NUDISM RHYMES WITH BUDDHISM
Nudism rhymes with Buddhism. History repeats rhymes with carrots and beets. Autumn turns to winter in a flash. Now’s the winter of our discontent? It’s like you’re reading our collective minds, Willy the Shake. We all need some good news, a big pile of cash, cheaper cartons of eggs, and a fully gassed-up ride across the border. The world has turned inside-out in an instant. As many of us know and feel. Me? I’m gonna only watch Film Noir films for the foreseeable future. It seems the best course of action is to build a time machine, or take a two-year media fast. Whichever one seems most doable. Getting things done with an inner guidance system made of one part clarity, two parts resilience, and a third part made of gut instincts. When attempted violent coups don’t succeed, it doesn’t mean they are erased from our memories. Or from recent history. I speak not of chips in vaccines or hold court with climate science deniers. I’m talking reality seen and experienced in nature, as well as human nature, and the cosmos. All of which contain both darkness and light. I remember back in the President Clinton years, when pundits and people acted so outraged when he looked into the TV camera and stated to the nation, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman.” Outrage about a single lie, about an affair. Where was the outrage about the man voted into the presidency in 2016? A torrent of lies that never stopped, about anything and everything: sex scandals, disrespecting opponents who served in the military, stolen classified documents, and whether or not he lost an election. The Washington Post documented over 30,000 lies. In his first two years in office, no one, or very few reporters called him out mid-interview, in real time. Standing up, and correcting his sentence mid-lie, to set the record straight and reflect the truth of the matter. That didn’t happen semi-regularly until this year, in this most unusual election cycle. Finally, opponents and reporters spoke up and broke through the wall of lies, if only for a moment or two. Think about all the moments that could’ve turned into minutes, and minutes into hours, and hours into days and weeks. At the very least, these resilient ones who called him out on lies in the moment proved it was possible to break through and correct the record in real time. Overall, the media and the pundits were largely silent or ineffectual, inept at even pretending to be outraged. Where were the reporters to cause a groundswell of pushing back and saying no, or media organizations to band together – from 2016-2024 – willing and ready to ask more direct questions, when it would’ve done the most good? Instead, the political and cultural normalizing of his lying that comes as easy as breathing to him, and his bullying everyone he feels like bullying was the dumbest strategy possible. It was a bad choice of action, or inaction, for our culture and our standing in the world. None of this should’ve been normalized. Applecart rhymes with Napoleon Bonaparte. Do Americans really want a tyrant who says they want to be one, claiming to be a dictator ahead of time? I’m guessing no. Show of hands? Raise ‘em high people. It’s past time to have a mainstream media makeover. Time for truth-telling on the airwaves, coming in the form of straightforward clarity. Time to hire more engaging TV and online reporters with spines of steel. Conveniently revising history done daily across TV screens should be a thing of the past. Call out propaganda-filled lies in real time, as happened during the abbreviated election cycle we just participated in.
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Yes, this -the entire world acted as if infidelity was punishable by death, and pretends as of none of his BS occurred: I remember back in the President Clinton years, when pundits and people acted so outraged when he looked into the TV camera and stated to the nation, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman.” Outrage about a single lie, about an affair. Where was the outrage about the man voted into the presidency in 2016? A torrent of lies that never stopped, about anything and everything: sex scandals, disrespecting opponents who served in the military, stolen classified documents, and whether or not he lost an election. The Washington Post documented over 30,000 lies.