A LESSON ABOUT DONALD TRUMP FROM THE DEER HUNTER
by
Marc Cascio
(Note: Marc Cascio is a high school English teacher, father of three, soccer coach, and my son. I am pleased that he is an occasional contributor to my blog.)
More and more, I keep thinking of the scene from The Deer Hunter where Robert De Niro’s character Mike explains to his friend Stan (played by John Cazale) that reality is reality by angrily exclaiming, "This is this!" The lesson is clear: Some things are just not subject to being false simply because you want them to be false or because you say they are false without proof.
For example, climate change is real. It just is. You can yell and scream and rant and rave, you can surround yourself with other people who deny it, and you can find a screwball or two with some fancy degree who offers some quackish data that supports your claim, but that doesn't outweigh the throngs of experts and the mountains of data the prove the truth: Climate change IS real. This is this.
The dangers of Covid are also real. Just because you might happen to be living in an area where emergency rooms aren't packed with the sick and dying doesn't mean that the dangers aren't real. No one person is the center of the universe, and no one person's subjective experience dictates objective reality, so to run around foolishly without precautions puts everyone at risk. This is this.
And the president of the United States incited a riot--
>>>He fomented an insurrection.
>>>He got a police officer killed.
>>>He lied about a stolen election.
>>>He badmouthed governors and his own vice president.
>>>He vilified the Supreme Court because the justices upheld the law rather than saw it as their obligation to side with him because he appointed some of the justices.
>>>He is guilty of treason.
Maybe (?) there were a few antifa people milling around who jumped in, but those people rioting in the Capitol were radical Trump supporters doing Trump's bidding.
That is that and this is this!
(Copyright Marc Cascio; all rights reserved.)
