The United States today is governed by professional illusionists. Not only are officials elected through campaigns of image-building based on fiction and caricature, but once in office their actions are decided not by anticipating consequences to the nation and/or humanity but by the kind of image those actions will enable them to present to the public. Washington acts by putting on an act. The same is true of every state capitol and city hall. With sheriffs behaving like movie actors, movie actors aspire to the highest offices.
Politics increasingly takes on the forms of mass culture, in which the picture of a thing, or the publicity about it, achieves precedence over the thing itself, since the latter is seen by considerably fewer people. . . . Events are contrived out of the whole cloth in order to provide occasions for actions or statements of policy. Events are made to happen for the sake of words, instead of words being used to give an account of events. History has been turned inside out; writing it takes place in advance of its occurrence, and every statesman is an author in embryo.
Harold Rosenberg
(Writing during the Johnson Administration.)
Beau, these times are troubling. Just hope you are well… -Bill
All is well in my immediate sphere, Bill, thank you for asking. I’ve been on a different path nearly two years now. Painting when I can, very little writing, and next to no coding at all. I walk 7.5 miles a day (!) and have much for which to be thankful.