The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

This morning in the mainstream lying press, I read about a UW professor who was tracking blogsites and twitter feeds to see if she could get a handle on where folks are getting their information these days. InfoWars. She was astounded that most people are reading – and probably believing— the alt-right and far left sites that appeal to their biases, not their reason. I listened this morning on the radio to an interview with a right wing talk show host who accused his interviewer and NPR of bashing all things Trump, just another example of the lying media.

Trump and his mentor Bannon of Breitbart have studiously planted the seeds of public doubt about the veracity of the Washington Post and New York Times. We are entering a techno-fueled Dark Age. I talked with a woman last week who said she couldn’t bear to read anything but the sites that bashed Trump. The entire nation seems to be pulling the covers over our heads and listening only to voices that agree with us. This tribalism bodes ill for Reason.

If I can summarize, the way to determine if something is faux news or factual news is this: it’s all phony. Everyone is lying. Truth is relative. Truth is what I believe, period. Walter Cronkite was a big fat liar, we just didn’t know it yet. Rush Limbaugh is God and he’s laughing at us. He killed the truth by telling people what they wanted to hear.

I don’t have the optimism I once had about the fate of a nation that loves its own ignorance. Like my old neighbor loved to intone: no brains, no headaches. Course, he went bankrupt three times, lost his wife and kids and his farm. My bet is he didn’t learn a single lesson from that. It isn’t that we no longer learn from history, we don’t even believe in history.

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Every year in the Pulitzer Prize nominated Crab Cracker, our local bastion of honest news reportage, we look forward to the one day when we can test our readers’ knowledge of alternate facts and verify vestigial funny bones. In the past we have run cutting edge, fast breaking stories about everything from whale sightings in the Stilly River to alpaca hunting season openings, from renaming the Mark Clark Bridge the Colton Harris Moore Causeway to the proposed 40 acre landfill on Camano’s South End.

Admittedly many loyal readers felt duped and some even canceled subscriptions … at least until they learned there were no subscriptions. It’s a free press in more ways than one, we informed our outraged gullible readers. But for the most part folks were mostly amused at our once a year antics. Those days, sad to say, are now gone. The Trump Administration yesterday issued an executive order via Tweet that henceforth, April Fool’s Day would no longer be recognized as a national holiday.

Reporters from the lying NY Times and Washington Post clamored for clarification, but White House spokesman Sean Spicer refused to accept questions from their faux news services. Fox News asked if rumors were true that the entire month of April would be designated Fool’s Month, but Mr. Spicer refused to validate those claims, saying the President and his staff would issue further information in good time.

“Isn’t it true, sir,” our reporter from the Cracker queried, “that Saturday Night Live is saying the entire year can now be declared April Fool’s Day?” which brought the press conference to a sudden conclusion when Spicer blamed the media and Hollywood for a profusion of phony stories like those. “You people twist everything!” he shouted before abruptly throwing down his microphone and walking to the door.

The Crab Cracker, no longer invited to further press conferences, if indeed there are more press conferences, was unable to verify rumors of a month-long holiday from truthful news, much less reports of a yearlong celebration of Alternate Facts. But … our investigation did reveal that Congress will soon introduce a bill in the Senate declaring May 1st National Truth Day. Watch for an update here in these pages.

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So little by little, tweet by tweet, you’ve come to grips with the sad reality that Donald J. the Trump is king of America. Hard, isn’t it? Sleepless nights, muffled sobs of despair, an inchoate but ever present anxiety, a mounting anger and a refusal to fully accept this harsh new reality. You thought, with Obama winning the second term, we’d turned a corner in this country. Oh, racism had reared its ugly head again, but … we were a pluralistic liberal society after all, we’d solve these vexing problems.

Just like you, I didn’t see this coming. Sure, I’d listened to Hot Talk Radio and those rating-hungry demagogues. I predicted Trump beating the Rhinos, but I sure didn’t see him winning the Whole Enchilada. I couldn’t imagine it. But … no need to tell you, unless you’ve been self-medicating too hard, he did. I’m not going to reiterate the man’s foibles, you can read it in the lying press every damn day. What we’ve all got to face, what we all need to understand, is we’re in a culture war and we’re losing. The kids aren’t buying into Trump and so if you’re willing to wait a decade or two, well, the tide will turn once again.

But me, I waited through the anti-war Civil Rights 60’s, the Nixon 70’s, the Reagan 80’s, got hopeful in the Clinton 90’s, lost faith again in Bush’s war years, then grew optimistic with Obama. Now we get the backlash. Easy to say it’s just the old white guyz, those Fox News addicts who think their Anglo country is being over-run by immigrants and welfare queens, transsexuals and women in the military, who call themselves the real patriots because they think this is a Christian nation and by God they’re Christians even if they never go to church on Sunday and they’ve made Hate a breakfast cereal to wake up to every day of their unhappy lives.

You don’t win the culture war by staying in the closet. Ask your gay friends. Black Lives Matter has it right. The Occupy Movement had it right. Folks don’t like uppity blacks? Tough. They think men shouldn’t sleep with men? Tough. They think Hollywood is a bunch of neo-commies? Fine. They think immigration is a doorway for terrorists? Wake up. They want to make America great again? Welcome to the future. We won’t be going back to Ozzie and Harriet, Ike and Tricky Dick. The America that’s great is the one that honors innovation, fresh ideas, new blood. It’s the America that’s inclusive, welcoming, democratic and optimistic. And yeah, it’s the America that’s willing to fight back against the bigots, the small minded, the xenophobic and the misogynistic, the America that has nothing to fear but the fearmongers themselves. I say sharpen your pitchforks, we’re in this fight for real now and I for one don’t plan to lose.

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