Maybe it IS you...

...when everything you think you know is actually and completely wrong.

Jim Fallows has a new post up arguing that America doesn't have to be great again because, well, because it never really stopped being fairly great. That the current what-appears-to-be-common-and-popular political trope about the U.S. as a shrieking hellscape is...mistaken. And that the secret to changing that trope is...to tell people about all this good news.

My argument is that this trope is anything but a mistake. It's a lie, a damned, dirty lie repeated by damned dirty liars and Republicans but I repeat myself. And that the grifter and liars know that and will not change anything because the lying and grifting is profitable and that their marks and stooges won't change, either, because they're too goddamn investing in the lies as part of their mindset.

I should add that the most significant problem - real problem as opposed to the fantasy-problem of screaming hordes of Zika-infected, ISIS-allied Mexican terrorist-rapists coming over the walls to adulterate our precious bodily fluids - of the New Gilded Age - the louring oligarchy that has thoroughly corrupted our politics and our media - never seems to wander into the liars' wheelhouse.

Which is, of course, the whole point of the lie.

But here's where I think that Fallows is wasting his ink. The people who believe these lies, the people who believe that they need to elect a short-fingered vulgarian real-estate swindler and serial adulterer to "Make America Great Again", have no interest in facts, or realities, or anything other than their own moronic delusions. Telling them that "...an important task for moving beyond our current era of a Second Gilded Age is connecting the stories and examples of people and places that are figuring out how to cope..." won't change their minds.

So far as they are concerned the Damned Lib'ruls and the Kenywn Usurper have destroyed America's once-awesome military power, flooded the nation with illegal Mexicans and Syrians, debased the currency, encouraged homos to screw children and animals and each other, and carpeted the path to the welfare office with a red carpet made from aborted baby parts.

As I've said before; I won't talk about U.S. politics because they're nothing left for me to say. And there's really nothing here for me, either. This is just a thing. If these people had a functioning cerebrum they'd see how ridiculous they are and change. They don't; they're working off the old lizard-brain, and doing nothing more useful than any other reptile snapping at the shadows it believes are insects.

But what is depressing to contemplate is that this sort of America the Terrible obsession seems to have subsumed perhaps one-fifth to a quarter of the American electorate.

And a maneuver unit that has taken 30% casualties is usually assessed combat-ineffective and completely worthless for anything but parting out and completely rebuilding.