The Thing behind the curtain & It’s self appointed press secretaries

Leave reality behind for a moment and allow yourself a bizarre flight of fantasy.

Imagine that the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful man on the planet, has never been seen. He never ran for office, and was never elected by official ballot. No one has ever personally met him. He never meets with foreign officials. He never speaks publicly. He never appears in person, in pictures, or on TV, the radio, or the internet. He is said to have written, or at least “inspired” a book to be written, that defines his political positions and vision for the nation; albeit, the original text has never been seen only redacted and reshuffled copies of the original manuscript exist.

And instead of having just one press secretary to interpret his book of policies, issue his edicts, explain his positions, and define his objectives he has thousands upon thousands of self appointed spokesmen-spin doctors speaking on his behalf. Many if not most of their interpretations and explanations are in diametric opposition to some of their fellow spokesmen’s understandings and pronouncements. Each of them accuses the other of being false spokesmen, or “not true press secretaries.”

The result would best be described as chaos. It wouldn’t take long for the American public to become disillusioned and completely dismissive of the nation’s leader and his self-appointed quasi-official mouthpieces. Surely calls for impeachment would follow; people would be on the verge of revolution; the heads of the soothsayer spokesmen would roll in the streets. Shouts of “Mr. President show yourself and speak to us directly! Prove you are who your spin doctors say you are, or which one they say you are if you ‘are’ at all! Resolve the confusion and conflicts among your official un-official professors once and for all!” would ring in every city, town, village and hamlet in the nation.

Absurd you say? Who could imagine such a thing, or allow it to happen? How anyone could give that president or his “ministers of spin” any credibility, much less entrust him or them to guide their lives for even a moment much less a four or eight year term is simply implausible.

And yet the vast majority of Americans, and billions of people around the world, not only endure such a construct, they endorse it, embrace it, couldn’t conceive of existence any other way. Not just for four or eight years, but for their entire lives. Just substitute the word “God” for the title “President,” and “Clergy” for his thousands of press secretary minions and what I described in my hypothetical construct becomes as real and as natural as a priest’s erection at a choirboys’ rehearsal.

One would think (if in deed one can think at all) that when your invisible divine being needs an army of contradicting spokesmen spin doctors all of whom claim to be speaking for it, you can pretty much figure the reclusive and inscrutable divine thing they profess to speak for is either senile and confused, mute and in a coma, or non-existent.

But no. Instead the faithful take sides. They form into competing parties that proclaim THEIRS to be the one true “party of god”; THEIR spokesmen best represents THEIR god’s / gods’ wishes. THEY represent the true invisible silent god, the others worship a false invisible silent god and follow the interpretation of false prophet / not a true believer spokesmen.

Sound crazy? It is. It’s the stuff of fantasy stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, or Gulliver’s Travels. Stories that if they were real places with real people would be a nightmarish existence where fiction is taken as fact, lies accepted as truth, confusion and contradiction perceived as clarity and cohesion, edicts of genocide and violent punishment perceived as just, good and loving.

If forced to live in such a world I would do what I do now - use every opportunity I had to proclaim: “Pay no attention to the thing behind the curtain, it does not exist; and the one speaking in front of the curtain is full of shit.”