with contrary beliefs. It remains safely tucked away when power is in the hands of those such protests now support. Thus, nothing improves, at least not very much, although consciences, somnambulant during the past eight years, seemingly awake well rested and refreshed, prepared to make noise, light some fires, destroy some property and injure some non-like-minded souls in the name of tolerance and free speech.

Murphy loves hypocrisy and conflict, and divisiveness and ineptitude, and we keep Murphy very, very happy.

I wonder what he’ll do for chuckles when we’re gone.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2017; all rights reserved