by Christine Whitmarsh

Created on: August 20, 2009   Last Updated: August 21, 2009

Metaphor in Chief

If a lie becomes so overwhelmingly obvious to such a large number of people that the reality of it all is surreal, shouldn't the lie and all its associated illusions, simply cease to exist?

This was my hyperaware reality of America somewhere between the promise of change and the sobering understanding of what that change really entails. The vehicle for that change was little more than a metaphor with the ability to read the words that people want to hear at the moment they want to hear them.

This metaphor was manufactured by the grievances, distresses, ideology and conflicting desires of a people who cannot distinguish between what is real and what has been manufactured to appease them. The metaphor they elected promised to end a war on an emotion but instead waged war on the foundation of his alleged country.

The conflicted people, desperate for an end to what they were told were the worst of times, checked the box they were told would lead to the best of times. Once elected, the metaphor for all the things they thought they wanted used the power they bestowed upon him to lead them into the worst of times.

But even as he spent their money, vaporized their jobs and earnings and escalated the war on an emotion, the people remained silent. Nobody had yet told them that this metaphor had changed from the solution to all their problems into the cause of a whole set of new ones.

As the metaphor continued to spend their money and doom their future, what would happen next seemed inevitable, but only to those who were paying attention. These were the people who had been paying attention all along. They were not waiting for cues about what to think and regarding the appropriate level of optimism they should feel about their lives. They saw what was happening from the beginning and were astounded and lonely in this realization.

And then, suddenly, at a random point in the middle of the storm, all the people, even the ones paying attention, were informed that the storm was over and that they should leave their shelters and celebrate the end of the storm. So everyone, including the ones paying attention, ventured outside of the shelters into the street. First out came the ones who still believed in the promises originally recited by the metaphor, as he stood facing his word monitors with what he thought was an appropriate facial expression.

They were the ones who whooped in delight, dancing and celebrating in the stormy streets because they were

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