Inception

I recently had a very odd dream in which I was eating lunch in my college cafeteria (the school I went to, not the one at which I currently work) with various childhood friends who I haven't seen (except on Facebook, if that counts as "seeing") in anywhere between 13 and 18 years. I awoke from this dream at work, at approximately 3PM on a Friday. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that:
A) I don't sleep at work
B) the friend with whom I was excitedly sharing the details of the dream is no longer a co-worker and
C) my office isn't located in my grandparents' house.

These simultaneous realizations jarred me into the real world, where I found myself slowly waking up on a Sunday morning, comfortably tucked into my bed in my nicely air conditioned apartment. I had experienced the rare dream within a dream. I immediately decided that I would have to stop watching Inception whenever it appeared on HBO, as it was clearly starting to infect parts of my brain.

The rest of my day consisted of breakfast, or lunch, whatever you'd call it when you're eating right after you woke up, but it's happening at 1PM because you've been afflicted with the sleeping patterns of a small, nocturnal mammal. Then I read a book (seriously, I finished reading a book! The first book I actually sat down and read since I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time sometime in 2004 or 2005). Then, some TV sports consisting of a Yankees game (thank you MLB extra innings) and NASCAR (sports pickins are slim in the summertime).

Then, Fox News Sunday. The first segment of the show was an interview with Republican presidential candidate and noted crazy person Michele Bachmann. The second segment was a brief interview, mostly about the budget negotiations, with Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who proves his fiscal conservative bona fides by not spending money on superfluous letters for his name. As expected, we spent most of their collective half hour in Fantasyland (specifics in a minute).

How did it come to this? I imagine, at some point in our history, politicians and other public leaders spent their time saying things that were true, or that they at least believed to be true. Then, as politics became a career rather than a temporary state of public service, there was the natural migration toward pandering to voters, but that stopped working after a while. People are stupid and they don't even know what they believe half the time, and sometimes they start to believe that they don't like being pandered to. It's all such a hassle.

But then, somebody had an idea. I'm picturing Dick Morris and Karl Rove in a dimly lit laboratory somewhere in Washington D.C. The idea? Inception. If you haven't seen the movie, inception is a pretty simple concept. You plant an idea in a person's mind in a way that makes them think they had the idea on their own, thereby causing them to act on the idea as they would if it really were their own.

Here's how it works:
Step 1: Introduce a relatively simple, but emotionally charged talking point into the public debate and/or news cycle. You can do this yourself, but it's even better if you can use your favorite shill "commentator" in the media ("remember, if we want this to work, we have to use words Sean Hannity would use, nothing over one and a half syllables").

Step 2: Wait to see if the idea takes hold. It's important to use an idea that people would want to believe, or an idea that would give them a "logical" excuse to feel a way they already feel for irrational reasons. Example: Gay marriage destroys families.

Sidenote: If the idea doesn't properly take hold, just stop saying it. And when you run for President, tell everyone you never said it, even as news people show you video of you saying it.

Step 3: Once the idea takes hold, do some polling. If you've done your job correctly, the "American people" will parrot your idea back to you in the form of poll answers. The media will then do your bidding and report these poll answers as "news". For example, this just in from CNN..."like, zOMG you guys! A majority of the American people don't want to raise the debt ceiling, and this is important, even though most of them have no idea what that means." OK, maybe that isn't "just in" from CNN, but it sounds like a headline they'd use.

So then, let's say you're Michele Bachmann, and you go on some Sunday show and the sad looking man in the suit asks you about same sex marriage. You can proudly say you don't agree with it. But not because you're a bigot. You aren't a bigot, you're a good person, just look at all your foster children. No, you have to be against gay marriage, because you're just standing up for the American people, who are overwhelmingly in favor of protecting the family, which we all know is constantly under threat of gay destruction (sidenote #2: I have a number of homosexual or bisexual friends, I keep forgetting to ask them why they hate families so much, I should write that down so I remember).

Or, let's say you're Jon Kyl. You have to defend the tax cuts demanded by your corporate overlords and the other various super-rich people who own you (and your entire party, and the other party too, and really the whole country...sigh). Well, that sounds pretty indefensible. But, luckily, your party has been seeding the public debate for 30 years with ideas like "tax cuts create jobs" and "tax cuts actually increase revenue through the magic power of tax cuts" and "tax cuts equal freedom". That last one is especially insidious because it equates something tangible and easily given (tax cuts) with something intangible and impossible to give, something that must occur naturally or be earned (freedom).

So then, Jon Kyl can go on Fox News Sunday and suggest the President wants to put an anchor around the neck of the economy with his evil plan to slightly raise the top marginal tax rate. It's not fair to punish success by making people pay taxes. Seriously you guys!!! It's, like, so unfair!

I know I'm picking on Republicans again, but that's because they're so much better at this. It's like picking on Barry Bonds for (allegedly) using steroids. I'm sure plenty of other guys you never heard of (allegedly) used steroids, but you've still never heard of them, so who cares?

Anyway, I think I have some possible solutions to this problem:
1) We could all try being a little smarter and better informed (just kidding).
2) We could hook elected officials and people running for office up to lie detectors whenever they're speaking publicly (I actually really like this one, it would quickly turn any debate, speech or TV appearance into a game show we all watch to see if the lie detector goes off).
3) We could stop letting corporations and rich people buy politicians legally through campaign contributions (once again, just kidding, the Supreme Court is always right and legalizing bribery was an awesome idea).
4) We could start electing bears to run the country for a while. What they would lack in logic, reason and writing skills, they would make up for in mauling our enemies and stealing honey from other countries. What's that? You say a bear can't be President? Well sir, I say that makes you a bear racist.

I seem to have lost my train of thought. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I was going back to where I always go. I wish politicians would stop telling me what the American people want. First of all, I'm an American person, and I almost never want whatever it is they're telling me I want. Secondly, I don't care what the other American people want, because, for many reasons, including the one I just theorized about, what they want is usually stupid.

I'm tired of asking for a show of hands whenever we have a problem. Michele Bachmann was making the point yesterday that the government has a responsibility to protect the American people from same sex marriage, because a majority of them don't want it. No moron! The government has a responsibility to protect LGBT people from the dumbass majority trying to withhold rights from them for no good reason. Which is why, as always, New York is the best state ever.