At this point, in what seems to be our American endgame, we are a nation that is overrun with delusional thinking. Tyler Perry's "The Response"...wait, no...Texas Governor Rick Perry's "The Response" rally, where 30,000 people gathered in Houston to get more exercise than most of them have had all year just with the arm lifts, is merely the most obvious evidence of an affliction that is plaguing the United States.
The thing about the rally and all the photos you've seen of random participants exultingly raising their hands in the air, as if God is on a stage and they can maybe get him to brush his fingers on theirs, is that it's such utter bullshit. No, no, not just the notion that if there was an invisible sky wizard who gave a goddamn about Texas, he'd at least make it fuckin' rain. It's bullshit because a good many of those screaming, singing, arm-waving prayerturbators are just showing the fuck off. Yeah, they see their neighbor a-worshippin' like someone just goosed 'em with a crucifix and they're thinkin', "Oh, fuck that. I can show how much I really love Jeeeezus." And so they start a-yelpin' and a-hollerin' like particularly enthusiastic porno twink with a giant cock in front of him. It's all for the crowd, not the Lord.
But they are filthy with a delusion that somehow what they are doing matters in any way other than to make them think that they did something that matters. It is the delusion that follows the delusion.
Like, for instance, the entire economic approach of Republicans. We know, for a fact, that tax cuts and spending cuts during an economic downturn don't work. There is hard evidence of it. But the delusion seems to be that if we just tighten our belts (well, as long as we don't have private jets), if we all just suffer for a while (especially if you're old), then everything will be okay for future generations. Or something like that. Whatever you want to say about the S&P debt downgrade, the point of the rating agency was to degrade the nation for buying into specific Republican delusions.
We could live with the Republican delusions if the President wasn't operating under a delusion of his own: no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, he keeps believing (or at least acting as if) the GOP negotiates in good faith. He doesn't treat them like delusional idiots. He treats them like honest partners. The clearest explanation of how this delusion has failed the nation comes from Drew Westen's mucho-debated New York Times commentary on why the Obama presidency isn't working as we thought it would: he should have understood that after the 2008 election "the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement."
Or, as the National Review says in a vicious attack blaming Obama for the debt crisis (which is like saying that a one-armed janitor with a worn-out mop is responsible for the pipes bursting), "Though Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives from 2008–10, and therefore could have forced through any budget they saw fit, they left the nation with no budget at all." Yes, Republicans were cocks the whole time, but Obama negotiated with them and with the craven and frightened Democrats like Ben Nelson who didn't know what the fuck to do with power. He didn't need to negotiate from an already-compromised position (like during the health care reform debate). He chose to.
Now, as both these delusions combine, we have to ask which side is going to wake up. 'Cause fuckin' one them has to or we're done.
The one hope is this photo:
Yep, that's a fuck ton of empty seats behind that deeply American Jesus-fellatrix. There may have been 30,000 people there, but the place fits 70,000. And it was damn well air-conditioned in the hundred degree heat. In other words, the delusional are merely the preening loudest, not the most.
The true delusion delusion is that we don't think we can do anything about it. No, let's go further. It's that we know we can do something about it, but we just choose not to. And that's delusion tilting into voices-in-the-head (or TV) fantasy.
