I think I figured it out. The US has been transformed into a reality TV show. A dozen or so years ago, our voyeuristic obsessions gave birth to the concept of “Reality TV”, and that concept has been picked up, whether intentionally or unintentionally, by the “news media”, and turned into the reality that is our daily life now. We are all actors living in a frat house, either as victims or perpetrators, participating in silly sophomoric stunts and hazing rituals. The boundaries of this stage are defined by what’s going on in the rest of the world: the apocalyptic horrors in Gaza; the incredulous and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; an insane tyrant quietly building long range nuclear missiles, boasting about attack capabilities on the US from North Korea; our long-time friends and allies in Canada and Europe turning their backs on us; the detention camps in El Salvador being filled with immigrants that are here in the US both legally and illegally. Any one of these events would have been remarkable and cause for concern and intervention a couple of decades ago, and would have resulted in outrage and appropriate responses by the US. Now they are just another day in our lives. They have numbed our sense of sensibility and outrage. They have become accepted as routine. “Yeah, so…wadda ya gonna do about it, right?” Like the exhausted parents being terrorized by their bratty kids, we have given up and stopped parenting. When Mr. and Mrs. America come home from a long hard day of work, all they want to do is plop on the couch, toss back a beer, or a bottle of wine, or a fifth of scotch and numb their brains. As they sit on the couch every night watching this shitshow unfold they must be thinking “This can’t all be real, can it? It’s got to be some reality TV show director’s idea of a dystopian world dreamed up by the show’s sick, depraved writers.”

 

I can imagine the show’s director giving instructions to the actors going something like this:

 

Hey Don, can you uhhh, take your character to the next level and be a little more…I dunno, unhinged? Don? Don! DON! Hey Donny, let’s focus here, OK?

 

And Pete, remember that you’re playing a needy, insecure alcoholic. [Pete makes a suggestion]. Yeah, that’s good, I like it. Why don’t you just post some of that classified shit on your social media. Perfect!

 

Now, Jimmy D, I want you to pretend to go outside the frat house and drive around the neighborhood. We’ll get a couple of shots of you getting out to insult the neighbors and kick their dog. [muffled response from Jimmy]. What’s that? Yeah, that’s a great idea. Why don’t you and Donny beat up on, uh, what’s his name? You know, that guy from Ukraine? Yeah.

 

Bobby, I want you to be a little more critical of the scientific method – remember, it’s deny, deny, deny – vaccines: bad, witch doctor remedies: good. Got it? And we wanna see you bring back some of those extinct diseases like polio,measles and syphilis. Let’s see if we can stir up drama there. The audience is gonna eat that shit up.

 

Ok, so…lemme check my notes real quick…uhhh. Oh yeah, Elmo! You got your chainsaw? OK, good. I want you to poke around the government agencies, pick a bunch of random ones and just cut the crap out of ‘em OK? Good.

 

Now, everyone got their lines? Sound crew, ready? [muffled response] Cameras? [muffled response] QUIET ON THE SET! OK…ACTION!

 

Please tell me I’m just imagining all this. Please?