trumpland revisited

 By the mid 1980s Americans were beginning to feel unease.

The certainty of god being in his heaven and all being right with the world - the birth right of every god-fearing, WWII Winning, White American Male - was, somewhere down in the nation's conscious sense, no longer certain.

The Gipper slid home to a second term on the strength of it being "Morning in America".

But the mines, factories, mills and all kinds of small businesses in all kinds of small towns kept closing leaving all kinds of Americans aimless, jobless and futureless.

But the joy of it being "Morning Again in America" kept a lid on the increasing bubbling boil of hopeless anger from "we the people".

One might argue that fomenting and allowing this condition to develop as far back as the late 1970s has given way to the hopeless clash of fictional realities that dominates the 2020s.

But one won't.

What one will point out is that in 1984 Lee Greenwood released an album that had a song on it with these lyrics.

"If tomorrow all the things were gone

I'd worked for all my life

And I had to start again

With just my children and my wife

I'd thank my lucky stars

To be living here today

'Cause the flag still stands for freedom

And they can't take that away

And I'm proud to be an American

Where at least I know I'm free"

And the dispossessed bought into the spirit of those lyrics: "I may be screwed, but I'm being screwed with options - freedom - and I'm really proud to be screwed in such a first class manner".

And time and tide moved on and the screwees continued being screwed and, I guess they continued humming God Bless the USA, and grinning and bearing it.

But then it all came home to roost: November 8, 2016.

I believe that the cataclysm of that day had been a long time coming.

It had been coming as, one by one, the screwees began to listen to a different song, this one from the 1970's:

"Freedom's just another word

For nothin' left to lose

And nothin' aint worth nothin'

But it's free"

That's from Me and Bobby McGee by Chris Christopherson.  I have decided to contribute some additional lyrics to flesh out the anthem of trumpland.

"Sounds like the bets all are off:

Serfs we were; serfs we'll be;

Forever from here on out;

Or so it seems to me."

(Richard II said to Wat Tyler just before he had him killed - after Tyler had nearly unhorsed the British monarchy several hundred years before the French Revolution "Villeins thou art and villeins wilt thou be.")

I thought historical symmetry would flesh out the roundness of this post.

The definition for villein is "a feudal tenant entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom he paid dues and services in return for land".

Sounds like serf to me.

And Ol' Mitch and the Boys are all working on it.

It's gonna be laughable when they get herded into the tent with the rest of us.

It might not be pretty.