Forget the Debate about Columbus -- FOX News Helped Me Discover America

I don't know why it has taken me a lifetime to punch through the mirage. But I'm grateful that this moment has come. For, it has given me a deeper sense of peace than I've had since Donald Trump won the presidency.

I was at an upscale supermarket this morning, and FOX news was playing in the cafe area.  I didn't bother to complain to management as I usually do.  I'm the interloper, having chosen for various practical reasons to make Texas my home.  In any case, I was watching the lies prance across the screen, interviews with Trump's pals about what a low life ex-FBI Director Jim Comey was, etc.  And then I realized something. This is Russian television, or any banana republic's television station that so happens to be broadcast in English.Nobody goes to journalism school to broadcast propaganda.  Why are we (regular Americans) even allowing banana-republic propagandists on our television-waves?  That's when this awesome little insight struck.  

America is both a democracy and an autocracy, with that latter sub-system nestled behind a flimsy curtain. And that is what our nation built on slavery has always been.   The liberal democratic superstructure's job is to  speak for the whole, and to squirrel the de-federalized autocracy in the attic like a slightly disreputable relative.  That's what so-called "states rights" is actually about, the autocratic, authoritarianism, anti-democratic soul of many Americans (but fortunately JUST less than a majority).  Their political core, that is, "the Dixiecrats" were over time allowed to bounce back and forth between the Democratic and Republican parties.

But what we have now by fluke of circumstances is the de-federalized autocracy having come down from the attic and temporarily taken over the democratic superstructure (DC) , which was never supposed to happen.  The two were supposed to co-exist, with the DC doing all the talking on the national and international stage.  

Yes, yes. yes.  I finally get it at a gut level.  Donald Trump and his minions have always been with us.  Maybe that authoritarian strain in the American national character could have been stamped out after the Civil War or maybe it was just too large.  In any case, as we watch our nation disintegrate before our very eyes, at least we can say we knew what happened and why.