{"id":20801,"date":"2020-09-13T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=20801"},"modified":"2020-09-13T06:44:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T13:44:57","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/13\/roll-of-the-dice-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Roll of the Dice: Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We live in an Orwellian time when what\u00b4s true can be made to seem like a lie, and what\u00b4s a lie can be made to seem true. So this song is not really about magic–it\u00b4s about tricks. And their consequences.”\u00a0 –Bruce Springsteen, October 15, 2007<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s about gaslighting. And division.<\/p>\n

I write this from a hotel room just fifteen minutes from my house in suburban Seattle, because despite our best efforts to keep our house sealed, after several days of toxic air in what is for the moment at least the most polluted city on earth, the haze in our home, the redness in our eyes, and the burning in our throats compelled us to leave for the duration.<\/p>\n

The smoke, as you most certainly know if you follow the news, comes from the wildfires engulfing the western half of the United States at the moment–wildfires caused by Antifa, I’m told by my social media feed. Or possibly Black Lives Matter. Although if California had only swept their forest floors, this wouldn’t be an issue, because climate change is a hoax, like that whole Russia thing.<\/p>\n

So my family and I are holed up in a hotel because we can’t be outside, and we can’t be in a mall, restaurant, movie theater, or any other public place inside, because of a virus that China unleashed on us, but that our president did a great job of defeating. And now we’ve turned a corner, except that lots of people are still dying, but it would have been so much worse without our president’s great leadership.<\/p>\n

Yes, he was caught on tape admitting he was lying to us about the threat posed by the virus, but that’s what leaders have to do sometimes in order to keep us calm. And sometimes rile us up.\u00a0 And besides, if those comments were really so bad, that reporter wouldn’t have sat on them for so long, right?<\/p>\n

But the point is: America’s back! Just look at the job creation numbers if you need proof, and don’t pay any attention to the job losses that both precede and parallel them, because they don’t count.<\/p>\n

Hey, that saw blade sure is shiny. Can we see a magic trick?<\/p>\n