George Carlin was known in his times for being one of the best and most powerful comedians. Mostly, it was because he cut through the bullshit, and told it as it was. In fact, I think that part of his draw was not just that he made people laugh, but that he was such a breath of fresh air. People actually like not being lied to every now and then (although not nearly as often as they probably think, because most people really do like embellishing in a worldview filled with lies, and they like reinforcement of that world of lies).
Now to be fair, Carlin died long before this whole Trump nonsense began. After all, Carlin died in 2008. Sure, Trump was around at the time, and he had been famous for many years, even decades. It was just that he had not yet run for public office, much less the White House yet. And while Carlin did predict that the United States would someday embrace a dictatorship, he could not specifically have known that Donald Trump would edge the country so much closer to exactly that kind of a scenario.
That said, I hardly think that he would have been surprised. Admittedly, the fact that it was Donald Trump was a bit surprising to me. I mean, for superficial reasons, I could understand the draw, based on the fact that he has blond hair and blue eyes, and is wealthy and entitled, and all of that. However, Trump also seems to epitomize the untrustworthy, city-slicker kind of figure, and he also hardly seems sincere about embracing traditional religious values. Thus, it seems to me a bit surprising that people from more rural regions would actually have come to embrace such a man as this.
Still, it has somehow come to pass. I once suspected that the American people were collectively stupider than most people gave them credit for, but Carlin would not have been surprised, as this video attests. Admittedly, even I was surprised, beginning with how disingenuous the arguments for the invasion of Iraq were (still can't get past how easily they swallowed the argument of Saddam being an immediate threat to world peace, having a 45-minute response time and all that, while also paradoxically being so weak militarily that he would be defeated within six days or six weeks). Nor could I understand the related embrace by the majority of Americans that George W. Bush was such a successful president, that he deserved another four years. Then, eight years later, the most devastating wake-up call yet, that enough Americans (never quite a majority to date, thankfully, but still) would embrace Trump and all that he stood for, that he would officially win the 2016 election and officially become our elected leader, the face and the voice of our nation around the world for four long years.
Apparently, I must have gotten wiser since then.
Why would I say that?
Because it no longer surprises me that a hell of a lot of Americans (again, still not a majority, but probably enough to give him a real shot at the presidency once again) feel that Trump was a good enough president to give him another four years in the White House. In fact, I have suspected for a long time that Trump would win another term, even if, admittedly, I never hoped to be wrong on anything in my life as much as this. Still, I am old enough - and hopefully mature enough - to understand that what we want to have happen will not necessarily actually happen in real life. I did not want the invasion of Iraq to happen, but knew that it would in the months and months leading up to it. Nor did I want to believe that Bush would win re-election in 2004, but I somehow knew that he would. A lot of people were surprised by my prediction, and mistakenly assumed that I wanted it to happen, which could not have been farther from the case. Again, though, there is a big difference between wanting something not to happen, and expecting as a result of this that it will not happen.
That is why I am resigned to the very real possibility - I would even suggest the probability - that Trump will win the upcoming election. No, I do not want this to happen. Still, all of the signs point to it. The man has the luck of the devil himself. Previous presidents on both sides of the political divide - Reagan, Clinton, and the second Bush - were often labeled as "the Teflon President," but Trump really was the real deal in that regard. He has regularly weathered massive storms that surely would have buried literally anyone else's chances, or their presidency. The pattern is that this obscenely entitled and pampered man gets himself in trouble precisely because of this false sense of entitlement, and then somehow, through a mixture of naivete on the part of others, as well as his own financial (and increasingly, media) power, as well as his admittedly genius instincts (not the "very stable genius" that he credits himself for, but still) of self-preservation, he not only survives all of this, but thrives as a result of them. Not only does he survive, but he grows more popular, and thus more powerful, as a result of it. Now, he poses the greatest threat to our American democracy that likely has ever existed, with the possible exception of the events leading up to the Civil War. Really, it feels like the United States has never been so close to simply abandoning the pretense of being an enlightened, modern nation, and a democratic one at that. Increasingly, we seem to be testing the waters of having a new kind of totalitarianism thrust upon us - and entirely voluntarily, to boot! Nothing could be easier than avoiding this, if we wanted it, and valued things like democracy, or honesty, or integrity, and truth. Yet, far too many Americans these days seem to bend over backwards and go out of their way to stick their heads in the sand. And I'm not just accusing right-leaning Trump supporters in this regard, either. Idiocy and blindness (and a collective sense of false entitlement) seems to have become our national pastime in recent years, even decades.
Another person who, I strongly suspect, would not be surprised? George Carlin.
Take a look at the video below, and see why that is:
George Carlin's Grim Warning Has Turned Into Reality
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