Yes, he screwed up with bleach and heat nonsense the other day. But his crisis-management team immediately convened and one of them quickly dug into his always-ready folder, just beside the one marked, “binders full of women,” and pulled out, “Well he can say it was sarcasm, that or ‘irony’ and both have worked before.”  Another countered with, “Just deny that it happened or was ‘being taken out of context’ and that will likely fly.”  A crusty old veteran then stood up, stroked his beard, appearing to be wise, pondering studiously for a moment,  then noted, “Hey, we could use the old tried-and-true maneuver, blaming it on Obama…or Hillary…or Biden or China. Hey, the “deep state” always works.!” So, an hour later, this group of advisors opted with the “sarcasm” defense, after sucking down tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars” to employ this “CYA contrivance”.  They quickly adjourned, pleased with themselves for again arming the president with “BS” that would satisfy Fox News and the rest of his devotees.

Speaking from experience, when you have so much to hide in the depths of your heart, any bit of lame-ass denial will suffice to satisfy your need to cover up your heart’s insecurity, fear, and anxiety.  I should know, having done that for most of my life.! And  that will keep you from admitting, “I  made a mistake. I goofed,” or even Rick Perry’s famous, awkward, admission of faltering in a debate in 2016 when he could not recall the third of “three points,” shame-facedly uttering, ‘Oops!’”

Yep, life is often tough as we plod along in the “tale told by an idiot” that we have contrived to save face, disregarding that this “tale” is always “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But even then Shakespeare wisdom must be taken with the body of his profound work, that beneath the surface of our collective falderal there is “Something” undergirding the apparent “nothing-ness.”  But when we are so deeply ensconced in falderal, this “nothingness” we inevitably will take it to be “the real.”

And with this organized, systematized denial system, we go merrily along our way, as in Goethe’s observation, “When folks made all the week a holiday/With scanty wit, yet wholly at their ease/like kittens given their own tail to tease.” W. H. Auden put it even more bitingly, describing humankind as, “bland, sunny, and adjusted by the light of the collected lie.”

” Oh my,” I am often wont to say, realizing that honest, human admission of fault must never be utilized.! We must keep from appearing “human” even though our “human-ness,” with all its frailty and shame, is our most valuable God-given treasure.