Kirwan Articles 

Deadly Delusions

May 17,  2004

You can also view this article at Rense and at Old American Century

How could this be? Actually it's all been part of a grand design, consciously shaped by those who came to understand what America and Americans are really all about.

After the war, and though the 1950's, America became enchanted with success, as symbolized by money. From that point on, anything not directly tied to money became dead weight. People shut down their feelings, curtailed their dreams and just needed to conform. By the late 70's most of the creative elements of society, along with the rebellions of the 60's, had been abandoned. With the arts removed from the curriculum public education was just a holding pen for future drones.

Then came "Ronnie" our first real actor to "act" as President and America was forever changed. All politicians are now Actors, just performers on a stage, mouthing words that someone else has written, for secret reasons and other people's dreams. This is not new; most people know it for a fact. But why does it work?

It works because we have eliminated the most personal parts of our everyday lives. We, as a nation, only work. Everything we do is geared toward money in some way. We've forgotten how to feel, how to care, how to play, and most of all we've completely forgotten what it means to be real.

Jobs today are nothing short of slavery If your work-life is not indentured servitude, then you're either self-employed or unemployed, because there's very little middle ground. But all of us are people, social animals, so where do we find outlets for that side of us that seeks excitement, romance, depth or just sheer fantasy? Television is the shortest way to what we lack in life. Millions upon millions of us have become addicted to some program, be that sports, or soaps, or "reality television." So much so that we often tape our preferred choices, and become disturbed if we have to miss an episode for any reason. Why: Because we've made the images on the screen into reality-our reality, because we have no other.

The characters, be they sports figures, or soap stars, or fake "Survivors" become stand ins for the real life that we lack. And for many, the on-screen characters are more real than most of the people in their lives. All of this has become a national obsession. In politics, the same transference is also true. Political junkies spew out the facts, the position papers and all the other crap that goes with every candidate for anything. But none of that has much to do with who will be elected. Because the potential voters are not voting with their brains, they're voting with their passions.

Did you ever wonder why Monica Lewinski was such a huge deal for Clinton's credibility? That's simple-she broke into the fantasy that too many held about Bill Clinton, the illusion. It was as if millions of voters had suddenly been "cheated on."

And so the endless investigations always stayed on center stage (at costs that approached the stratospheric).

Ronnie was a half-wit, but he could read a script with passion. It was not what he said, or his policy decisions, it was the projection of Ronnie as that someone in their lives that caused people to vote for him. But that was not "him" it was an illusion of what his handlers had made his image into. But that never really mattered either, because the vote came not from the head, but from the damaged hearts of those who were not free, within that "life" they called reality.

Fast forward now to GWB: Technology has moved ahead, and where under Ronnie there were brief film clips, today the images are measured in tenths of a second - splintered partial pictures and powerful symbols that are all run together in profusion. Words themselves no longer matter much so now it's only images that count. Body language can be a narrative all its own. Here's Bush junior a blank-slate in reality, pretending to be the president, and he slouches, he swaggers, he's tough and crude and mean, whenever he speaks of "the evil ones," as though he were about to join in the fight. But the facts tell a very different story. He's nothing but a frat boy, a power junkie in the bleachers of life, a failure and a fool. Does that matter? No! Why not, because people vote for him based on the character they have made him into in their minds.

It gets worse, because of television and the snippets that now pass for news, people seldom listen to what anyone actually says. Instead some remember that they voted for him in the first place, and so cannot "betray" their man, just because he's in a little hot water now. So they deny reality and support their commander-in-chief, because they believe that to do otherwise would be disloyal. They do this even though they've never met the man, they know him not: but he's real to them. The true reality is nowhere visible, yet the actor is as "real" as his designers have made him-not as he is in reality.

This is a serious problem for America, and this year for the world. It's serious because Americans can no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

Life is not a movie or a TV series. In life when the scene is over the dead do not get up again. People can romanticize their political choices all they like, but when the bills come due, the money used to pay them must be real.

This didn't happen by itself. The politicians had a lot of help from media. You may have noticed that the networks have retained their individual logos, but that in many ways they're really all the same. That's because they were all taken over in a friendly merger. They are now all part of the EFI Network (Entertainment For Imbeciles). The new network is recommended for individuals with double-digit intellects, or less. One wonders why there hasn't been a class action lawsuit to remove the word "news" from so many programs that sell us nothing but fluff, while the entire planet is coming apart?

Thanks to EFI Network, the politicians don't need to explain anything, because so few of their transgressions ever make it to the airwaves. Only pictures seem to be able to get through the censorship (when it matters), and even those are tightly controlled in this country (they must protect the people from knowing too much).

Look at that most American of all political events-the political conventions! This year they've been eclipsed because we let EFI determine who the candidates will be long before the conventions were even scheduled! The political junkies sizzle with zeal, and hold endless meeting and demonstrations, but it's just for them, because the vast majority is keeping their guy close and safe, far away from all the ugly truth that now strides across the world.

The other disconnect that feeds this dark delusion is the myth that we are somehow connected to the outcome. Both sports and politics were born together in Ancient Greece. The "games" were about city-states, and people then knew the athletes, just as they knew the politicians. Today, the games are nothing more than billionaires in costume, performing in various revised forms of the ancient arena. None of the players are connected to the titles of the teams, the cities or the states they represent: yet still the fans proclaim undying loyalty: "We're Number One, we WIN!" When in point of fact the fans have no connection to the teams or to the players for the most part, at all.

The same is now true of politics. In politics "the people" are to be guarded against, to be protected from. The voters are an amorphous mass that needs to promised certain things, and wooed, at every turn, until the deed is done and the politicians can get back to stealing every dime from everyone that's still got something to spend.

After the elections, the people return to being the enemy, and the politicians return to all that matters to them, and never the twain shall meet. The officials return to their perpetual stages and each performs his or her part, and the public goes back into the fantasy, while the world edges ever closer to the open pit of hell itself!

Watch it all on EFI tonight-film at eleven! ??