Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

It has come to this. The division in this country can no longer be cloaked nor denied.  The last November election results broke the last semblance of political  unity, although all the signs of cracking had been there since the last thirteen years or so.

It is a bewildering time at a place touted as the birthplace of modern democracy which the Greeks and the Romans tried but failed.  Here we are befuddled by what is going on. 

Is it true that The American College of Psychiatrists - an American association, based in Chicago, Illinois - is in the process of adding to its roll of modern mental ailments a new phenomenon first observed after November 5th, last year?  While they're considering it, the board outrightly rejected the one proposed earlier by one party group who wanted it to be "Trump derangement syndrome", or TDS for short. The likelihood is that the public will  get a general definition which will be EDS instead - for a more inclusive, "election derangement syndrome". 

Those proposing, even insisting, that TDS it should be, claim that the other side does indeed exhibit the quintessential confluence  of the  B's, that of being Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, a Bedraggling case of Befuddlement. 

It would be tragic if we cannot make light of this phenomenon; inject some humor perhaps, because otherwise, we are in for a bleak four years of  Bedraggled politics.  So, let's see.

But first we need to go back to 1940. Rogers and Hart created the song "Bewitched", in a musical called, "Pal Joey". It quickly became part of the Great American Songbook, first introduced to American audiences by singer and Broadway actress, Vivienne Segal, on December 25, 1940 while WWII was still going on in Europe. It became a hit in 1950 and in the Broadway revival of it in 1952, as the world was starting to settle down from the calamity of the war.  Below are just the three lines out of a lengthy song that one side of the political divide cherry picked to describe the other.

"And wouldn't sleep

Until I could sleep where I shouldn't sleep.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I!"

Let's face it. In a politically divided country that this nation had become, must we take everything so seriously?  As in most contests of any kind, there can only be one victor. One at a time, that is. The pendulum swung one way, and it is meant to swing the other direction, the losing side may say, and perhaps for a moment we are able to learn something from history.  We hope so because we have been poor learners of it.  If not, we are doomed to see it repeat all over.

One party felt bewildered by last year's election that certain sectors of the population they believed were on their side all along went the other way.  And Vanity Fair was so bothered that they just published an article, “Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Protein? Blame MAGA” by author Keziah Weir. Was it perhaps because after last year's campaign the MAGA crowd grew tired of word salad? 

One party accuses the other of being bewitched by wokeness. The latter accuses the other of worshipping the modern leader of the Third Reich. Then the other responds that if it is so, they should all be withdrawing their money from their banks and convert them to gold or move it outside of the country.  You see, they claim that during the old Fuhrer's time, the deutsche mark was so devalued as to have sunk in a hyperinflationary rate of 30,000 per cent by 1923.  Let's take a history glance at what happened.  

"In January 1923, a dollar cost 17,000 marks. Just three months later, in April, that figure reached 24,000. The numbers skyrocketed each month, reaching 353,000 in July, 4.6 million in August, 98.9 million in September, 25.3 billion in October and 2.2 trillion in November. The sorry climax arrived in December, when the exchange rate topped out at 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar".

That was what precipitated the rise of the Nazi Party. The rest is history.

The other option is to leave the country.  But it seems that this sentiment only affects those from Hollywood.  Matt Damon did move his family to New Zealand post the 2016 election but it didn't last.  He's back in the good old USA.  Apparently, the only one who seems to have a much stronger resolve is Rosie O' Donnell who recently moved to Ireland (for good, or so hopes one party).  There were many others who did talk about leaving but opted to say, "psych!" in the end - a weak attempt at face saving, the other party claimed.

It was Henry Higgins from "My Fair Lady" who proclaimed, "The French don't care what they do actually, for as long as they pronounce it properly". So, one party claimed that the other party doesn't care what it actually does for as long as they pronoun it properly.  And bewitched as to believe that biological men can play in women's sports and not be bothered that women's records are being broken literally in leaps and bounds. A bewildering shift but even the National Organization for Women (NOW) cannot be bothered to even show one iota of sympathy for young women in high school and college sports, one party says.

Instead one party is bewitched by taking up the case of a "Maryland dad" who was deported to El Salvador. One party accuses the other of hyper sympathy when a few of them (a senator and three congress persons) made a spectacle of a trip to the South American country, a bewildering case while ignoring visitations to Jewish American citizens held by Hamas, the other party said.  But it was a case of due process and Constitutional rights, one party says.  To which the other responded that the man in question actually chose to ignore due process when entering the country illegally - not once but twice, and supposedly engaged in helping several others in one case of alleged human trafficking, one party said.

Added to all that irritates the other party is the current President thinking of so many ways to bewitch and bother them.  The President must spend a good amount of his time at breakfast each morning thinking of one thing or another to bewitch and bother the opposing party.  One day it was buying Greenland, another to make Canada the 51st state, and the latest is to reopen Alcatraz.  All of these perhaps to get the opposing party to be in a constant state of bewilderment?

In the end, is the other party being played by the President into a constant state of befuddlement as to get them so riled up as to lose their temper and their ability to think of an original idea to best serve their party in 2028?

What, we're talking about 2028 now!  To quote John McEnroe, "You cannot be serious!"

Well, we shouldn't be Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered by all of these. Politics has a way of taking us all into a bedraggled state if we take it seriously. Instead, we should strive to understand, vote our conscience, and ask, as John F Kennedy urged the American people in his inaugural speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." As everyone of our political leaders should do.