Fakes and fakery

It's taken 50 years of the world thumping me on my thick melon but I'm finally ready to accept that fakes and fakery RULE and the honest and honorable are just in the world for sport. Average people are living their day-to-day being phony, as Holden Caulfield has been ranting for more than half a century.

I blame the fakery wave on TV. We have folks faking outrage on Nancy Grace and others faking outrage over the outrage to get on Glen Beck. The program hosts fake concern when they really don't give a damn about the issue; they just want to keep getting real checks. Millions upon millions of people watch this stuff, knowing these clowns are wealthy fakes, and assume that's the way the world works. Well, I'm here to tell you -- they're right. It does work that way.

I was reading the passage below recently. It's from Teddy Roosevelt's muckraker speech from 1906: There are beautiful things above and roundabout them (muckraking journalists); and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone. If the whole picture is painted black there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral color-blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man is really white, but they are all gray. In other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation as of the offense; it becomes well-nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrong-doing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men.

Rather than despair, I'm climbing aboard the Cannonballl heading for Hooterville (a fake train serving a fake town) because folks who come by their possessions or reputations honestly appear to have little of either. Maybe life is better that way but I can't imagine how -- human nature being what it is.

Honest and honorable people don't kiss ass and curry favor so they're laid off first. They don't pad their resumes or inflate their experiences so they don't get hired or promoted. They don't plagiarize or steal the work of others so they don't get bonuses. They're Diogenes' "human beings" and will soon be living in barrels like the great Cynic.

Because I don't want to be made sport of and I want what's coming to me, I'll be joining the rest of the fakes and pretend that what doesn't matter does and what has little or no significance is actually overflowing with importance. I'll agree to do things and won't, I'll say 'yes' and mean 'no,' I'll smile and be falsely villainous, to quote Shakespeare's Richard III, and pray I don't end up like him.