I write fiction, besides these essays about the unreality of our reality, I also write fiction. My current manuscript has telepathic dolphins, underwater labs, prehistoric shaman and much more. And you know what? In the context of a sci-fi fantasy speculative fiction piece, that’s just fine. But as a way to determine policy for the world’s largest economy? Maybe not so much. So, let’s talk a little bit about how the madmen and women in charge of this nation are out of their frickin minds and seem to be basing their decisions on cuckoo for cocoa puffs completely insane batshit crazy notions of reality. And as a result, I can’t help but wonder what kind of miserable end all of this is going to lead to.
So, where to begin? There are literally thousands of examples to choose from, and new ones are coming online by the second. But for the sake of this exercise, let’s start with our current Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, who said that immigrant farmworkers, who are being swept up in mass raids, could be replaced with automation and “able-bodied” U.S. citizens on Medicaid. Yeah, this is what she said.
“There will be no amnesty. The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way,” Rollins said. “And we move the workforce towards automation and 100% American participation, which, again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”
Okay, a lot to parse there. Does she believe that to be real? Or does she think that’s an effective way to make enough Americans believe that all of this clearly illegal cruelty and madness being thrust upon legal asylum seekers is somehow actually just good policy? I don’t know, and I don’t know which one is more dangerous either. But what I do know, and what she should know given her responsibilities, is that most people on Medicaid do work, and the rest are either caregivers, children, in school, or are too disabled to do any kind of work, no matter bend over and pick fruit in the fields for 12 hours a day. So what is she talking about? And given her responsibilities, why does she think that she can get on TV and tell a reporter, with a straight face and apparently in all seriousness, that there are 34 million able-bodied adults on Medicaid who can work in the fields? So I’ll ask again, does she actually believe that to be true? Does she really think we can deport all of these farmworkers, and somehow a bunch of able-bodied Medicaid participants will report to duty to pick fruit and vegetables in the hot sun? Or is she just trying to fool enough Americans into believing that she knows what the hell she’s talking about? I’m assuming it’s the latter, but I honestly can’t tell anymore.
Either way. Who’s going to pick the fruit and vegetables that are already in the field? It won’t be automation, and it won’t be these fictional lazy deadbeats on Medicaid. And that’s where reality comes in. At some point, they can only spread so much disinformation until the reality of their lies comes crashing down on all of us. Or simply rots in the fields.
If this were an isolated incident, maybe we could all just have a good laugh and go on with our day. But it’s not isolated, it’s rampant, it’s prevalent, and it’s spreading like the measles. Literally it is actually spreading measles, that’s another result of this misinformation butting up against reality. Same in Texas, where our delusional leaders have decided that hundreds of people dying in one of the many—predicted for decades now—ever-increasing weather catastrophes isn’t enough proof that maybe we shouldn’t be cutting funding to the National Weather Service, or climate change research, or clean energy initiatives, or FEMA.
The list of easy-to-predict outcomes of their unreality are endless. We’re supposed to believe that not only are they not cutting Medicaid, but also that when they do cut Medicaid, millions of people won’t lose their coverage. Or that rural hospitals won’t close. That cutting SNAP won’t cause millions of kids to go hungry. That all of this gutting of the social safety net won’t lead to misery for the most vulnerable among us. That cutting environmental protections won’t lead to more cancer and illness. I could go on and on, but the simplest way to describe it is that we’re supposed to believe that all of the safeguards we spent a century putting into place to make this country somewhat equitable are unneeded, and no one will suffer when we unravel all of it. Against a mountain of evidence that begs to differ. Oh, and we’re also supposed to believe that equity is a bad word and that diversity is making us weaker as a country. Don’t even get me started on how destructive being inclusive is. Yikes, I can’t believe we ever went down that road.
Anyway, one would hope that if an authoritarian regime came to power, it would at least reside somewhere within the confines of reality. But that’s not what we got, we got a regime hell bent on reality-denialism. In one sense, you can argue that they are just lying to us to get what they want. Sure, of course, but what they want will have real-world consequences that can’t be avoided by simply spreading enough disinformation. Just like the fruit and vegetables in the fields, and the ever-increasing storms coming our way, at some point, fiction comes face to face with reality, and as far as I can tell, reality has always won.