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Step out of Looking-Glass World

As usual, the original was better than the remake. To be actually living in a looking-glass world in 2020 was a big mistake.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is a story written for children by an oddball mathematician, Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. The tale has charmed young and old for more than 150 years. As a kid, my favorite volume combined “Alice” with its sequel “Through the Looking-Glass” (and the wonderful John Tenniel illustrations; the cartoon versions were always inferior).

In the sequel, Alice climbs through a mirror over the mantel and lands in a very different universe dominated by chess pieces and their prescribed motions. Behind the mirror, Alice finds constant disruptions in time and space. Everything, including logic, is reversed; time runs backward; in order to go someplace, you have to walk in the opposite direction. The whimsical dissonance of this mirror world opened new perspectives for me.

In real life, we seem to be acting out a different version of that looking-glass world based on alternative facts and denial of the obvious. Unlike the story, what passes for reality in 2020 is neither amusing nor enlightening. Every day is Opposite Day; everything’s binary. It’s political war without end — Red versus Blue, never Purple. Half the country has a deep grievance. What is it, exactly?

Conspiracy theories abound, with the same cast of folk-devils: a couple of philanthropic billionaires; selected politicians, especially female Democrats; the UN; the elusive antifa. One absurd mash-up, the QAnon conspiracy, has infiltrated Congress and some evangelical churches. Although TV dramas, novels, and movies have more interesting plotlines and characters, conspiracy theorists can boast: “I know something you don’t! And who cares if it makes no sense?”

Those who strain at journalism and science will swallow any old rumor on social media. We’re as superstitious as if we lived in the Middle Ages.

The 2020 world was quite as illogical as Alice’s was. Millions waited in vain for help with groceries and rent, but as the White Queen once said: “The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday — but never jam today.” Finally, the rulers appeared to release a dish of marmalade along with some pork links. O frabjous day!

Back behind Alice’s mirror, every creature or thing has its own point of view and strong opinions. Tweedledee and Tweedledum insist that Alice exists only in the Red King’s dream. Garden flowers criticize her hairdo/petals. When Alice slices the Plum Pudding, it exclaims “What impertinence!”

In 2020 world, people not only have strong opinions — they also carry guns and threaten elected officials. It seems that some of us are more equal than others.

Republicans look for loopholes in the Constitution so they can overthrow the government; Democrats threaten to try them for sedition. Is this Civil War II? Will the red states secede, led by shyster lawyers, rightwing militias, and politicians afraid of their constituents? Would millions of people play at political coup like a massive multiplayer online game?

Humpty Dumpty pays words extra if they mean what he wants them to mean. The White Queen tells Alice, “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” That’s nothing to now, when citizens can easily absorb 15 falsehoods from the White House each and every day.

We keep accusing others of our own faults. Dubbed a master of projection, Donald Trump attacked Barack Obama for playing too much golf and Mitt Romney for failing to release his tax returns. Psychiatrist Lance Dodes says Trump “tells other people that they are what he is.” However, hypocrisy began long before Trump, and spreads like a pandemic.

We human beings believe that we are rational. Why are we now driving in reverse and upside-down? Granted, it’s been a super-stressful year, with covid-19, economic disruption, massive protests, wildfires, and the endless election. That’s even more reason to keep our wits about us, rather than regress to a poor parody of a classic story.