Act IV
[A makeshift Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in candlelight. Members of the Deep State are situated in the tent forming an audience for the Man in the Stove Pipe hat, who sits in a chair, rising occasionally to pace.] CHORUS: We prayed for divine intervention on this dark night, we offered Harriet incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns from songs of yore, to bring us a leader, but we prayed the night before, and the night before the night before. The God in Whom we Trust paid no attention. What brings you among us tonight in the form of Abraham Lincoln? Are you his spirit or a fake apparition? Apparition: There is but a whisker’s difference ‘tween the two, good people. I am me, and you are you, me on my side, you on yours. The Secretary of War from my administration awakened me from a slumber in answer to your…
Act III Good People on Both Sides
Chorus: Being a Deep State actor tortures the soul with ungodly moral dilemmas, but decisions must be made in times of turmoil and trouble. Someone must rule. Regardless of our political party, our hypocrisy sustains our democracy, double double, boil and bubble. Someone must be cruel. Pragmatism trumps ideology. All of the truths we tell are tempered by human psychology. We tell them what they want to hear to break the fever of their fear. We measure human misery and poverty and hate, we stage FBI investigations and we debate, we want all citizens to be happy and free, but we have to face the core problem of taxation. We are the adults in the ether. We know for the past two score and two years private profits have flowed one way, from the masses to the oligarchs and the well to do. The people have gone begging. A deep…
Act II
Good People on Both Sides: ACT II —Donald John Trump, Speech to the People in America’s Heartland—“very fine people”—2017 Chorus: As Deep State actors we share the burden of protecting the People from their worst instincts while protecting ourselves from what makes them distinct—their votes. Dance we must to keep things spinning from left to right and back again, across the screens from Fox to CNN. As time goes by, our job gets harder to operate within the original charter. From Valley Forge to Gettysburg to Minnesota we’ve kept the spin within a circle with dead bodies from both sides stacked on the perimeter. But lately the dance has gone grotesque, our noblesse oblige showing far less finesse, our People splitting apart like particles in a centrifuge, our enemies friending them on Facebook with even less regard for the truth than we have. Where it shall end we haven’t a…
The Late American Republic: 2121
My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Will we still sing of thee in 2121? Will our song of freedom ring? My country, ‘tis no guarantee, fertile land of possibility, for thee I fear. Will we still sing free in 2121? Will our song of hope persevere? My country, ‘tis for thee, precious land of empathy, for thee I pray. Will we still stand proud in 2121? Will our song of justice decay? My country, ‘tis for thee, treasured land in history, for thee I tremble. Will we feel your beating heart in 2121? Will our song of democracy crumble, dissemble? My country, ‘tis in thee, bountiful land of mystery, in thee I trust. Will we have a vote in 2121? Will our ballots like our bodies return to dust? My country, ‘tis of thee, of thee I sing.
Hysterical Blindness
Conversion disorder. When you can’t walk or balance very well and can’t make your way through the real world, but there’s no neurological or physiological explanation. When you can’t hear real sounds, but your ears aren’t broken. When you can’t see real images, but your eyes and retinal theater are fine. Doctors cannot find a cause. Conversion disorder has existed forever under different names. ‘Hysterical blindness’ is an archaic expression of it with echoes of insanity. Times have changed because nowadays medical science recognizes that this condition is not a mental illness but a neutral syndrome without a chemical or physical cause. Something is happening but you don’t know what it is. Conversion disorder. It also appears to have metastasized from an individual affliction to a collective one in 21st century America. But what do I know? A neighbor asked me about getting a Covid vaccine. Before I could respond,…