Strawberry Fields

John Lennon/Paul McCartney

Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about

Strawberry Fields forever

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Undoubtedly a very colorful, talented person.—Vladimir Putin on Donald Trump

He’s a strong leader.—Donald Trump on Vladimir Putin

Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

The Red Scare began a few months back, when reports that Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and key Democrats had been reported to Congress a year earlier. As if on cue, Democrats fumed and Republicans checked their watches, because of course, no one could say anything earlier, having been sworn to silence and/or not checking their watches by America’s dutiful spies.

Then last week, The Washington Post, still smarting from having been so wrong about the inevitability of a Hillary Clinton presidency, reported that, not only did the Russians hack the DNC and key Clinton aides, but it was for the express purpose of throwing the election to Donald J. Trump, with whom Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoys both mutual admiration and the desire to be taken seriously by the rest of the world, especially beautiful women.

The New York Times, never one to be out-scooped by the Post, reported that, not only did the Russians hack the Democrats, they hacked the Republicans too, but they didn’t leak any of the Republicans emails, for reasons unknown but which could only be evil and nefarious.

Then today, as the Fox News cameras swooped in on his Mark Twain mustache, Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton implied that Barack Obama was actually behind the hack, since the lack of digital fingerprints at the DNC were actually a digital fingerprint belonging to the current President.

Now everyone, even the Republicans, are screaming for investigations. Well, almost everyone. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, constitutionally the most powerful Republican in the country (at least until January 20, 2017), is rejecting the whole thing as a politicization of meddling in presidential politics, since he is quite busy trying to get the AARP to look the other way while he tries to privatize Medicare.

It’s all quite exciting, isn’t it? America at the end of 2016 faces not only the Rumsfeldian cosmos of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, but an entire Twitterverse of unknown known unknowns. We live now in the Strawberry Fields, where nothing is real and there’s nothing to get hung about.