Back in the allegedly good old days, when men were supposedly men, Black folks down south had their very own water fountains, and all the children were ducking and covering so as to survive the nuclear attack that might come at any moment, baseball was called The Great American Pastime.
Baseball has been eclipsed over the years by football and basketball. All of these sports, though, have been left in the shade by what is now this country’s most popular—and hazardous—pastime: wishful thinking.
How dominant is this practice? Well, the first clause of the First Amendment notwithstanding, it has become our Established Religion. What’s more, the President is the Pope.
Who is to say these are not true facts? Congress kowtows before the President, the Court smiles from the sidelines, and the press doesn’t dare state the obvious.
To better understand the present, return with us now to those boring days of yesteryear, when the Lone Ranger and his subservient Native American companion Tonto whitewashed the racist history of the real Texas Rangers.
Behind the pulpit of Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan is the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, who, in addition to performing the usual pastoral duties, has written The Power of Positive Thinking. Peale had plenty of cause to believe deeply in his own mish-mash of self-help woo-woo and Biblical admonitions—it sold 2.5 million copies in just four years.
Many theologians and psychologists took a dimmer view. In The Nation, R.C. Murphy wrote, “Peale’s teachings ‘endorse the cruelties which men commit against each other’ which encourages readers to ‘give up [their] strivings and feel free to hate as much as [they] like.’” [Wikipedia.]
In Peale’s pews are the Trumps: Papa Fred, Mama Mary Anne, and, among their other offspring, Donald. The young lad’s annual allowance, adjusted for inflation, is more than a quarter million per annum.
Couple Peale’s teachings with the widespread tendency among human beings to believe they have earned whatever good fortune they enjoy, and… well, here we are.
Ironically, over the weekend, Peale’s most prominent congregant was himself the subject of an extraordinary amount of wishful thinking: a large chunk of the Twitterati held its breath, desperately hoping that the President was doing the same, but on a more permanent basis.
And why not? There were promising signs everywhere, foremost among them his own three-day absence from the public gaze—an eternity for someone who has purposely turned the world into a rotten remake of “The Truman Show.”
This disappearing act came, of course, on top of all the morbid signs typically seen among obese men of his age whose favorite meal, according to New Hampshire’s own Corey Lewandowski, is two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and a chocolate milkshake.
Our own favorite tidbit of this weird death watch was seeing a video that appeared to show objects being defenestrated from the normally-closed bulletproof windows of the White House living quarters. What was that all about? But we digress.
It was fun while it lasted, but on Tuesday, in a moment that will live on Page Eight, Fox “News’s” designated killjoy Peter Doocey was able to ask the President “How did you find out over the weekend that you were dead?” Trump’s lackluster response made it clear that while his respiration may in fact continue, he is completely dead to irony.
Conventional wisdom often becomes, on closer examination, an oxymoron. In this case, though, an old adage applies: be careful what you wish for. If the President were to kick off, and the 25th Amendment kick in, the Executive function of government would become even more nebulous than it already is.
Would a mascara-wearing alleged couch fetishist—not that there’s anything wrong with that—be running the show? Or would J.D. Vance, just be fronting for Peter Thiel?
The billionaire founder of the U.S. government’s favorite supplier of surveillance and data-mining technology, Thiel once wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Add that attitude to the data on U.S. citizens Elon Musk hoovered up at DOGE, and our corporate overlords can party like it’s 1984.
Rather than wishing the President dead, fans of freedom, justice, and what used to be, more or less, the American way, might be better off sending up hopes and prayers for his health.
Besides—speaking of things worthy of wishing for—a person must be alive and conscious to benefit from sitting in prison, contemplating the errors of a life of crime.
Horrible, greedy, and dangerous as he is, #47 spends a great deal of time dreaming of hamberders [sic] and yattering on Lies Social, his social media platform. A 25th Amendment-style #48, whoever that might be, could be even worse.