It was a remarkably quiet day, in the City that belongs to no State, when it happened. Like Sherman’s “Siege of Atlanta” there was no stopping it. The “Alien” invasion had rolled through in a thick Fog that settled over the grounds of 1600. In this city, known for its Great Hall of Talk Over Action, the talk of late centers on the nexus between the “Alien” invaders and all that Fog. As if to make matters worse, the “chief” at 1600, being a true “Carpet- bagger,” has chosen to bring his own “Imperial Fog” to the party. For the uninitiated, a “Carpet-bagger” is defined as: “a person from the Northern states who goes to the South to profit from its Reconstruction.” The City having long lost its Southern sleepy town feel now prays to the Spirit of Dolly Madison to end this “Siege.”
Our Nation has long been accustomed to strange storms-a-brewing, especially at 1600. Still we know not what to make of all that Fog and hot air blowing in like a “Derecho.” The Fog Over 1600 has lingered and caused more unnecessary trepidation, fear and panic than the 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ novel “The War of the Worlds.” Sadly, the panic and frenzy are being poured and smelted from inside the “People’s House” before being released on the general public. This home-made fear and panic is justified as serving the greater public good by its capacity to propel the “Alien” invaders back to where they came from.
Surely, we must fight this menace that has penetrated right through America’s force field. The “Alien” invaders, we are reminded constantly, have employed an arsenal of weapons of mass disintegrate aimed at the very core of America’s soul. Meanwhile, the American public listens intently to official communiques from the “chief” deliverer. Yes, some even think of him as the “Messiah,” but comfort he us not. Instead, more like Lucifer, he delights in driving a wedge right through the people. Stoking the engines of hate he gets off on driving us against one another. Military generals call this phenomenon the “Fog of War.”
Our ‘chief” would have us believe that the “Alien” invaders have come for one reason; to plunder and plaque our cities. They have trained their disintegration gizmos at our women (just girls, really!) in order to raped them at will. And they have trained their sights on our suburban youth (just kids, really!) making junkies out of them. They have also targeted the “Windy City” for a special brand of mayhem not seen since the “Roaring 20’s” and the city’s St. Valentine’s Massacre.
In response to the urgent cries to defog “Our House” the “chief” has proclaimed before a Joint Session of Congress that he is ready to deliver America to the “Promise Land” and rid our skies of all manner of Fog. In his apparent opiate induced rantings and tweets he has called for preventing the “Alien” invaders from coming here by building a “Wall,” restricting air travel, and keeping just the good ones (like he would know them). But wait, where is the connection between the Fog Over 1600 and our borders or those folks on planes taking off from other lands.
What our “chief” and his allies fail to grasp is the very lack of a nexus between the ills of our nation and the “Alien” invasion. The “chief” must have skipped school when Willard Scott made a special appearance at his school and broke down for the assembled fifth graders the beauty and nature of East-West weather patterns, clouds and the ever mysterious Fogs. The thrust of the day’s lesson was that our southern neighbors produce very little by way of weather affecting the U.S. of A, and certainly are not capable of producing the Fog Over 1600. One can almost hear dear Uncle Willard sharing his wisdom and lamenting the possibility that if one remains ignorant of the weather (and here, I would add, climate change), then the Fog will forever be viewed as our enemy. Of course, our “chief” still thinks Willard was full of baloney and didn’t know much about weather or the manufacturing of fake news.
Luckily, those of us old enough to remember can still recall Willard’s role as the lovable Bozo the Clown. Our “chief” is altogether a different type of Bozo, which accounts for the large numbers of Americans who do not share his “dooms-day” vision or his rantings on recapturing our lost America. Nor do we take stock in the notion that our enemy is the “Alien” invaders. This news is as fake as the broadcast of H.G. Well’s novel or the Chicago Daily Tribune’s Masthead Headline that Dewey had defeated Truman. Yes, we know “fake” news when we see it, and truly do not need Presidential assistance in identifying it as such. We instantly recognized the Fog Over 1600 for what it is - another attempt to divide and conquer “We The People.” Regrettably, it is quite likely that our “chief” is himself a fake, even if his election was not. Simply stated, we can blame the multitudes of non-voters and/or our Electoral College system for this debacle without any further finger=pointing. And we have the power to accept or reject the very existence of the Fog Over 1600. In the final analysis we would be wise to head the axiom coined by the comic-strip character Pogo: “that we have met the enemy and he is us.”