Not My Reality

So I have a theory...

I see a direct correlation in the timeline between:

·    The complete disregard and dismissal of reason

·         

     The birth of 'alternative facts'

·    

    The school-yard-like knee-jerk labeling of "FAKE NEWS FAKE NEWS" to ANYTHING that anyone does not WANT to be true (or at least not reported as true)

·    

    The complete dumbing down of America

AND ...

'Reality' Television

Putting aside for a moment that our clueless leader was himself, a reality TV Star ...

This so-called reality of reality television IS 'fake news' and it is an 'alternative' reality.

I don't get it. I don't know why someone would come home from a hard and stressful day and not want to relax with a good old-fashioned sitcom. Instead they watch cat-fight shouting matches and the manufactured 'drama' of producer-induced/goaded neo-celebrities flipping tables over and spewing anger.

I get it from the TV BUSINESS side of it. Yeah it's great we have HUNDREDS of television stations now. But more choice just means more bad television to choose from. But alas, all those stations means they need a whole LOT of programming to fill that air time and by far, the two cheapest ways to fill that are ... infomercials of how to get a Brazilian Butt for example, Penis Enlargement (sugar) pills and The Best Bra ever) and then of course the other cheap air filler - reality television.

Reality television requires no writers, no scripts, no THOUGHT. Just pay (peanuts at first) to a generation of fame-seekers who would do anything for their 15 minutes - hand pick them to get the best combination of unlikeable morons to go at each other and  ... your work is done here.

I get it. America come home from work and wants something 'mindless' so they don't have to think about their jobs, their spouse, their kids, the growing gap between the impoverished and the super rich etc. Mindless entertainment is nothing new. It's was Dwayne Johnson movies exist.

But we always knew this form of entertainment was FICTION. Now... I'm not so sure we know that as we should.

There was a prevailing theory many years ago, that if all there was on television was opera, Shakespeare and ballet, that people WOULD watch it because there was no other choice, I don't know if I believe that to be true as this theory came along long before the advent of the internet (and free porn).

But surely there is a middle ground of watchable entertainment somewhere between Othello and Duck Dynasty?

So we are collectively dumber as a nation as near as I can tell, seem happy to be so. We deserve what we get because WE THE PEOPLE allow it to happen.

Not only do we like being dumb, it has led to a distrust of those who ARE intelligent, educated and rational. Hysterically, the right called Obama (a black man) an 'elitist' simply because he went to Harvard Law School.

Yeah sure ... Goof 'Ole "W" went to Yale but come on ... he got in because his Daddy went there and we're pretty sure Ole W was only there to party. We knew W was not the sharpest knife in the drawer but hey ... he was a guy you could sit down with at the diner and share a beer and some meatloaf with. Well that's very nice. But the kind of guy I could enjoy a brewski and the diner special with is the kind of guy I would want to go to the diner with ... not run my country.

Trump often uses all 87 words he know to claim to be the smartest, most ejamacated genius since Einstein - in factor smarter probably - Einstein never had a TV show, a fake university or his own airplane.

But middle America did not vote for him based on his intelligence or there lack of, they voted for him because he was a regular guy billionaire (multi-millionaire more like) who wore a baseball hat just like the rest of us in the trailer park.

We knew Trump waned to run America like a business. We just didn’t know he was going to run it like one of HIS businesses.

The conservative write George WIll recently said (and I paraphrase) that he hopes there is no impeachment because he wants Trump to serve out all four years. Because WE voted for him (at least in an electoral college sense) and that we NEED to experience all four years of Trump so that we are never ever ever tempted to vote so stupidly again.