“Klaatu barada nikto”

Loose Translation: If they hurt me, order Gort not to destroy the Earth.  Although they appear like a savage, uncontrolled, blathering mob, the population of Earth as a whole is redeemable.

Klaatu as played by Michael Rennie, The Day the Earth Stood Still – 1951

I knew something was in the air.  I had only ever witnessed bizarre hatred like this in off the rails movies like “The Purge”.  I had not seen people drop any semblance of integrity like this before.  It started one morning entering the office building, when she thrust her hand in my face, waving an old yellowed comic strip newspaper clipping, screaming just two words, and repeating them over and over.  “Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton!”  The old woman snarled as she thrust the comic strip in my face.  She held it still long enough for me to see that it was a cartoon picture of Bill Clinton with a woman on each arm.  The events had blindsided me, but I suppose I should have been more conscious of what was happening to our country.  I openly around the office spoke of how I thought Trumps bigotry, imbecility, pathological tendencies, corruption and misogyny, were obviously horrendous to even allow him a stage in America.  To me this was obvious.  By this time we knew of the double digit accusers of Trump’s predatory actions.  We knew of Access Hollywood.  I would openly laugh and say no one would be sick enough or dumb enough to vote for him.  I was wrong.  Millions were.   I feebly tried to argue back with her calling out that she was speaking of the husband of a candidate and not the candidate, and that her candidate openly bragged of assault, had double digit accusers, and bragged of walking in on pageant teens getting dressed, but soon I realized I was arguing with a cult acolyte.  She was immune completely to what “is”.  Showing the tell-tale symptoms that honor and integrity had been drained from her by going for the signature move of acolytes, the “whataboutism”.  The whataboutism keeps the conversation away from an observation of one’s position on events, and instead throws the argument to an imagined scale of moral justice, that certainly has an off-center fulcrum.  Whaboutisms are for liars, and children 9 or younger.  They make the argument that no matter how horrible the things I support are, I can find a moment in history that someone did worse.  I can make you defend that moment, instead of me defending giving power to a man that gropes women, cheats, lies, and sounds like an idiot hate monger while living his life like a libidinous Tasmanian Devil.  Whataboutisms are tools of dimwits and cowards that can’t argue the merits of something they stand for.  Something that “is”.

She wasn’t the only one.  I was appalled to find a Medical Doctor friend of mine one day speaking of Hillary’s kill list.  I thought he was joking, but he went on further to say the debt Obama saddled this country with was breaking the back of America.  I dug a little further and found out he was angry that Obamacare had hurt his ability to charge patients more money.  As a parting shot he made a comment about how Obama’s executive orders were off the charts.  I was sure I had seen information that showed George Bush had issued more, and I offered that, but he was willing to go to the mat defending his statement.  He doubled, then tripled down.  Wanting to be polite, I gracefully exited the bizarre conversation.  When I returned home and fact-checked it, sure enough I was correct.  For all the right wing bloviating, Bush had issued more executive orders than Obama.  This experience left me wondering why someone who had obviously attained a level of success based on his professional education would willingly dive into a black lagoon of lies and disinformation.  Going so far as to lie himself.  Surely some virus had taken over these people.  People don’t get this wretched by natural means.  Something had infected them.  I had to find it.  I was having body-snatcher moment after body-snatcher moment.

I turned to my friend, a former infantryman who lived his life like he was still in Iraq.  He had recently had a prolonged illness that nearly killed him.  Only through years long treatments was he finally cleared of his cancer.  Surely he would care about healthcare and effects on families.  He was nearly bankrupted while out of work for several years, and was lucky enough to have started with health insurance.  I knew he was a life-long Republican, but near death experiences tend to change people.  He openly talked of his disdain for Trump.  While he saw clearly the need for Healthcare, I could sense that the pull his party had on him was something more than policy or who made out financially.  This pull was woven into his sense of self.  Even as he spoke of not voting, because he couldn’t support the bigotry or the denigration of women, there was something I could sense that was off.  It was very clear to me that somehow his mental capacity to do something that his brain told him was unmanly would be beyond his ability to manage.  I could tell he wasn’t man enough to vote for a woman.  His identity built on fear of being accused of being less of a man would win out.  Even in his blatant conversations about caring about people, it was clear this man who had experienced battle didn’t have the courage to confront his own ignorant ideas.  Despite his impressive battle for life, his mind could not participate in the battle for identity.  After the election, he emailed me an apology that he voted for Trump because he thought he would lose, and a vote in that direction would allow whatever body-snatching virus that controlled him to be stilled.  I told him what I thought of that level of cowardice from a man that had the best medical treatments available to him denying them to others.  I couldn’t help but wonder why he’d fight so hard to live, yet not to care.  Not to grow.  Not to empathize.  I don’t blame him.  Of course this man displayed his significant courage tenfold in his service to the country, and in his fight for life.  What other worldly pull made him betray all principle?  What propaganda drove the firing of his neurons?  What brainwashing had him cast aside honor?  What sickness laid waste to his judgment?   Was the resonant frequency of belching hate the right chord that allowed the cowardly, draft dodging Cadet Bone Spurs the tune becoming of the pied piper of hate?  I think so.  I believe that our society has slowly built to a fever of right wing media manipulation that just needed a chord to be struck to let it ring out across America.  The control would be complete.  Fox News and Cambridge Analytica manipulating the populous would be enough to lay the groundwork for the grand Wizard of hate to march the Acolytes wherever he wanted.  Work with a foreign power, sure!  Believe conspiracy theories, will do.  Betray country, check.  Deny your lying eyes, of course.  Give money to the wealthy, aye sir.  Something happened that day.  It was not natural.  It was a disturbance in our Fabric.  It wasn’t smart.

It was the day the Earth Stood Stupid.   Klaatu Barada Nikto us all

— V.M. Smith