The Wizard of Id

Close your eyes and come with me on a little dream journey. Imagine, if you will, that you’re not in Kansas anymore. Courtesy of your gold card (a bargain at a mere 5 million), you’ve arrived in the wonderful world of Ov. You’re surrounded by a troop of flying monkeys, ready to carry out the bidding of a narcissistic wizard. (Spoiler alert — he’ll be unmasked in the end as a common con man, motivated by power and greed, and an unquenchable thirst for loyalty). You’re a bit disoriented — a fly-in from your tornado-ravaged home land will do that! You’ve been welcomed by some apparent friends — one with no brain, one with no heart, one with no courage — but they too will reveal themselves soon enough. You’re sitting in a room that’s not quite round — more kind of egg-shaped. You might almost say . . . oval. You’ve come seeking the support of the Wizard of Id.

And so the surreal cl___er f__k unfolds. Depending on one’s orientation, ‘great television’ or the most shameful, political mugging in multiple decades. Replete with lots of material for analysis — psychological analysis. So. . . where to start.

Perhaps with the wizard himself. What makes a carnival grifter into a self-appointed monarch? What are the essential elements, values and traits that define such an individual:

• • demanding, selfish behaviour
  • unethical, even criminal acts
  • inconsiderate conduct or speech
  • unreasonable nature
  • uncooperative with others

No surprise that these sterling characteristics are the self same descriptors as the Freudian Id, ‘the primitive, instinctual aspect of the psyche, devoid of organization, logic, or reason, harbouring conflicting, contradictory impulses, operating solely on immediate gratification’. Sadly, without the constraints of conscience or the guardrails of rational thought, the Id is a child, fumbling his way through life, without a plan, pin balling between hollow pyrrhic victories and tantrums, empty pleasure and pain. Bring me the broom of the wicked witch (or maybe just some rare earth minerals) and I’ll tell you how to get home. The Wizard’s quid pro quo.

And what’s a charlatan wizard without his winkies — the cast of ‘green guards’, enslaved lackeys so riddled with cognitive dissonance that indeed the sky is green and the grass is blue; holding two absolutely contradictory thoughts in mind, then checking with the Wiz to see what’s ‘true’ (today). What must it be like to celebrate this visitor to Ov one moment as ‘the best kind of ally I could possibly wish for’ then laud the Wiz for trashing this stranger in this very (very) strange land, the next. How soul splittingly sycophantic to hold this stranger’s hand in warm welcome, then delete any evidence of same the next — wave that misanthropic wand, my Wiz. 

We can only hope that, at some point, the curtain will fall away, the props will fail, a quick click of the heels and poof, it will be 2028!

To Tell The Truth

Ah yes, if life were just a game show!  One where lying convincingly is a part of the fun. One where the ‘big reveal’ is applauded. And the stakes are considerably lower for ‘being fooled’. 

A New York Times podcast (This American Life) caught my eye — well, more properly, my ear — this week. The focus: That’s a weird thing to lie about. The opener, a short interview with a neurodivergent journalist, asks a simple question: ‘do you ever lie’. Her considered answer was a qualified ‘yes’ — but, as it turns out, only when the cost to another individual is extremely high. The rest of the time, ‘no’, with tag-on query, ‘what would that achieve?’. Her reference was to all the ‘little whites’ that most of we ‘neurotypicals’ pass along without a second thought. Or the overstated and gushy greeting (‘we must do lunch’). Or the compliments paid without any conviction — and often just patently false (‘love your new look’) — that are essentially unheard and unheeded at best, barefaced untruths at worst. Convivial conventions — with little value added.

We’re currently working our way thru’ two excellent series, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Astrid — must be neurodivergent month on Netflix! Aside the compelling story lines, the bit about figurative speech (call it what you will, but essentially departures from literal truth) and lying are central themes — as much to highlight the chaos and confusion these practices create for the protagonists as to hold up these commonly accepted behaviours as weirdly ‘normal’. 

I did in fact sit through all 98 minutes of the quasi state of the union ‘address’ a few evenings ago. Almost as taxing were the talking head analyses — a significant chunk of which was devoted to the (inevitable) ‘fact checking’. And, wait for it, the guy lied! This is not news. We’ve had it confirmed by every news source east of Fox. We had it waved at us on the Dem’s myriad ping pong paddle signage. And, before he was summarily marched out of the room, old Al Green, the Texas congressman, shouted his cane-pointing message at the man himself. 

To return to our journalist, perhaps more newsworthy is ‘why bother’. You won the election. Your party controls both houses. You have a majority of the Scotus nine in your pocket (although some hint of balanced and independent thought does surface from time to time on that front). And you have an entirely, sycophantic following, prepared to cheer your every utterance, arrayed in front of you. So why embellish, distort, or flat lie about so very, very much? 

A quick Google of motivations underlying (pun intended) that ubiquitous but generally reviled practice (fibbing) produced way too many links. But one such look offered the following:

As far as my late night viewing, I’d have to go with door number 2 (if I can mix game show metaphors). Some recent reading on the consuming power of social media kicked up the following reference from Leo Braudy’s four decades old book, The Frenzy of Renown: 

The lust for recognition has become so great in the twentieth century as to manifest itself in outright insanities.

Seems attention’s the thing . . . wherein to catch the conscience (if such exists) of the ‘king’.