No Crazier Than Its Ever Been

FOR THOSE who think that American culture and society are crazy today, which many do, because they are, shallow, sour comfort can be deerived from the irrefutable fact that the same craziness has always lurked just beneath the American surface, often breaking through into unmitigated prominence. For instance, in October of 1843 thousands of Americans all across the fruited plain gathered together at dusk atop numerous hills, having sold all their earthly possessions and willed them, and awaited being reptured into heaven, the term "rapture" regarding heavenly ascent having only recently been invented. When nobody got raptured, they tried again a year later, with a few fewer believer participant hilltoppers, and once again, almost predictably, stayed put. Then they went home, or in most case somewhere else, since most had sold their homes, and tried to find something to eat. Standing on a hill top straining neck and eyes heavenward all night is a good way to work up a good appetite. That (1844) was the final attempt of the followers of the reverend William Miller, the "Millerites", to rapture up as the world should have ended according to the reverend, but didn't, to their credit. A third try would have been no more "fruitful", and even they knew it... Let's see now...In 1907 the great reprobate state of Indiana passed a law requiring all inferior human beings be sterilized, "inferior" meaning mentally or physically disabled. Many other states did the same, amid the "eugenics" craze, which Hitler later said made him greatly admire the United States, and inspired him to his genocidal policies. (Hitler also admired America for the way white Americans treated native Americans and African-Americans, but, as they say, that's another story. The Supreme Court agreed with forced sterilization of inferior people, eight to one. The lone dissenter knew he was whipped, shrugged his shoulders, and kept his mouth shut, for a time... Moving right along..As the year 2000 approached, thousands upon thousands of previously, reportedly, presumably reasonably intelligent Americans over stocked their basements with bottled water, toilet paper, and other assorted necessities, believing that at the stroke of midnight January 31, 1999-2000, all computers, hence society and its economy, would suddenly spontaneously combust, in a confusion of what time is it. By midday Januaru 1, 2000, they the overstockers began to realize that they had a modest problem; however in the world to use a basement full of botled and toilet paper. By now, twenty years later, we hope they are beginning to run out, and have "wiped the slate clean", so to speak. Even more strangely, all this happened a year too soon. It happened as the next to last year of the second millennium became the last year of the millennium, one year ahead of the actual changing of the millennium and the beginning of the new century. ameerica and the world celebrated one...year...too...soon. To comfirm this weirdness, do the math. Our own very special kinds of contemporary craziness in the summer of twenty one are well known and well documented. People have always been inventors and purveyors of misinformation, disinformation, and nonsense; hence, religion. Hence, Q-Anon. Hence, Trump and his seventy five million member gang of delusional traitors. Whatever reality we do not understand or like, we replace with our clever little fabrications. Here in the twenty first century, our unique human penchant for the fabrication of alternative realities is magnified and distributed through the internet. Standing interpidly but perhaps uselessly in opposition to the false paradigm purveyors are universities, libraries, and serious scholars, like an intellectual great wall of Trump, or a dyke or levee, bulging and straining, but for the moment, holding. If its any consolation, and really it shouldn't be, the United States of Amnesia Artistry de la Scam is no crazier than it ever was. Whether sanity ultimately prevails, or even holds a place in future human civilizatin, depends upon how may people join the ranks of the fact based sane, and how well they fight and endure. Right now it doesn't look good, but, hey, its still early.