Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
99 New: Adaptation
The lying shocked me at first but now I just find it vaguely curious. That the President could say such wildly untrue things and suffer no repercussions used to be horrifying, now it’s fascinating to watch. I stopped walking around with my head in my hands, now I just shrug. Oh well. So what.
It’s like a kid who lies so much and so outlandishly that eventually the rest of the family just assumes the kid is lying all the time and pays no attention anymore. After all, how many times can you shriek “Stop lying!” to someone who doesn’t care that you’re shrieking?
Pretty soon the lying becomes part of the wallpaper you’ve hated since you moved into your house but never had the energy to replace so you just live with it. Every once in a while you pass a wallpapered wall and think to yourself, I need to get rid of that someday, paint that wall a nice color, something hip and calming. So you think that until someone nice visits, say from Canada or Australia, and they say, “JESUS! Why do you have such hideous wallpaper?”
And there really isn’t an answer to that question, is there?
4 Comments on “99 New: Adaptation”
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Well stated, Jan. Let’s change that wallpaper.
Did you see Frank Bruni’s column in the NY Times today? He says something similar, although you said it shorter and sharper. As a Canadian who has been following US national politics obsessively since mid-2016, I have now closed the door on the hideous room. Blame it on Nafta. I can follow no more. I leave it to my American cousins to tear down the wallpaper and make the change. Let me know when it’s safe to return.
In Australia, you often have the Murdoch press making outrageous accusations/statements and presenting it as fact. Meanwhile no-one in government will necessarily correct them.
This is like the story of slowly heating up the water in a pot of frogs, no one jumps out. They get use to it. But if add a new frog, he jumps out immediately. How can as the voting public get back to noticing how hot the water is? And how bad hot water is for us?