I Know What’s Wrong with America
My wife texted me this screenshot yesterday:
I sent it to my lawyer friends with this quip:
One of them replied:
It’s real. At this point you may think you know where I’m going with this. It’s another one of those “boo-hoo look at what a shitshow the country has become and I, the legal academic, am here to tell you it’s all because of the Second Amendment or Trumpism or whatever” kind of posts. But no, that’s not it.
Regular readers might know that I am pretty bummed about the death of American satire. Maybe that’s what this is about. After all, I did unwittingly forecast the headline above in an article I published in my regular LEO Weekly column two-and-a-half years ago:
2024: Faced with an unprecedented teacher shortage, Indiana’s General Assembly declares the whole experiment of public education to be a failure and votes to abolish public schools altogether. A loose network of charter schools, 90% of which are operated by churches, appears to fill the void. Anyone with a high school diploma is allowed to teach K-12. To subsidize tuition at these schools, sales tax is imposed on groceries, and tollbooths are set up to collect money from motorists every 100 miles. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce effusively praises the creation of new non-union teacher and tollbooth operator jobs. A bill abolishing all restrictions on the sale of firearms passes easily. Gun sellers place vending machines in every mall and drive-thru kiosks beside every tollbooth. Mask requirements by private businesses are punished with stiff criminal penalties, including fines and jail time.
This was supposed to be part of an increasingly silly set of predictions about what the maniacs in my state’s GOP supermajority legislature would do over the next few years. It was meant as satire: part funny, part scary. But it isn’t funny anymore, because even the most absurd stuff — like ammo in vending machines at grocery stores — is actually happening.
So is that the point of the article you’re reading? To again the lament the death of that sacred, ancient art? No, but close.
In answering the question posed by my lawyer friend and reflecting on the continued elusiveness of all forms of satire in the post-Trump era, I figured it out: the whole reason for the endless devolution of America into a roid-raging, idiocratic parody of itself. Here it is.
Everyone reading this died during the Obama administration. This is Hell, and our punishment is that all the satire we created in our lives is slowly coming true.
I know this is difficult to accept, but think about it. What other rational explanation could there be for an old Simpsons joke — the Trump presidency — to manifest itself as reality? How else could it be that Onion headlines regularly come true? You think it’s just a coincidence that even the Babylon Bee’s miserable jokes are actualizing? This is clearly the Devil’s handiwork, and we’re in the ironic punishments wing of the Bad Place.
In the Twilight Zone episode “Nice Place to Visit,” a career criminal wakes up in a casino where he always wins. He thinks he’s died and gone to Heaven but — surprise! — he’s in Hell. Our situation is sort of like that, but for social commentators who like to clown on people in power. So many jokes to make! But — surprise! — now everything’s a joke and no one is laughing. Guess who claims to have been profoundly influenced by that very episode of The Twilight Zone? That’s right, it’s Donald Fucking Trump, a man who presents as pathologically incapable of self-awareness, but who is slyly dropping hints as to our eternal punishment.
There are some heavy implications here. In line with the article I referenced before, get ready for Amazon paramilitary groups and mandatory ivermectin doses. Not just that, but a town full of hospitals, coffee militias, and a political system based on professional wrestling (no one read that last piece, but what would Hell be without dog-ugly engagement stats?). And this is just what I’ve written — who knows what honest-to-god professional satirists have unleashed on the rest of us in an effort to outpace what we thought was reality, but was actually our own past clowning, made flesh?
For my part, I am sorry to have wrought satirical damnation upon us all. I didn’t mean it. But I will be a pawn no more. Beelzebub, I rebuke you. Consider this a formal request to return me to regular, lake-of-fire type punishments. Chain me to a furnace and bite off my testicles. Chop me in half. Deep fry me in duck fat. Remove my face with an electric sander. Do your worst. I’d gladly be locked in an eternal prison, just so long as I can make fun of the warden again.