… the President of the United States is being admitted

(3 min)

We need Nurse Ratched in the White House!

The 1962 book by Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the 1975 Academy Award winning movie of the same name, is a marvelous, entertaining depiction of art imitating life. A story of fiction running on the edge of reality. And today, reality is running on the edge of disbelief. We have a home invasion at the most important house in America, and if ever the cliché was appropriate, “the inmates are running the asylum.”

Of course, when the book was written, no one knew the real-life story of little Donald Trump. He was just a troubled, rich kid from Queens, barely out of adolescence, a dime-a-dozen, privileged prick filling his need for love and attention with fear and anger (psychological diagnosis: He has never evolved beyond his empty, childhood-adolescent upbringing).

Donald’s father would have seen, and admired, “Big Nurse” Ratched as a doppelgänger, a cold-hearted, passive-aggressive bitch who intimidated, manipulated, punished and lobotomized the people she was supposed to care for. Is it possible that adolescent Donny saw the movie (he sure as hell didn’t read the book) and decided to emulate Nurse Ratched?

“Show me screwed up kids and I’ll show you screwed up parents.”

“I want Nurse Ratched, she’s beautiful. She likes me … I’m the President.”

What Ratched did to those poor souls in the asylum is very similar to what Trump is doing to the poor souls in America – actually more terrifying – as well as creating terror around the world (e.g., USAID, economic lunacy, citizens in terrorist prisons). The real terrorists are in the White House.

Free Will (pun intended)

Will Sampson, the famous indigenous actor, plays the character Chief Bromden in the movie and symbolizes oppressed peoples’ futile pursuit of freedom. In the context of today’s asylum-like White House and the oppression of American’s rights and free will, the Chief is exactly who we need to stand up to our very own Nurse Ratched.

Problem is, so far, no one in America has stepped forward and stood – face-to-face – with Trump. Not one leader has shown “any guts.” Sure, a lot of hand wringing and yelling from Mount Democracy but no hands-on action. Millions of citizens protest in the streets while so-called leaders yammer on TV. Where are they (Obama, Romney, Cheney, Shapiro, Bloomberg, Whitmer, Cotton, Thune, Cruz (forget him), Lankford, Blackburn, et al)? If they’re playing the old political calculus and “keeping their powder dry,” the fight will be over before they lock and load. We can only hope (such a weak word) they’re acting like the Chief, pretending silence, pretending to be “gutless nuts,” then, like the Chief, do what no one else would, risk everything for freedom.

“But we mustn’t overlook the fact that this man has had extensive psychiatric treatment.” – Nurse Ratched

(video 1:44)

“I’m not a fish, I’m a bird.” – Chief

America, look at yourself

Right now, you’re a fish out of water, flippin’ and floppin’ to nowhere. Dying on the beaches of times past (MAGA myths). Listening to nursery rhymes lamented by purveyors of hope and yet, becoming “authoritarian followers” complying with dictators who promise you water then drain the ocean.

“The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.” – JFK, Edmund Burke, and many others

Fish don’t fly and Mother Goose is just another fictional character that can’t fly, let alone get over the cuckoo’s nest. But that doesn’t mean a whole helluva’ lot of good men and women can’t get up off their tiny plot of America-the-Beautiful and do something – anything!

Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

[origin of title]

In the fictional story, the Chief was the one – the only one – who “flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” In today’s reality, does anyone have “the guts” to follow his example?