One For The Fans

Frank turned to Lonnie, his pal, after 

the speech, and said: “That was truly horrible.”

The stench of overused, rotten analogies and 
vapid assertions hung in the air like a pall.
The loudspeakers aired jingly music to blow
away the feelings of angst and despair
generated by the bloviated rhetoric. It  didn’t
seem to matter who was speaking or what
point  of view they held.  The political arena
had become a cesspool of decomposing
ideas and failed solutions. Some of the words
spewed at the public were these:

“We need to come together as a nation of 
people that are involved in the process of
coming together.”

“Everything’s more the way it is now than it
 ever has been.”

What?

“The Right is not right, so, all you have left is the Left.”

“The Left is what’s left when you’re not right.”

The men felt nauseated and in need of a shower. 

The words that had hit them from the speech left a 

discernible scum on their minds. Was this the best 

that their representatives could do? People that 

left the  venue were asked by reporters their 

impressions of the performance:

“I thought he was saying we’re going to attack

North Korea tomorrow, and there will be compete

denuclearization of the peninsula the next day.”

“I heard him say, we’re going to build the wall, 

but we’re not going to build the wall, but because 

of that, we’re going to build the wall.”

…and similar such reports.

All the speeches these days, all the interviews on 

news shows, all the debates on college 

campuses, wherever politicians appeared these 

days in public, had a similar tenor. It was the tenor 

of a psychological, intestinal  revolt. It was the 

tenor of seemingly rational, obfuscating,

mindless newspeak. It gave the impression 

of meaning, but you walked away scratching 

your head.

The country was in a crisis of knowing what 

was real. The proverbial poop had hit the blades  

and was fanning over the populace like a plague 

of mental poison, eating at common sense and 

natural morality. Even the perpetrators were not 

safe from their own concoction…. at times in 

debate they would sputter and fume nonsense

without semblance of logic. They seemed to 

think it didn’t matter what they said. All that 

mattered was evacuating enough words out 

that people would stop asking questions…

and, the tactic was working.