By Mickey Friedman
October 7, 2015
Webster defines “devolution” as retrograde evolution: degeneration. Deterioration, decline, and downfall.
In the 1960s, when hope and illusion twisted themselves together, people used to chant “the revolution will be televised.”
All these years lately, with no revolution to be found, it seems it is the devolution that will be televised.
And, it is television itself that has triumphed.
Exhibit A: The Trumpster.
Because without television’s relentless focus on celebrity, there would be no Trumpster. He is a creature of TV. Without TV, he could build. And have apprentices. And go broke occasionally, but without TV’s constant proclamation that he is special, hardly any of us would care.
Do you think with just the telegraph and newsprint, we would know one Kardashian from another?
I’ve come to understand this more clearly because I gave up TV news for half a year. A self-proclaimed abstinence. No MSNBC. No CNN. No FOX. No PBS. “The Blacklist,” “Mr. Robot,” and “The Good Wife” but no TV news.
Until my big time slip. Like many an addict, I said to myself: I don’t really want or need to do this as I did it. And so on August 6, my remote had taken complete control of my hand. And there on FOX were the eighteen Republicans who want to be president.
A big mistake. From cold turkey to too many turkeys. You’ve been taking this slow. Getting used to Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum and George Pataki over time. The soft-spoken Dr. Ben Carson and self-proclaimed successful businesswoman Carly Fiorina and the loud governors and ex-governors and senators from Wisconsin and Texas and Maryland. And the-invade-Iraq-because-that-worked-so-well Lindsay Graham. And The Trumpster.
So now, I too, know how much they fear Mexicans and despise the give-the-nuke-to-Iran Deal and Barack Obama for encouraging the murderous Mexicans to come here and plunder. And for funding Planned Parenthood, which not only encourages safe sex and allows abortions for those who mess up the safe sex or are victims of rape, but worst of all, with the permission of these women, provides fetal tissue to cure cancer.
Obama, the worst president ever. Who probably isn’t an American when you come down to it. Because, Muslim that he is, he just won’t say Radical Islamic Terror like every Republican candidate does. And because he’s given us Obamacare which is like the worst poison ivy ever.
I had forgotten this upside-down world even existed. For some crazy reason, I had been watching “Jane The Virgin” with its kindly and kooky grandmotherly illegal alien. And “Being Mary Jane” about bright and successful and hardworking people of color.
And so I was probably the only viewer waiting for some real ideas about making America better. Creating jobs. Rebuilding roads. Restoring the middle class. Making sure all the melting glaciers don’t swamp Miami Beach. Sensible solutions.
Waiting patiently because once upon a time the people who ran for president were asked what they intended to do if they won. How would they solve the problems we faced? How they would be different from the last guy?
Instead, I got 18 noses growing big and bigger. I got a trillion-dollar 2,000-mile wall sealing us off from the scheming Mexicano criminals and the systematic rounding up of the 11,000,000 aliens who are here illegally, scheming while they work the hardest jobs real Americans don’t want. Who pay for Social Security they’ll never collect.
Where was I? Who was I? Who were these people? What happened to the America of Eisenhower? Nelson Rockefeller? Edward Brooke, our Republican Senator? The reasonable American Republicans? With real noses?
Confused and concerned. Worried and weary. For I seem to have misplaced America.
When I saw the polls and saw the Trumpster was winning I knew my America was gone.
I still had my passport. And my remote. And so after several deep breaths, I went looking for the Trumpster’s America.
Channel flipping day and night. Until glory, glory hallelujah, I found ABC’s “Bachelor in Paradise.” Once blind, now I see. Buffed American men and beautiful American women, all straight, looking for love. Somehow they had slipped beneath the Trumpster’s Wall to flee America for Mexico’s sun and sand and tequila and love. Love. Magic Love. Instant Love. TV Love. Not a word about work or poverty or war or #BlackLivesMatter. The women often cried; most of the men lied. All kissing and cuddling for the camera. The women fell in love with men they hardly knew. The men betrayed the women. Tears and more tears.
The Trumpster knows this world better than the neurosurgeon and Jeb. Even Hillary. The Donald of Trumpster TV. Reality America. The America where you can’t tell too many lies. Where the devolution will be televised. And Trump can be president. So far it’s Pinocchio 18, America 0.
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This column was first published in The Berkshire Record of September 24, 2015.
Mickey Friedman’s Berkshire novel, “Danger Times Two: An I Ching Mystery” can be purchased on Amazon.com.