So That (never)Happened
I See What I Wanna See
Back in April and again in July, I swore to myself I was going to blog here every week or two.
That never happened.
Here’s a thing you should know about me.
I was talking to my dear friend, A, last night, and after having brayed in my all too frequent, presumptuously authoritative tone one of my judgey opinions — of which I have one for nearly every person and occasion — about a celebrity who she adores and I abhor, let’s call him Lorbert Beo Nutz, A said to me, “On what evidence are you basing that? What’s your source?” And my reply:
“I don’t need sources,” uttered with an undercurrent of ‘pshaw, have you forotten to whom you are speaking? Followed by a superciliously sniffy, “I just KNOW.”
In the particular case of Nutz, did I know? Perhaps not to a degree one might consider definitive. My disdain for Lorbert was based on a rumour I either heard or made up myself. It was so long ago when I set the opinion in stone, I can’t site with 100% certainty the source or the evidence. Or, frankly, if either source or evidence — other than the fact Beo rubs me the wrong way and looks like someone who once rejected1 me — ever existed at all.
You should know that about me. Further, you ought to know that whatever evidence did or did not exist is entirely irrelevant to what I feel about Beo Nutz, and in a backwards illogic, it is because I feel about him the way I do that I am certain what I heard (or made up) is true.
And later, after I’d gotten home, re-playing my conversation with A, I had — or suffered —an epiphany — rather an unpleasant one — that I’ve got in common with the magats and their prince of barkness the following: We make up facts and cite fabricated delusional evidence to support our egregiously fatuous dogmatisms.
And later still, me being me (and you should know this about me, too) and unable to live for long with being in the wrong, I resorted to the elementary school justification of, “Well, everybody does it to one degree or another. At least my making shit up is harmless.”
But is it?
When truth and facts have become fungible phenomena, when we have become a society of people living shoulder to shoulder, sharing the same airspace, and yet, somehow, existing in totally different and incompatible realities with inconsonant, clashing, irreconcilably antagonistic beliefs, where contempt for and distrust of one another roils and boils in every exchange and interaction, can the ending be anything but tragic?
Here’s what really frightens me: I know that my feelings and pronouncements about Beo Nutz are bs, based in fake news. I trade them with A because we laugh about our disagreements over actors, it’s a game between two people who love each other and share a world view and still have room to enjoy different things.
But look at the magats and orange man. I am not sure what is scarier: if they, like me, know the bs they spout is not true, or, if they, unlike me, actually believe the bs with which they pollute the atmosphere? Is it scarier if they are just a bunch of grasping, power hungry liars and cheats OR if they are delusional sociopathic zealots?
Either/or, both horrific, and one suspects the cabal is a conglomerate of all the extremes of the far right and avaricious, power-gobbling criminal lunatics.
And here’s the thing: they have developed a pretty-effective blinding diversion in which they accuse the “other” of whatever it is they themselves are guilty of. And though I cannot cite any source or concrete evidence to support the following, I KNOW IT IS TRUE.
He did NOT win the November 2024 election. He’d been saying for weeks he didn’t need anyone’s votes. He and the mu-funk-sk have been in contact with Russia for months, years probably. People loved Kamala far more than they had loved Hillary, and Hillary nearly beat him, and did in fact far outstrip him in the popular vote. No way in November was he the first gopzi in decades to win the popular vote. There is no way this country is filled with more people who’d choose hate and criminality and misogyny and homophobia and transphobia and xenophobia and contempt for those less fortunate than would choose love and equality.
THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.
You cannot make me believe that there was not massive election interference with voting machines and results. And no sooner had it happened than did they start propagandizing, posing as members of the left, criticizing Kamala and democrats for what they did wrong, and for being out of touch with middle-america.
That is some insulting and divisive bs.
So, I say again, that NEVER happened. I know what I (wanna) know. Here, let Audra McDonald explain.2
So, I needed to get that out of my system. From here on out it is my intention to blog about books and theatre and movies and TV and, of course, every passing thought and crackpot notion and rant and rave that crosses my mind.
Next up … maybe … books I’ve read so far in 2024. Or, at least, the ones I really liked. And thoughts about WICKED:THE MOVIE/Part One.
I’m on BlueSky now. You should be, too. It’s very much got the vibe of the old bird-spot before it was ruined into a russian/christo-fascist propaganda tool. I celebrate what I see through my window every morning there. Come join us at:
Okay, that’s 1000 words and about a 5 minute read. So, I’m back. I think. Today anyway.
muchmuchmuchlovelovelove
By “rejected” I mean that I found this person attractive and imagined liaising with them and they never read my mind and came to me suggesting we hook up. So, okay, maybe they never outright said no to me since maybe I never made my interest clear — or, even, visible — but in my mind, in my world, THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN AND ACTED ON IT. But, as far as textbook definition of rejection goes, I guess you could say: That Never Happened.
SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE is from the Michael John LaChiusa musical of the same name.