Every day, I wake up and seek the good. Yet, as I commune with the world, and receive its messages “enlarge”, all I get is the static that comes from mixed signals - in a word, hypocrisy.
It rears its head most in our elites - our political and social classes. You know, the ladder climbers, Instagram crumpets, anything for a view, hit, click, vote, dollars …
Where is the sincerity and authenticity (read Trilling’s fine essay - now 50 years old but even more pertinent)? There is no center that holds. It’s anything goes “ism”. Just make it through the day. Say and do whatever you want, so long as at that moment in time, it works. Who cares if it lies, if it is hypocritical? It works for that moment - to get me a view, a hit, a click, a vote, and some dollars. N’est pas?
It’s called pragmatism. I call the level of hypocrisy most live with - problemagicism. It’s psychotic and most of us just accept this level of lies. That’s how used to it, how numb to it, we’ve become. I mean, look at how many bought into the cucumber chomping FTX thingamajigger (don’t even have a word I can use to call it).
Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.
- H.L. Mencken
You're probably wondering if I’m going to give you some specific examples? You might be saying, it isn’t so bad. Sure lying happens and is just the way things work. So what of it, these lies, this social expediency?
Let’s just dig in a bit. I promise not to get personal, I do want to keep my readership. But let me ask - when was the last time a politician or a leader did what he said he/she would? Never. Or very rarely. That’s how common lying is, in relation to the public good.
Example 1 - Covid Mandates. Today, Chinese protesters against mandates and lockdowns are brave heroes. Yet, a minute ago (in social time), lockdown and Covid one-size-fits-all protesters in our own backyard were kooks and social outcasts, spawn that needed to be eradicated. See this - it puts it all in its place, the hypocrisy.
Example 2. Energy. We are all supposed to be working on going “electric” and cutting down on carbon, CO2. Yet, those flying to the conferences to organize the troops, get there on huge jets with huger carbon footprints.
It’s all bait and switch. Targets have been set for decades, to decrease CO2 - yet it is just posturing. Vain glory nonsense. We drive bigger cars, we live burning more CO2 than ever - it’s been increasing at an exponential rate, non-stop. Lies. And the savior isn’t electric, especially electric cars. Just making them huge batteries costs more energy than will ever be saved by their use. And we are also plugging them into diesel-fed generators, coal-buring sources of energy. What a load of bunk!
Example 3. War. We are killing people to make the world more peaceful. Yeah, right. And who is making the money - that’s the $100 question. There just isn’t any need for war, yet it happens. I mean, it boggles the mind, the lies to get people to hate each other! If we had some decent, non-hypocrites sitting at the table - wars would be over in 30 minutes. 10 if you had some high-quality liquor served.
It’s always the same thing - we have to fight harder, stop the war now with violence, so we can have peace and goodwill for all. B.S. And then there is the not-in-my-backyard aspect. All good, so long as the bombs aren’t falling in my neighborhood! Got to break some eggs to make an omelet, eh?
I don’t care what the cause is - power, greed, money, declining social morals, political expediency. What’s important is that we all stand up and say -
Are you gonna start doing that? When you gonna wake up?
Or are you gonna keep your head down and your body scooping up the rocky road ice cream they keep feeding you?
Shut Up
9 a.m.
and I'm
looking for my glasses
looking for my house keys.
I give up
sit before the window
Monday
watching all those below
huzzing to battle,
rats with their asses
in the air
trying to
"get stuff done."
Whatever that means.
My aunt keeps writing me asking
why I don't write back,
asking
why I don't come and visit.
What is there to write about?
I don't get it.
I am ashamed of this world.
Truly, madly, lividly.
This cesspool of phony desire,
clinking change
and daily self-deception.
Most days I sit in bed
sucking on a watermelon rind
waiting for something to happen
something REAL to happen
- a fresh smell of lilac
- a child's squeal of delight
- a fresh breeze
to waft through the window.
Not happening.
Just the always whine of a lawnmower
churning through the manufactured beauty
of the golf course across the street,
the hum
of my mind
and those below going about
their busyness
betraying this world
one second at a time.
I've had enough of it all.
I guess I should
get out of the house
go visit my aunt
and apologize for not writing
because
I have nothing good to say
and
if you can't say something nice
you should just
shut your goddamn pen up.
NIMBYism & Hypocrisy