The Devil is in the Sub-Plot

The current story of the United States of America is a novel, whose on-going factionalism, among the main characters of its major political groups, creates an intriguing major plot. The bitterness of their conflicts; the clear difference in their ideologies, interests, and constituencies; and the rising actions of an upcoming presidential election further enhances our interests in this apparent suspenseful narrative.  Further, the propaganda of the political media, which ignores the principles of the Fairness Doctrine, provides us with overtly shameless, grossly embellished, one-sided Cliff Notes, loaded with juicy, gossipy tidbits. This allows us to relinquish our rights to critically think, while allowing us to interpret the novel from our particular perspective: It allows us to make the characters of our choice the protagonist and all other the bad guys.

However, the real story is the subplot, whose unnoticed minor characters continue to steadily and incrementally amass the means to possess, nullify, and control the “interests” over which the main characters are fighting. And this is the irony.

What is more ironic is the fact that while our attention is on the main characters as they move to the apparent tragic collision on their current course, our attention has been diverted from the minor characters from foreign countries, who will become more prominent and dominant by the end of the story, as they take ownership of the territory over which the main characters are currently fighting.

This story, my friends, could become the ironic tragedy of the United States of America with its unfortunate, unhappy end-result, but it isn’t too late for use to refocus our attention on the subplot, critically think about the events in the story, and most of all rewrite the ending!

by

James A. Porter