“Life of Illusion” is one of Joe Walsh’s, and rock music’s, greatest songs. Today’s biggest problem is that way too many people currently live their lives in a state of illusion.
Somewhere I read that our current day and age no longer the Information Age. We now reside in the Imagination Age.
Imagination indeed.
Recently Whoopi Goldberg on that horrendous show called The View opined, “What’s the difference between us and the people we are fighting.” Presumably she meant the radical Islamists we are fighting because, as Katy Perry insisted after Manchester, if we all just love each other the bad things will go away.
There are considerable differences of course between us and radical Islamists. We, the western world, responded to our wars with ever more stringent standards of conduct to try and lessen the effects of armed conflict on the innocent. That’s why we have precision munitions and no longer rely on Dresden- style aerial bombing campaigns. To date radical Islamists have done precisely the opposite and have gone out of their way to heighten the effects on the innocent of their armed conflict with us to the greatest extent possible.
When you are Whoopi Goldberg though, and you are living in a life of illusion and imagination, maybe it seems sane to equate us to them and them to us and so forth.
I’ll confess, I had no idea who Kathy Griffin was until she brought life to her imagination and posed with a depiction of President Trump’s decapitated head. At first I thought maybe it was whatshername RIpa on daytime TV. Or that character on one of those prime time cartoons that used to be edgy but now is just same old same old.
Then I saw Kathy Griffin. She looked familiar but I had to Google her to see what she’d been in that I might have seen. I could see why she turned to comedy – I mean, for her porn was no doubt a no go. When Griffin apologized, I was ready to become her biggest fan but then…
She retreated into her own imagination and emerged to blame the entire ordeal on Trump. That’s right. Griffin posed for a picture in which she, like an ISIS operative, was holding the head of President Trump. And it’s somehow Trump’s fault that people are upset with her because she posted for a picture in which she, like an ISIS operative, was holding the head of President Trump. Only when one lives in an imaginary world does any of this make sense.
Imaginary worlds include entire college campuses. Evergreen State College in Washington recently allowed students to engage in segregationist violence. Were it white students that engaged in segregationist violence media coverage would have been wall to wall. And yes, it’s violence to occupy public spaces, deny use of those spaces to others based on their race, and to try and silence dissenting opinions. When Evergreen students were exposed, they complained that “white supremacists leaked” the video.
See how this works? “White supremacists”. They used that firecracker of a term to shift attention away from their racially motivated hate spree on a publicly funded campus. “Leaked”. Because “leaks” are all the rage right now and if you live deeply enough in imagination you believe that leaks will eventually impeach President Trump.
Speaking of living deeply in imagination, Hillary Clinton’s been making the rounds lately. I think now I can understand why Bill is, well, Bill. Can you imagine coming home to Madam Secretary after a hard day of being Bill and enduring the increasingly deranged conspiracy theories that spout forth from the mouth of Rodham.
Hillary’s blamed Macedonia.
The DNC.
Obama.
Anti-vaginal sentiment.
American voters.
And Russia for her loss in 2016.
Note that I write this on June 2nd so by the time it’s published her umbrella of blame may extend further. That’s right. Her 2016 election loss couldn’t be because she was the original birther. Or that she spent more time off the campaign trail than on it because she thought Obama’s abuse of unmasking would produce dirt on Trump. Give the woman that once claimed NASA and the Marine Corps once turned her down another month or so and she’ll be blaming Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
Ah, the age of imagination.
In the meantime, our adversaries live in a very real world. One in which they eschew imagination in favor of real world plans for our demise. I hope we snap out of it soon.
photo credit: claudiadea131 Among the delicate drops via photopin (license)
