Lies…

—From EF—

         This has been a beautiful day. We had our usual coffee at Hardcore Espresso, and since I don’t drink coffee on a daily basis I get a pretty nifty lift. I had the pleasure of giving somebody a good laugh at the grocery checkout stand as she was looking up an unfamiliar code for the little orange fruit: “No, it starts with a K. You don’t get the Q until you come to the Quat.” The ocean was sporting stripes, blue and grey and green, and although the wind was sharper than a breeze, it didn’t blow our sushi off the table. I managed to put most of my little plants in the ground: mint, basil, Armenian cukes, lettuce. The big haul of new peppers can wait until tomorrow, and the Polish Linguisa tomatoes are safely in their bigger pots, waiting for the garlic to be harvested and give them the raised bed. The bucatini soaked up the clam sauce wonderfully. None of these things lied to me. Part of my pleasure lay in their absolute truth.

         Tomorrow, Sabbath is over and the regular week begins. I’ve tried to minimize my exposure to the news, but it’s hard to miss how the vomitorium of lies is building up its spew. No, I don’t watch Fox or listen to Sinclair radio stations, but every news outlet is reporting on the increasingly large percentage of the population that celebrates the lies, because they do watch Fox and listen to Sinclair. It’s all they trust. I’m not even sure they all believe what they’re hearing. It’s enough that it’s owning the libs, and that’s fun. Andrew Clyde is hilarious saying it was normal tourists, and the fact that he’s shown on tape screaming in terror on 1/6 just shows that his lies come from genuine brass balls.

         I was a liar for a long time, and it took me years to find how to crawl out of that painful muck. I have a different appreciation for truthfulness because I have lived on the other side. What is happening here? I think my lies came from a fear that if truth were known, I could not survive. The fear that nourishes solid group lying is growing, fed by an astonishing propaganda network. The same thing swallowed Hungary. The last time I was there I was dazzled by the open energy of the theatre world, the vitality of sharing stories openly, and the next year they got Orban. Last week we watched a film made in Poland the year that martial law swallowed Solidarity, 1981. This is not new. The difference is that the playbook is being used here, now.  

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