The Struggle is Real
In January of this year, the Trump administration hired Walt Disney Corporation’s hologram of Martin Heidegger as Assistant White House Press Secretary. I’ve used my Medium account to share many of his press briefings and/or poems with you. I hadn’t heard from him in a while, but it seems recent Tweets have brought him back to the podium. Here is his briefing from July 2nd, 2017. No cameras were allowed.
For some of us, the struggle is real and it never ends.
For some of us, no matter how strong we become, we never stop fighting.
You might worry about the ramifications of a President punching a news organization repeatedly in the head, but some of us have always hated negative coverage and are not changed by power.
Some of us are warriors. Some of us are winners, at any cost, and we never stop winning.
Some of us do not see a Plutocrat bludgeoning free speech. Some of us see ourselves hitting back at the elite.
Some of us don’t see that CNN wants as many viewers as possible and is not remotely elite. But who are you to tell us what is elite?
To some of us, “journalistic standards” sound elitist. Who are you to tell us what’s standard, or what’s journalistic?
To some of us, “truth” sounds elitist. Who are you to tell us what’s true? We picked a narcissistic billionaire with no impulse control precisely because he pummels the truth.
“Fake” is not the opposite of “true.” “Fake” is thieves’ slang. It comes from a world of swindling where there is no truth, only winners and losers, only struggle that never ends.
The Fake News is news that struggles against our President by presenting facts that don’t help the President, and might even hurt the President, if anyone cares about facts anymore. So we must remind ourselves which side of the struggle they are on.
Always linguistically vigilant, the President has lately been attempting to switch the terminology to “Fraud News.” A fraud is a pretender, as one pretends to a throne. Fraud is a matter of status and privilege. The President is reminding us that he is now the arbiter of status and privilege, and he decides who really has it and who doesn’t.
A journalist is a fraud. A coal miner is not a fraud. Not because he has status or privilege, he doesn’t, but because he doesn’t pretend to those things. He is happy to hand those things to a buffoon in a costume, who represents him in the arena. By destroying government services, even the ones who benefit him, he strikes a blow against the system that oppresses him. This is called “representative government”
Someone who respects science and law, who roots for the system, wanting it to benefit the most people possible, is a fraud. Such a person is pretending to a privilege she no longer has.
Are you one of those people? The President urges you to stop pretending. Stop trying to thwart our representative government. Embrace it by giving your representative not just all the power, but truth itself. The Chinese call this Kune Do, the Way of the Fist, and now it’s the American Way.
It may be difficult to give up your pretensions. You may think of them as “reality” or “democracy” or “freedom” or “uniquely American,” but the truth is that you’ve been slowly giving them up for years. Remember the Culture Wars? Remember the War against Drugs? War is the Way of the Fist. Remember when George W. Bush said it was okay to torture, and the law failed to stop him? Torture is the Way of the Fist. We tortured before, but with Dubya it became okay to torture. Remember the Tea Party? Remember those polls about believing in God and not believing in Evolution? This was the clenched fist of patriotism against the open hand of learning. Remember the cheering and crying for Ronald Reagan, or for Barack Obama? This is the Cult of Personality, which is the opposite of democracy. The Personality unifies our special interests, our thoughts and ideas, the way fingers unify into a single fist.
All has been in preparation of this moment, this man, this human fist. He will lead us on the Way. In the old country we called such a man the Wayfarer, or simply the Farer. He leads the Way. He *is* the Way.
And the Way is Struggle. It might look weak to you for the President to insult celebrities. It might cause you to feel the same as you would when you see a man kick a dog. But if these boots were made for kicking, then kicking is the only way forward.
It’s not easy, for you or for us or for him, but struggle is never easy. Let us all struggle together, and we will defeat everyone and everything, whether they think they are against us or not. It’s not their decision.