What if Political Dystopia is our Just Desserts?

Politics in America are turning into an interesting amalgamation of theater and storytelling. This particular national election cycle has elements of circus and reality television: bizarre and postmodern, apocalyptic and revolutionary…

This presidential election is both Dada and anti-Dadaist.

Clearly, logic and reason are rejected outright; and the critical prize is who can meme out a narrative that is the most entertaining or inciting.

Forget about not being in Kansas anymore. Culturally, we have broken the mold of everything we used to be and are entering a completely new ball game.

If this were happening in some tiny island in the middle of nowhere, we’d be bored with it in a day or two of itinerant coverage (“Oh those [fill in the backward culture here]!”). The problem is that we are one of the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful nations on the planet, and what happens in the USA truly affects the rest of the world.

Extrapolating the possibilities from the choices before us, in a historical context, turns out to be depressing and horrifying. On the other hand, narcotizing ourselves and letting our subconscious pick up parallels to Stephen King or other dystopian stories seems far safer.

It’s easy to ignore it when even your inner child is running around in your head, screaming, “We’re all going diiiiiie! Doomed. We’re doomed!!!”

If you step back, you can see some camps spinning their unique narrative; while others are expertly creating an intricate web for a larger (dare we say, epic) story.

Many have theorized that life is but a dream—an idiot’s dream. But this feels more like television than any dream I’ve ever had… everything happening now is the marketing for the launch of the world’s biggest reality television show ever.

I remember people being infuriated when St. Elsewhere ended their triumphant six-season run on network television by suggesting that the entire thing had been nothing but the musings trapped inside the head of a small autistic boy playing with a snow globe.

What if we’re nothing more than the musings of an anarchist stoner’s moribund dreams as he overdoses in some rat-infested dark alley somewhere?

But what if it's worse than that? What if P.T. Barnum was the Second Coming and this is the ending we all deserve?