am increasingly convinced – especially over the last few months – that the national news media, with the assistance of a wide swath of academia and those in the business of providing entertainment, are and have been for years constructing a kind of stage set which in their minds represents America. Fake buildings, fake trees with plastic leaves, a painted sky backdrop, concrete boulders and buildings which are either three-fourths actual size or mere painted false fronts with curtains or blinds hung in empty windows. In front of these sets, between the fake trees and the concrete boulders, all sorts of improbable and gruesome things are happening – race riots, fiery car crashes, anti-capitalist social unrest, cartloads of dead from the Commie Covid Virus rolled through the streets, and meanwhile Joe Biden is an honest and upright long-serving member of Senate and former VP who never put a foot wrong, and Hillary Clinton is the most qualified and respected woman ever, Michelle Obama a glamorous and tasteful former First Lady, and meanwhile the whole United States is rancorous with race-hatred, and everyone who has ever attended regular religious services is panting to transform all society into The Handmaids’ Tale.

And meanwhile, those of us living ordinary humble lives in flyover country (and even those who manage quiet lives in coastal states, perhaps) go through our days not seeing any of this. It isn’t our cities on fire, with regular violent protest by black-clad, masked Commie-Symps pretending a concern about the lives of minorities of color (a concern which doesn’t extend in the least to the unborn of color). We in our world – which we are mostly convinced is the real one, not the fantasy perpetuated by academia and the National Media – we live and work peaceably side by side with neighbors and co-workers of every color and religious sympathy there is.

So – which one will be reflected late tomorrow, and all the rest of this week? We can only wait. To borrow a phrase from often-commenter Subotai Bahadur, “Only the blue sky and the Tengri Nor know.” Discuss as you wish. Good fortune all.