Cathy wants a NEW POST!, and she’s not alone.
So I sit here, looking at the blank New Post screen, wondering why it’s been blank for so long. At the same time, I’m watching the news, and it occurs to me that the difficulty is that reality has become too amorphous for me to write about. The world has become, if not unreal, surreal.
How does a poet tell the truth, when truth becomes so elusive; so apparently insignificant?
I know this is not new. I’ve seen a lot of politics in my life. I remember watching, with my Grandad, the McCarthy hearings, and the Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy. A tiny television; a technological marvel bringing us the (North American) world in black & white.
My Grandma, near the end of her life, told me that one of her greatest regrets in life was the vote she cast for Richard Nixon. A life-long Democrat, she was frightened; she was afraid; she believed the lies.
So it’s not that the obfuscation of politics is new to me. I’ve even noted the current version here, and here.
Perhaps my tolerance has diminished.
But this era of sanctimonious prevarication seems so much worse. Our tolerance of it, as citizens, seems so much higher. Our Fourth Estate, now seemingly recovered from its post-Katrina outrage, has once again retreated into referee mode.
Well, not entirely. But I still see "reporters" "interviewing" this side, then that side, as if totally conflicting — and clearly verifiable, or not — facts have equal weight. Fact-checking, alas, continues to be rare.
This is the scary part. The unnamed White House aide (could it have been Scooter Libby?) told Ron Suskind of The New York Times:
"…when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that
reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other
new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort
out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do.”
And he (I’m assuming a he) was right. They have created their own reality. They can do what they like, and they do.
I can study what they do. I can try to discern the actual reality beneath the created one.
But I cannot write.
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