Minus 45

This is going to be an unpopular opinion among most of my FB friends. But I don’t think we should have given Donald Trump a Senate trial.  His goal, in having the Ukrainians dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, was to embarrass his principle competition. To create side theatre, a narrative, a story to have the American people ponder about a candidate as they choose from the twenty or so who are trying to figure out their story.  Donald Trump, the ultimate story teller, is just using the Senate trial to spin more yarns.

On election night 2016 it was determined that Barrack Obama was indeed a Muslim born in Kenya.  Or at least a significant amount of American’s believed it. Not a majority, only 46.1 percent. The other 53.9 percent of Americans rejected the various hypothetical conspiracy theories the 45^th President had run on. But, because of 18^th century founding father slave state compromises Donald Trump ascended to the presidency. (* Pay particular attention to the background section of the linked article.)

The current president has never been a man to let facts get in the way of his opinions. He is a man of stories.  Fictional ones he’d like to be truth. Everything from the Central Park 5 being guilty and deserving the death penalty, to the idea his inauguration crowd was the biggliest ever. I was listening to a sermon by a minister friend of mine visiting a church in North Las Vegas a year or so back.  He said, people like a good story. He was advocating the parishioners read the Gospel according to Mark.  Regarded as the forebearer to Luke, Matthew and John, it tells the most fantastic story of the ancient world. Virgin births, angels, resurrection from death, cure from disease, loving thy fellow human etc. Its such a good story, people wanted it to be true. No one’s experience to that date indicated it could be true.  Women did not spontaneously become pregnant and death was as permanent as it still appears to be.  Angels?  Well, humans always wanted to fly. The other story in Mark, Jesus was a messiah sent to end Roman oppression. Why not. He was the product of virgin birth announced by angels.

Buildings, art, organizations, political movements, literature, and society in general was re-organized around the premises in Mark. Over the years, as people have studied Mark, other gospels and the old testament, factions have developed around what the stories mean. Some factions are openly able to realize its metaphor. Ask a Christian if Mary really was a virgin, in a non-public venue you would likely get “I think Joseph was the original nice guy.”  Challenge them in the middle of church with the minister and congregation looking on, they tow the gospel line she was a virgin.  What a person advocates as true varies by need to maintain affiliation with a social group.  More than anything else we cling to our social factions rather than real truth. Its probably a survival technique left over from the African plains.

Stories, our fiction, run our lives and our social groups.  An anthropologist told me humans are the only animal that creates an agreed fiction. For instance, there are borders between our states.  Close inspection of all points in our country reveal there is in fact is not.  We have border crossings and signs, but there is no physical line. At least not one recognized by other species. Migrating animals use their omnipotent powers to pass through them as though they were invisible. In reality we have become one people, but in America we fictionally divide ourselves up by 50 unequal social groups. Each seems to have its own story.    

We extended that association to types of behavior and laws we agree to follow. But our fiction can be more abstract. We all know the stories of Star Wars and Star Trek to point we can recite lines of dialog on the spur of the moment. Nobody thinks the stories are true but we form clubs and affiliations around which star traveling story we like best. So it is that America has found itself divided between to factions the Republicans and the Democrats. Each has stories. Ones that evolve and are interpreted over time. Each has its fan club to the point of religious exuberance. Like a lot of religions, open warfare is permissible and encouraged with the members of the other fan club. Even though, both factions acknowledge they believe the other’s stories fiction.  It really comes down to, who’s fiction do you like better, this week.  Who has a good story.  

Donald J. Trump is a master of this environment.  The making a story of nothing.  He may be on trial for his Presidency in the minds of most people in America, but in Trump’s mind, the trial is just another venue to advance his fiction of Joe and Hunter Biden being corrupt.  Mark my words, the Democrats in the house will mount an aggressive story about all the things Trump has done wrong.  But the President having calculated what his associated faction will do in public, in advance, will just switch from having the Ukrainians defame the Biden’s to having his legal defense team do it in front of the nation.  In the end, he will have achieved his goal of casting doubt on his main rival, he’ll blame the fact he had to do it on his rival’s party, and he will still be our President.  

Sorry to depress you with a fact, when we all enjoy fiction so much.