All That Glitters Is Not Gold

For some strange reason there are those who lean to the extreme right who seem to think that reality is optional. There are a number of ways they seem to find that gives them an option so they can follow the flow of reality or to go off on their own only to encounter the gravity of returning to reality. That they can give their word about an issue only to go back on their word if they get cut off on the way to the office could be an option. Isn’t there a “five second rule” for giving your word like there is for dropping food on the floor? Isn’t giving your word the same as taking your hand off a chess piece? Once your hand is off the piece, that’s your move. In other words, taking your hand off a chess piece makes that move real. If you will recall we have our Wolf Watcher and Anti-Fraudster-in-Chief safely ensconced in a safe place which may or may not have padding on the walls but it does have an antique modem replete with its own dedicated hard-wired telephone cable. A man has to Truth when a man has to Truth, after all. I think the WWAAFIC wore out his welcome because there was nothing real in his claims of dictatorial domination. That’s the trouble with insisting that reality must conform precisely to a preconceived map of what has been determined reality must be. That whole act results in disappointment more often than not.

The first time I heard this thought it came from an older family member who mumbled, “All that glitters is not gold.” That was about a cousin who was enthralled with a young man who possessed a full-dress Harley Electra Glide. He was right, too, that was a nice ride but to that dude it was all glitter and no glide. Last we heard of him, he was taking acting classes in L.A. He was the first Magaite I’ve ever known who had any interest at all in discovering the subtleties found in expressing one’s self as something other than a scanned copy of a scanned copy of something everyone thinks is cute.

It’s true that we live in a drive-through society, but that does not equate to the idea that quality is found in drive-through thinking. Drive-through thinking does not allow the patience needed to conceive of and craft quality. If one is too busy to enjoy reality as it unfolds, reality is likely to do what it’s going to do and pay no attention to any plans at all. Reality is just a bitch about that shit. What can I say? Take the WWAAFIC as an example. He decided he knew something before he had proof of what he thought he knew. Now he’s embarrassed that what he believed was true was not true and what was and is true has gone on down the road of what’s real in spite of his protestations to the contrary. He can spend as much on lawyers as he is able but courts can not change reality. But then the WWAAFIC had Rudy as his wing man on reality issues and that turned out to be a decided misadventure. Rudy did have Sydney as a navigator, not that Sydney has ever helped anyone see reality any more clearly, either. I doubt that either of them ever saw the WWAAFIC as glitter but because reality is a bitch even if they were not aware they were treating him as glitter reality has just gone on and underscored that he’s a Glittering Grifter, I guess.

I don’t know who did the market research on this right-leaning lunacy we could call a hoped-for theocracy. Whoever it was either did a terrible job or they asked the wrong questions. I rather doubt that anyone would have asked a poll question like, “Do you consider God to be interested in the mating habits of Protozoa?” Or if we are a category-0 civilization and to even rank as a category-1 civilization we’d have to harness the energy of our star as our only energy source; 1) do you think God would make humanity’s mating habits his/her/its (choose the appropriate pronoun) primary concern or 2) is God waiting for us to get cracking on harnessing the sun’s energy?

Peter Drucker and probably every other guy who ever got anything done said, “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there.” One would think that if that were the direction that we as a civilization are moving toward, effective leaders would understand the futility of fossil fuels and kind of grok that the biggest filling station in our solar system is, umm, the sun? This is not an optional idea. This is a real thing and it is our little ole reality and our cute little reality doesn’t give a hoot about our excuses to justify acting as though reality can cut us a little slack. Is it any wonder that we’re balancing on the see-saw of repeating the past or moving into the future. There’s no question about if we’re going to harness the energy in our local solar filling station or perish, it’s merely a question of how we roll.

Which brings us to the subject of this little rant about doing it right the first time. It isn’t about being all ecological. It’s about having some common sense about what is inevitable. If you build a house on the river bank you are going to get water on the living room carpet. If your house doesn’t wash away, that is. If we apply that level of practicality to our upcoming election we could say we have a couple of prospective candidates for Champion of the Future. The only clues we have to know what kind of future they each would lead us into is what they have done and what they have said in the past.

Our favorite Wolf Watcher and Anti-Fraudster-in-Chief faxes that he wants to be a dictator and then I can’t read the rest. Here’s another fax where he says he did nothing wrong. Here’s one where he says he’s beating Al Capone because Al was a famous gangster, if you didn’t know, and he only ever got two felony counts, I got 91, can you believe it that’s the most counts any President has ever gotten. I’m number one. Remember I’m the guy who brought you vaccination hysteria.

Father Joe would like us to remember he brought us a check to help tide us over as the vaccine became available. He has tried to bring help to graduates who went to school on borrowed money. Father Joe is such a clown but he does get things done like that infrastructure bill he passed. He had seen the futility of having infrastructure weeks. Turned out to be better to just pass the damned bill. You know what else? Father Joe is just a decent man. Those kinds of men are made. It takes a lifetime to temper the hardness required to desire defined outcomes and the flexibility to adjust those desired outcomes to what the game will give him. They say you can’t coach experience. If that’s true Father Joe might could show the Wolf Watcher a thing or two.

If I have to choose a Champion of the Future, I think I have to go with the guy who understands that we have to harness the power of our star. There is no drama involved with that assessment. Nor is there any other option.

This blog was first published on February 16, 2024.

The Wright’s View is a blog written by John Worthington and is presented by The Business of Forging Agreement.

For additional content in a daily email format, I invite you to subscribe to “The Wright’s View” on Substack. I write about the folly of the current political goings-on from outside of what the media presents in the hope of giving anyone who reads my blogs another vantage point to see beyond the minutiae of the everyday.