I’m doing the audiobook version of “London Falling” by the wonderfully gifted writer Patrick Radden Keefe (“Empire of Pain” and “Say Nothing”). It’s truly fascinating. And also deeply maddening. In it, he quotes another work — Heidi Blake’s “From Russia With Blood” — in describing how Russian citizens “became aculturated to a certain dissonance in day-to-day life,” as people would simply die/disappear and the official line would state that it was a suicide or a fall or a heart attack (in “London Falling” this also happens with stunning regularity in England, presumably at Russian hands). This suppression of reality and the intentional blurring of the lines between fact and propaganda creates a disorienting “fog of ambiguity” — one that has been amply reproduced in America by the Putin acolyte, Donald Trump.
Sure, Trump’s incessant lies have an entertainment value for his base (“owning the libs!”), but they also serve a deeper function. If enough objective truth can be erased; if enough laws can be flouted; if enough court-rulings can be ignored; if enough fraud can be carried out, and convicted fraudsters pardoned, under the Orwellian guise of fraud-elimination; then you have effectively created a false reality (not unlike the TV show “The Apprentice”) in which you get to pretty much do whatever you want, elections be damned. Trump learned from the grand-master himself, Vlad the Assailer/Veiler/Jailer/Blackmailer/Impaler. And now that terrible phone call is coming from inside the house. Forget the Second Amendment, we need an Old Testament solution!!
“God, if you’re listening…”
