As IF Times

It’s hard to believe that we’re embarking upon yet another bruising election season soon…although you’d be forgiven if you thought the last one was still going on.  The whining and bleating about the results of the last Presidential election held almost 3 years ago still echoes like the screech of vultures circling above picked over carrion.

As shown in the attached graphic,  venerable news outlet CNN just displayed the results of theoretical matchups between the declared Democratic candidates and the presumed opponent Donald Trump. Even hardcore leftists would take this graphic with a barrel of salt…I mean come on, it’s CNN.  In the meantime, many more presidential aspirants are popping up like mushrooms after a rainfall in a swampy forest including the biggest loon bag of all, Bill De Blasio.  At present, there are over 20 declared candidates who genuinely think that there are enough non institutionalized people out there that would subscribe to their version of reality.

The vast majority of the declared candidates are from the states that normally lean heavily Democratic and that’s not really a surprise.  California, New York, Massachusetts are known to be the fonts of unhinged logic and hence the preponderance of spiral eyed politicos emanate from those states. The majority of them are lawyers who have done nothing in their lives but pander to their constituencies with increasingly extreme rhetoric.  None have built a business or endured the hardships of running one.  The one contender that has, Howard Shultz, is shunned by the mainstream Democrats as being a spoiler since he chooses to run as an Independant.

You would think that mass delusion has taken hold of these candidates because there is not the remotest of chances that they would be embraced by any outside of their protected enclaves. To the degree that they’ve even articulated a view for America, those views are as appealing to the values of Americans as a skunk at a picnic.  Unfortunately, that is the source of their genius.  They don’t have to appeal to the majority of Americans.  They need only to corral the votes of those in their populous constituencies, since there may be enough seats there to tip the balance of the houses.  So it’s a about strategy and tactics not about ideology.

Some like De Blasio and Eric Swalwell don’t even try to hide their mental condition since their constituents are like minded as proven by their being voted into office.  Some like Biden have a long history of being useless, but apparently also not a disqualifier. Fortunately as time goes on, the various faults of the candidates will become glaringly obvious under the harsh light of policy revelations…especially since, like the infamous John Kerry,  many of them were for policy ‘X’ before they were against it. As noted, many (and most) aspirants to political office are lawyers.   By definition, lawyers are not beholden to principles since their education and vocation are to argue for their version of truth.  Clearly their value system is not rooted in absolutes but in relativity.

In the dawning years of America, such a notion had been considered when drawing up the basic structure of public governance.  David Dodge, an archival research expert,  discusses this in his research on the missing 13th amendment.  Essentially, the gist of it was that lawyers were to be prohibited from holding public office.  This may have been prescient on the part of the founders way back when, but it seems especially apt today when it appears that a law degree is common as cold sores at a frat party…and as easy to get.

Source: Pope Francis Mourns Excess Carbon Emissions Given Off By Notre Dame Fire | The Babylon Bee

It’s a sign of the times we’re living in when reading a story such as this makes you groan in exasperation rather than immediately dismiss it with a big ‘as if’.  In the past few years, you would think that a contest is being held to see which officious, high profile person can provide the stupidest utterance. We’re not talking about random slips of the tongue or the occasional brain hiccup that makes someone say that there are 57 states. We are talking about full blown, twilight zone whoppers which are often completely untethered to logic.

As this is being written, elected government representatives on the left are categorically denying that a crisis of any kind is happening at the US’s southern border with Mexico….even as irrefutable video proof of the invasion is readily available. It’s reminiscent of the classic Monty Python skit in which a customer brings back a parrot to the pet shop because it is clearly dead only to experience the vehement denial of thus by the owner.  There are Presidential candidates who openly welcome illegal aliens into their self proclaimed  sanctuary cities but howl in protest as plans are afoot to actually send them there.  As well, there are Presidential contenders running on the platform of reparations for slavery, even though that condition hasn’t existed in the U.S. for over 150 years.  Oddly, there are those that are pushing for the segregation of students along racial lines on campuses, even though the ancestors of the minority kids fought their entire lives for desegregation.  Also from the twilight zone of course, is Joe Biden running on a platform of ending the rule and domination of old white men, not to mention capitalist success story Bernie Sanders expounding on socialism.

Not that many years ago, The Onion was the only outlet publishing all manner of satirical stories on topical issues. They offer witty articles lampooning the newsmakers of the day.  Now, virtually all of the major news outlets are apparently battling for that same audience and truth is now as  bizarre as fiction. Alexia Cortez has become a franchise unto herself.  Naturally, politicos and entertainers are the ones most often captured embarrassing themselves with slips that expose their vapidity. Who can forget Rep. Hank Johnson’s fear that the island of Guam could tip over because of an influx of US troops? Who can forget Rep. Pelosi exhorting the house to pass a bill so they could find out what was in it? Entertainers are, well, entertainers, so the majority of their bleats are just that….for entertainment.

We observe that the TV news networks are increasingly willing to give voice to those that are only tenuously hanging on to sanity. The reason for this is that the 24 hour news cycle needs edgy stuff to keep people interested in the same boring news stories. Rather than any concern with the veracity of a story, they instead manufacture personalities to create brands and push wild narratives. So it’s entertainment masquerading as news. Nobody watches Rachel Maddow to find out the news. They watch it to find Maddow’s spin on the day’s events as if it were the next installment of Game Of Thrones.

But dear god, not the Pope! We don’t really know if he really uttered the concerns about the fire at Notre Dame worsening global warming as stated in the linked article. But based on the eyebrow raising comments he’s made during his tenure on other sacrosanct Church issues…. it’s possible that he may have! And that’s the point. The Pope isn’t supposed to say stupid things. He’s supposed to be sober and learned, his opinions well researched and his pronouncements measured and to be absorbed with gravity by all. He’s not supposed to be uttering the same things as Miley Cyrus.  It would be like attending a shareholders’ meeting at IBM and the chief financial officer declares that he’s going to convey the last quarter’s financial statements via interpretive dance.

With so much of today’s news coming from outlets that have morphed into entertainment vehicles, the line between hard news and infomercials for the latest social justice cause barely exists. With everyone getting into the Fake News game the average person would be hard pressed to find out what is really happening in his world. Instead, the consumer has a wide variety of versions of reality and he then chooses the one that fits his worldview. We are at that point in history when people have reason to be skeptical of everything.  In the end, we have to hope that people will tire of the circus acts and gravitate to what they observe with their own lyin’ eyes.

update: Pope urges hairdressers to cut gossip