Copyright berkshireeagle
Doppelgangers of Pinocchio and Charlie McCarthy, the first a liar and the other a mouthpiece, seem to be in charge lately, with the occasional entrance of the mythical Echo, a nymph from Greek mythology. Pinocchio, a wooden lad, had a nose that grew when he told a lie; Charlie, also made of wood, was the path ventriloquist Edgar Bergen would take to express himself; and Echo could only repeat the last words spoken to her, a punishment because she had distracted Hera, enabling Zeus to pursue his other love lives. You could make a Who’s Who kind of list about who in our present government fits best with lying, speaking from someone else’s brain or creating distractions so you won’t notice what’s really going on. I’m not going to do that; I’m more into making a list of things we don’t want to believe and should not be distracted from: Like government’s dismissal of the importance of protests, which allow Americans to take to the streets in dozens or millions for, as the Constitution puts it in the stilted language of our great-great-great grandfathers, “a redress of grievances.” Like supposedly legitimate (but you can’t really tell) immigration officers (ICE) grabbing people at random and not listening when a struggling woman keeps shouting in accented English, “U.S. citizen.” Like when boats are blown up in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean without input from Congress, and without solid evidence that the boatmen are drug runners, not fishermen. Like when Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sends all the Reps home because it turns out he can (Kevin McCarthy should have thought of that), and he can thus delay swearing in the newly elected representative from Arizona, release of the Epstein files, or negotiation on the shutdown. Like the Pentagon insulting all the women in the armed services by preaching male standards for all, plus the blanket purge of files to eliminate references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Technology worked too well, and all kinds of history were blotted out, as well as the atomic bomb named Ebola Gay and heroes with the last name of Gay. Some restorations have occurred already. Like the outright admission that President Trump would be singling out “Democratic cities” in his deployment of troops to Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles. Like the use of the military against Americans, with the president saying he has “the right to do anything he wants to do.” (August 2025). Like squeezing freedom of the press, freedom to read and academic freedom by threatening to freeze federal grants, or actually freezing them. Like not funding Head Start, thus targeting disadvantaged preschool kids from getting a jump on their educational start. Like the proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, which apparently can only be done by Congress, the branch of government that established it. Like stealing the Congressional wallet by refusing to fund what senators and representatives already voted for. Like cutting off funding and reducing staff at the National Institutes of Health, a leading research center encompassing all human problems with disease, behavior and environment; a source of funding for medical research at universities across the nation. Like not using its contingency fund – defined as money for emergencies – to at least partially provide SNAP assistance for food for the poor. Like laying off IRS personnel, thus reducing the number of audits that will be performed and unpaid taxes collected (total unpaid in 2022 was $606 billion, a piece of change worth getting). The list goes on. It’s shocking. And wooden people — no blood flow, no empathy, no humanity — are running the show.
