TikTok end of the world
TikTok videos and tweets aren’t long because you can’t get anyone to pay attention to anything for long, not unless it’s “Lord of the Rings,” and they’ve seen it six times. If the Second Amendment to the Constitution were longer, not nearly as many people would be able to quote the whole thing.
In Ukraine, where stray dogs are eating dead people in the street, they’re learning how long Americans can pay attention to any one thing. So are those conducting hearings into President Donald Trump’s “Three Stooges Coup,” during which there was a lot of eye poking and goofy sound effects but no actual coup. Oh, Trump wanted a coup, but the disorganized mob of hillbillies he sent to do the job failed miserably. And now the hearings are getting much less of an audience than they deserve because, dude, it was, like, almost a year ago or something.
As for Ukraine, that was a big deal for maybe four weeks. For that first month, it was a comic book war. Lex Luthor (played by Vlad Putin) stormed across the border with his minions, and the plucky little Ukrainians held out like Gandalf holding off a bunch of greasy, grunting orcs.
But there were too many pages in that comic book, and the Ukrainians started to lose, and no one cared who the dogs were eating.
If anyone in America still cares about Ukraine, it’s President Joe Biden, who keeps doggedly sending weapons to Ukraine, fulfilling America’s traditional role of defending freedom everywhere in the world. Wyatt Earp fantasists who own 17 guns and practice their fast draw in front of the mirror when their wives are out grocery shopping are not defending freedom. Biden is defending freedom.
As for the hearings in Trump’s bumble of a coup, it’s just, like, guys in suits and, like, legal stuff, and no one is wearing a sword or a pair of holstered pearl-handled six guns.
That’s why $5 a gallon gas is the perfect crisis for America. You can’t forget about it because you have to gas up every few days, and it’s an easy crisis to understand because there’s only one number that counts. If gas was $4.87 a gallon last week, and it’s $4.92 a gallon today, then there is no need for explanation.
I believe the price of gas should go up a dime a gallon every time there’s a school shooting. If we’d done that five years ago, we’d have real gun control in this country by now.
It’s human nature to forget. It’s the only way we can live through tragedy. All cries of, “Never Forget!” and, “Never Again!” are bumper sticker words doomed to fade fast.
It’s good that we forget. I’ve known guys who never got over being in a war or losing the love of their lives. A few of them killed themselves. A lot more became alcoholics and drug addicts.
But to forget so fast is not part of that human survival urge. It’s just turning away from anything that won’t fit in a TikTok video or on the front of a t-shirt. It’s entirely possible that no country ever needed legalized marijuana less than America does. We already have less longterm memory than the stoners in my high school class.
Under Trump, gas was cheaper. Now, what was that coup thing all about, and why are the hearings so long and boring? The Ukrainians needed to win their war in less time than it takes to play the Super Bowl, minus the halftime show and all the commercials.
When it comes to suffering and freedom and democracy, yeah, all that stuff’s important, but can’t we speed things up a little? We ain’t got all day. Tik. Tok. Tik. Tok.
Marc Munroe Dion’s latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called “Devil’s Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America.” It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.