Ministry of Truth
- Mike Dickey
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right."
This morning is already hurtling by.
Peg strode out the door timely at 6, and I adjourned to our beloved front porch to read the paper and enjoy the cool morning air.
I'm going to miss this spot. Maybe I can leave instructions to scatter my ashes down there in the ground cover where the cats always pee. The smell won't bother me at that point. Then again, whoever's stuck carrying out this request will have to sneak onto the property at 4 a.m., given that we won't own it unless that fatal stroke arrives in the next eight or nine weeks.
The news is, as usual these days, sort of a bummer. A common thread emerges in today's stories, however: their policies are failing, and so it's time to hide the truth.
Is all this chaos and bad monetary policy stoking inflation? There's no way to really know, because the administration has throttled the Labor Department's ability to gather data.
Worried about taking Junior to a Smithsonian gallery and being confronted with an image that causes him to question the cost of creating this nation borne on the backs of Native Americans, enslaved people, and women treated as objects rather than fully human? Worry not, Mom: the Trump team is there, firing anyone who tells the truth and replacing those troubling displays with an anodyne, Thomas Kinkade version of how we got here.
We're five days into hurricane season, except there is no hurricane season anymore, and no more climate data that might raise difficult questions about energy policy and the political might of the oil and gas industry. Good luck, Florida. You/we are going to need it.
And then there's the problem of the junk science crowd pushing cod liver oil as a cure for measles. Does it actually work? We'll never know because health-related data collection that contradicts the narrative from the top is long gone.
As an aside, that last bit came from Harvard, an institution that is also on its way to being long gone for having the temerity to push back. I'm sure Oral Roberts University, the second best institution of higher learning in Tulsa, can step in to bridge the gap with 20% more Jesus.
There I am digressing again.
The point is that while simultaneously filling the streets with armed goons directed to start arresting folks without warrants or probable cause (also in this morning's paper--look it up), and engaging in mass kleptocracy the likes of which the planet hasn't seen since Putin sold off Russia's infrastructure to the oligarchs, those currently in charge seem deliberately to have taken aim at the means by which a citizen might discern the truth about what's happening and what we are as a country. If the thing is not in the public eye it doesn't or no longer exists, sort of like the poor folks getting whisked off to an El Salvadoran gulag.
But most Americans don't care. They had a great weekend at Gulf Coast Jam a couple days ago, drinking their Michelob Ultras or White Claws (for the ladies), and with a bad country song playing in the background jabber about SEC football or the latest Ford truck or whatever one discusses with a degree from most American research university/party schools. Or no degree at all; it's all about the same when it comes to the level of discourse at the average Shell Island raft-up.
I guess that sounds a little bitter. I'm of that world, after all. But if 2026 doesn't mark a dramatic change in events in this country for the positive, if my neighbors signal for the third or fourth time they're okay with all this, my wrinkly old backside is flying somewhere that's not the U.S. That is, if Stephen Miller hasn't already led me manacled onto a jetliner for a flight to some overseas prison.
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