The Future of a Delusion
shapeshifting lies told to oneself are an unstable foundation for a movement, the GOP discovers
Hear the author read this piece, recorded LIVE from the shore of Lake Michigan on the This Is Hell radio show/podcast, and visit the website for long form interviews, Rotten History, hangover cures, and more:
Returning to the Midwest is always a catalyst for thought. I was born here. I lived the first two thirds or so of my life here (not really doing much careful calculation to come to that figure). I began making my move westward as the millennium changed. And although much of what I felt missing from my life in the 20th Century – good Asian food, a certain social and creative involvement with mass media, topographical landscape features – are now parts of my everyday existence in Los Angeles, I’m still more a Michigan boy than an Angeleno.
Most of my family lives east of the Mississippi. A solid core of those who influence my artistic and political development inhabit that zone as well. When I return to the Chicago-Detroit- Traverse City triangle, primal parts of my soul are engaged. Some are aspects of myself I’d rather do without, while others that are forgotten when I’m in Hollywood come back to remind me that I lose touch with them at my peril. The work I’ve still to do regarding those parts of myself is far from complete and refuses to release me from obligation.
One part of myself I find I need to reconnect with on a regular basis is the me who floats around in Lake Michigan. When I revisit this person by immersing myself in the vast lake, if I let my tension and anxiety go, I find myself experiencing that oceanic feeling Freud had so little respect for in The Future of an Illusion.
Floating out in the lake in sight of the pine forest along the beach, enclosed by the sphere of the blue and white marbled sky, or a pure blue sky fringed with puffs of pink and yellow, I get to thinking about the nature of water. The connectedness of water. The weight of water. The origins of water.
Ancient glaciers carved beds wherein to melt themselves. Wooly mammoths, mastodons, and megafauna of all sorts used to slake their thirst on the meltwater. When the first humans arrived here from the Eurasian continent, or from Polynesia, or from wherever our theories eventually decide for a few decades the first humans in the Americas came, they found a continent given over to nature. In the absence of human guidance and dominance nature hadn’t devoured itself and become a lifeless desert. Neither had it become a lethally inhospitable jungle of carnivorous jaws and poisonous thorns. It was a harmonious land on its own terms, and an adequately doable settler experience for the newcomers from across whatever land bridge or ocean they’d navigated to get there.
I have to wonder what thoughts run through the minds of our ideological opposites at such times. Do they think about the water? Do they think, “good thing we took power away from the EPA so we can pollute all this water?” I can’t believe they would think that while they’re floating in it. Do they never float in water? I can understand Trump never immersing himself. He seems like someone who sleeps with his clothes on. I’m sure he showers now and then. But it’s probably like pulling teeth.
Jim Jordan is clearly familiar with showers, but apparently he looks the other way when they’re in his field of view.
The two most egregious Congresstwats, MTG and Boebert, they seem like recreational swimmers, though. They seem like they do cannonballs into the crick. Do they just compartmentalize? Do they distract themselves with thoughts of Jesus, and maybe baptism? Is that what water makes them think of?
Don’t they ever think that toxic waste could ruin their swimming hole? Or do they believe that Jesus will protect their personal swimming hole? Or do they reserve one period of time for thinking about Jesus (or pretending to think about Jesus) and a separate time for thinking about how much they love pollution? Because the more pollution they detect, the more deregulation they can congratulate themselves on helping achieve. Or thank Jesus for, I suppose. Or pretend to thank Jesus for.
The real mystery is, why are there the kind of conservatives there are at all? What is the point of them? Why are there Evangelical Christian theocrats who want Jesus to be in charge of making sure the water and air and land are polluted? Why are there patriots who want their beautiful country polluted and stocked with angry virgin gun fanatics and the corpses of tragically ectopic rape babies and their enslaved mothers?
Is it because they fear foreigners? Is it because they fear the dark-complected? Is it because they fear Jews and homosexuals and Communists and union organizers and teachers? Do those fears somehow connect for them to cutting regulations and dismantling the public safety and public health infrastructure?
I understand being annoyed with wokeness. But is championing anti-wokeness really worth losing one’s swimming hole? Do they really think the plethora of guns wielded by angry incels are only ever going to be aimed at The Woke? Didn’t the sadly failed assassination attempt on the immense bulk of Donald Trump teach them that that just isn’t so?
Because make no mistake my fellow Americans, if there is one lesson to learn from the shooting at the Trump rally, it’s that the chaos so delighted in by Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Alex Jones, and all the other Jokers against the People – that chaos is not something on which to build the Thousand Year Reichskirche or Reichschurch they so desire. That chaos isn’t the prime real estate on which to build the Jesus-fearing faithopolis of Boebert and Taylor Greene’s dreams.
That chaos is chaotic. It’s shifting. And if they’d been counting on the guns they’ve handed out like Halloween candy only ever being pointed away from them, recent events must tell them that that just isn’t so. This is no country for the non-bulletproof human. There is no guarantee that the toxic waste you stomp your feet to deregulate won’t end up despoiling your personal swimming hole.
So I float, and I ponder, and I pronounce the shema – albeit with faith shaken by the daily evidence of unconscionable bloodlust of a nation’s military that wants me to believe it’s doing me some kind of favor. I suppose the question, “how can there be such people who believe such chaos can be a foundation for any citadel worth living in?” can be asked about many of those with whom we have somehow come to inhabit this world.
I know this chaos can toxify my Great Lake. It’s only ever been the power of the people that has prevented it. It’s only the fragile power of the people that keeps the shining big sea waters of the daughter of the moon from being sold off to Dannon or Nestlé. Pseudo-populist chaos is anti- people. And in the end only people can save humanity.
Sadly, those who most need to heed the lesson are the least likely to learn it. Perhaps a prolonged baptism in Lake Michigan is in order. Make sure to give them a good hosing first, to rinse off the chemicals they wear to conceal their scent from the people who, if they could smell who they really are – an odor perhaps they’re beginning to get a whiff of – those just plain folks would tear them to pieces.
The lake effect ❤️
I can’t believe you coined the term congresstwat lmaooo