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Get Off My Lawn: The only realistic answer? ... ‘Because’ The Fourth Wall Sunday May 13, 2018 at 2:01 AM By Robert GalvinMail Tribune As any ink-stained wretch will tell you, it’s not the Who, What, When or Where that’s the hard part of telling a story. Those elements — even in today’s throw-it-against-the-Facebook-wall-and-see-what-sticks world — are just the Joe Fridays. Most of the time, some of them are even true. No, it’s always the fifth W that’s the most difficult to ascertain. It’s always the Why. Sure, Colonel Mustard killed Mr. Body with a candlestick overnight in the library — but Clue would be a far more satisfying game if the motive, the provocation, could be ferreted out. Much of what passes for news these days might involve the clueless and (thus far) go no further than character assassination, but the search for the Why is clearer … and can be found in the absence of a national moral compass. A friend carries with him a xeroxed page from “Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War” — a 2007 collection by the late essayist Joe Bageant, who picks clean our economic, political and cultural skeleton … laying bare a disturbing lack of backbone. “The four cornerstones of the American political psyche,” Bageant writes, “are 1) emotion substituted for thought; 2) fear; 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda.” Sound like anyone you know? Or voted for? It’s those with a bully pulpit who stoke the motivational engines by throwing coal (but only the bestest, all-American, pollution-free clean coal) on the fires that enflame the sort of emotion-driven, fearful, ignorant propaganda that bombards us each day. The destructive power of a jawbone of an ass, after all, is of biblical proportions. For instance: Who: The United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan What: Packaged fliers with subtext-laden generalities seeking “like-minded men and women” … and a wrapped butterscotch candy When: Last weekend Where: East Medford Why? … You don’t have to live in Charlottesville, Virginia, to understand coded language (or even to think that a fist-bump greeting denotes a terrorist sympathizer) and the less-than subtle opening of the door to allow entry to the basest of all ignorant fears: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Sure, propaganda such as the KKK fliers could be the work of a single person … just as the Holocaust deniers who protested a local production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” appear to have been limited in number (and intelligence). But those who spread hate have felt empowered by subliminal acceptance … and that in and of itself should shiver our spines. Or: Who: PatrioticRevolution.com What: Petition drive for a “right to bear arms amendment” that would protect the legal ownership of firearms — including automatic weaponry — “without registration requirements” When: Work in progress Where: Jackson County Why? ... There’s a growing fear that a possible statewide measure to ban assault weapons would send unnamed forces after our guns that Americans will never surrender, ever, ever, ever … never, never surrender. This all reminds me of the turf-battle in Medford a few years back over whether the city could still outlaw marijuana as it became legal statewide. A City Council meeting exchange centered on whether state law would outgun city law … only to have federal law then shoot down state law. Before a game of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock breaks out, trying to legislate gun laws through a ballot box only will bust open Pandora’s. Or: Who: Still-employed consultant Kelly Sadler (I hadn’t either, until this week) What: Commenting that Sen. John McCain’s vote “doesn’t matter. He’s dying anyway” When: This week Where: During a communications staff meeting … in the White House Why? ... Maybe the question should be … Is anyone surprised anymore at the amount of great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts, mutilated monkey meat, hairy pickled piggy feet, flaming earwax floating in a bowl of barf that you get with the cracker jack staff at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Ms. Sadler — who still has a job — shouldn’t be blamed for taking her cues from her superiors … who are now spinning that, because of a news leak, she’s the actual victim. Now, if I were (not to name names, but George Will), I would launch into a lengthy segue about how the history of impolite demagogy is as American as butterscotch candy — including when it was said of James Buchanan that “the Constitution provides for every contingency in the Executive, except a vacancy in the mind of the President” — then remark that it was either Santayana or Stengel who warned us there comes a time in everyone’s life where we’re doomed to repeat history, and we’ve had many of them. But, I won’t do that. Instead, I’ll just say that the poor, poor, pitiful Sadler was shortsighted in her brusque brush-off. Yes, John McCain is indeed dying. So is she. So are we all. Only, that’s not the part of the game that matters. Have ink stains in your wretch? Contact Mail Tribune senior designer Robert Galvin at [email protected].