Sure, our health care, environment, and economy all hang in the balance of some two hundred mostly unpopular, mostly white men. And yeah, by Friday, it might be too late to reverse this last push to plunge our country into darkness. But we’re the news, baby, and that shit’s way too depressing.
Pay no attention to the millions of people who will lose their health care in the next decade because of this. You didn’t tune into our round-the-clock newsgasm to hear about big, sad numbers or whatever the “nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office” says. You came here to be entertained! Now watch this commercial with an original song about a weight-loss pill that’ll kill you and maybe, in a few days, bankrupt you.
Pay no attention to the $170 billion that would go to ICE, giving our unchecked, domestic disappearing act a bigger budget than the US Army. Didn’t you hear that a ’90s rapper was on trial? What he was accused of is really bad, and way more important to you than the growing possibility of masked men raiding your community and whisking away your loved ones to who knows where. We’re gonna run an entire miniseries on the trial to show how horrified we are about this.
Pay no attention to the fact that one in four abortion providers could close their doors regardless of the abortion laws in their state. Maybe you could’ve paid attention to that a few years ago, when we were still pretending to care that Republicans were attacking abortion rights, but the past is the past. We’re the news, not the olds.
Besides, didn’t we say not to pay attention to the health care stuff? Here’s that commercial again. Look: They’re dancing on a boat. They’re chanting a brand name that’ll net you fifty points in Scrabble. The health care industry is great, and nothing is broken.
Pay no attention to the fossil fuel handouts that will all but destroy the solar and wind industry so those coal mines can stay open. You can pay attention to how extreme weather is affecting this year’s holiday travel, like last year, and the year before that, but don’t worry about connecting the dots there. We sure won’t.
Pay no attention to how all of this is being done to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the country. Society is about sacrifice, and sometimes we have to give up things like rural hospitals or food assistance for the poor so that billionaires can get more boats. Because remember: Billionaires are people, too, and they do great things with their money. Things like owning news outlets. Which is definitely not relevant to why you shouldn’t pay attention to this.
Besides, there are so many great things to pay attention to these days. Did you hear that a Muslim socialist could be the Muslim mayor of a Muslim city that you probably don’t live in? We’ve got a diverse panel of investors, washed-up political advisors, and palatable racists whose criticisms are definitely worth paying attention to. Pay special attention to his views on a country that isn’t ours instead of his policies to fix the country that is.
But most of all, pay no attention to how little attention you’re paying to this. You’ll be so much happier not knowing that the fundamental structures of our society are about to collapse. And we’ll be so much happier if you don’t know who’s to blame when it happens, so that we can continue to frame this fascist, oligarchic takeover of our country as a prime-time spectacle with two equally valid sides.
Now, let’s get back to that commercial.