The American Suffering Project, Bifold Edition

While it is far from unusual for the Author to note problems with the reality we labor through with eyes half-closed, he has in recent days been observing problems with the presentation of reality, and more specifically with the two realities represented by our competing high-profile information-ecosystems, one of which seems sane and rational and connected to actual observable events, and the other of which is Fox News.

The editors of Poets & Suicides have discovered, through careful perusal of the Author’s many pseudonymous public accounts, a series of Authorial remarks on the tautological misery of the two-reality paradigm. In an effort to bruit the Authorial vision to his nine-to-fifteen loyal readers, we hereby publish an excerpt from a March 2025 diatribe that might lack the traditional Authorial bite, but (we would argue) remains consistent with the Authorial hand-wringing that (non)readers of this (un)storied rag have come to cherish. - The Editors

Okay, let's go again. Last one, I promise.

The NY Times: "U.K., France and Ukraine to Develop Cease-Fire Plan to Present to U.S."

The Wall Street Journal: "Europe Aims to Forge Its Own Peace Plan for Ukraine"

The Washington Post: "European leaders gather in London, embrace Zelensky after Trump blowup"

And Fox News? "Democratic governor takes verbal scorching for 'playing politics' instead of following the law"

If your primary source of information is Fox, you can again be reassured -- now that you're satisfied that our strong President and his loyal Wingman have put that Ukrainian ingrate in his place -- that the libs are being sufficiently owned.

I keep doing this because I don't think the problem is with Trump supporters. I know many of them, and they are not, by and large, any of the things that they're accused of being. (Racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, hateful, etc.) They are reacting to the world that they are shown constantly and that they have every reason to believe is the actual world. One in which liberals are trying to take their jobs, steal their money, surgically alter their children, weaponize the justice system against conservatives, and raze to the ground all of the mores and conventions that define the America they love.

I can see how easy it would be to be pulled down this path. I look at Trump and see -- clearly and without equivocation -- a corrupt and vile con-man who treats governing like a reality television show and will do anything for more power, more attention, "better ratings." But there's a reason that tens of millions of people look at him and see a convention-breaker, a straight-talker, and a Savior. They are being told, every day, that he's taking the country back for them. This tale is powerful. Sometimes I wonder: if the price-of-eggs (both literally and metaphorically) continues to soar, will the illusion of the Savior be broken? If enough people see friends and neighbors rounded up for deportation, will the illusion be broken? If bombs fall on American cities, will the illusion be broken? Sadly, my answer in all cases is, "No." Because all events can be run through the own-the-libs grinder and be transformed.

So while I don't blame Trump supporters for the state of the country, I do fear that, sooner or later, I will have to fight them. When really, all I want to do is write my books, play the guitar, love my family, and serve my students. It becomes difficult to do any of these things when you're priming for war and are worked up into a frenzy every day. What seems most unfair, or maybe just most confounding, is that many Trump supporters seem immune to the kind of impotent rage their faultless leader has instilled in his opponents. From their perspective, it’s all “winning,” the world is finally being corrected, they can go about their business with a sense of “American pride.” Their condition is a happy tautology: Since Trump can do no wrong, anything that goes wrong can’t be a Trump failure. It’s all just proof (for the Fox News enthusiast) of how deep the deep state runs; it justifies ramped up cruelty to migrants, students, the undocumented, the progressives, the transgendered, the “lunatics and Marxists” who are “destroying our country.” Cruelty, cruelty, cruelty. I suspect most of them do not read literature….