Recently two investment companies sent me ballots to cast my vote for changes to their corporate investing plan. Not being any sort of fiduciary wizard, and not having a single idea on what I would be voting on I ignored their requests to participate. I felt that my voice in corporate decision making, based on how many shares I owned was more of a silent minority thing.

However, that was not to be. Shortly after I trashed one ballot another one arrived in the mail. The other company started flooding my inbox with emails to vote. I relented and voted by mail and computer. It was quick and easy and in both cases I noticed some sort of control numbers on the ballots that would obvious keep me from voting more than once. What they did with my ballots after I voted I could not say.

The recent corporate/GOP fallout over recent voting laws, proposed and passed, on changing voting procedures is interesting, particularly when GOPers like a Senate Minority Leader and governors tell CEO’s to bugger off. The Texas lieutenant governor basically said CEOs were stupid when he told them they have “meddled in a lot of issues lately … stay out of things you don’t know anything about and if you want to get involved then you’re taking that risk.” This seems odd when a lot of legislation is actually written by corporate lobbyists. He also admonished them to “read the damn bill” before they proffer an opinion. This is bold talk for a politician fatted on the corporate larder, particularly when there is a shift away from typical and long-held GOP beliefs to more Trumpian attitudes.

The Texas LT may have a point, though. When I voted for changes to the investment management I had no idea what I was reading. Talk about the fine print. It made me think of legislators reading the numerous bills they are confronted with. For instance, the recent 5,500 plus page pandemic aid bill, one of the longest bills in Senate history, was handed out several hours before it was voted on.

Generally speaking, if you want to memorize something, you’ll need to read slowly. A normal rate for learning is 100-200 wpm, and for comprehension it is 200-400 wpm.

According to MindTools.com The average reader can read about 250 wpm. This a good speed for comprehension. If you crank it up a notch to speed reading, around 400-700 you can turn more pages quicker but you start lose something in the translation, especially when you hit 500-600 wpm. Evelyn Nielsen Wood, a pioneer of speed reading, supposedly hit super sonic speeds of 2,700 wpm. I am not sure if she could have read a 5,500 plus page document in two hours.

Several years ago Senator Rand Paul proposed a bill that would require the Senate a whole day to read 20 pages of proposed bills. Talk about bringing Congress to a standstill.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell took a slightly different tact with those recalcitrant corporations. He fired a warning shot across Corporate America’s bow by saying that “corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs,”–code for socialists, communist and other fellow travelers. This harkens us back to the eras of “Red Scare.” That’s heavy duty considering that Corporate America has a history of calling on the government, particularly the military or state militias, to physically bust up left leaning mobs like union strikes against railroad, coal and steel barons; and any other socialist and anarchists gatherings. Right wing mobs, however, are given free reign to tour Congressional chambers of the Capitol.

The symbiotic relationship between the GOP and Corporate America may not be crumbling anytime soon but the feeling that “I’ve got your back on this one,” maybe slipping a little. Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 just might be the first act in a right wing multi-act play to return the South to its core antebellum attitudes. A desperate play being acted out by desperate white men.

Unlike some of the proposed voting laws, it seems that those corporation managing my investment concerns went out of their way to make sure I participated in their decision making policies; no matter how small my voice.

It could be argued that most of American history can be interpreted through visions of unreality. My family loves to watch The Masked Singer and The Masked Dancer. They get a big kick out trying to figure out who is behind those exotic costumes. I grew up more in era of Sergeant Joe Friday: Just the facts… not cloaked in some shroud of fantasy but a man in a gray suit with narrow lapels and wearing a thin tie taking notes.

Recently I was watching HBO’s documentary on QAnon, Q: Into the Storm. As I watched the first episode I could not help but think how Americans love a good fantasy especially if it is cloaked in a mystery and salted with sexual behavior, particularly if it is prurient. For some reason sex makes it more believable.

Now I do not know much at all about QAnon, nor do I really want to. The internet search for the masked “Q” is beyond me with encrypted messages and social media platforms: 4chans or 8chans. It sounds more like what George Smiley and The Circus would be doing in a John le Carre novel. Or a more complicated game of Clue: Hillary Clinton did it with the Rope in the Pizzaria. And I think this is where we are at in time. Reality reads more like a game or fantasy/spy novel. It makes for great reading or a movie; but really. The problem becomes one person’s fantasy starts to creep into another’s reality.

I think of how Americans love a good story–the truth be damned. We love the missing pieces so much we get reeled in hook-line-and-sinker hitting at anything. We have even fought wars over phantom torpedo boats attacking US Navy Destroyers. We searched high and low in Iraq for Weapons of Mass Destruction and found out that maybe it was just a Saddam scavenger hunt. I really think we want to believe in the absurd. Who killed JFK? Was it the lone gunman in the book depository, Cubans behind the grassy knoll, the mafia or the CIA with exploding cigars? As far as Kennedy goes, it might as well be as the Rolling Stones sing: “well after all it was you and me,” There is always enough truth in the story to get us all fired up. When we cannot figure it out we make stuff up and extrapolate the story from there.

But on more benign level of fakery, take PT Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid. Americans flocked to see this freak of nature. Barnum, like many hucksters today, was media savvy. His use of the 1840’s media, peppered with expert opinions on the poor beast, created an insatiable interest, particularly the rare opportunity to see a bare-breasted mermaid. People were laying down good money and making PT Barnum rich in the process. Afterall, as Randy Newman sings: “It is money that matters in the U-S-of-A.” If anything, that has been the one constant fantasy in America. Who wants to be a millionaire?

As I continued watching the show I became lost in the technical workings of social media. The speculation that Q was sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and riding on Air Force One–for all we know he may be piloting it. The more I watched the more it reminded me of the television series Lost. ABC hit the mother lode for a story. People surviving an airplane crash on a tropical island. Nobody ever survives an airplane falling from 35,000 feet. But that ain’t gonna stop us from believing it could happen. Get out the tackle box load up the boat because we are going fishing.

What started out with a an unbelievable plot turned into multiple realities; an island that can move about; a mysterious smoke monster; “others” who also inhabit the island; and characters named after historical figures like Locke, Faraday, Roussou and Boone. I watched that show to the end, and probably like people who follow the Q, I liked it. I was always wondering where the writers and J.J. Abrams were taking us. They tied everything together in science, fiction and mythology. I imagined the writers, sitting around stoned and coming up with these weird plot twists. Every episode required an even weirder plot twists to explain the previous plot twists. Pretty soon the whole show was out there in the ozones and I had to wonder if the only way to make any sense of the show is that you had to be stoned to get it.

After watching the first episode of Q: Into the Storm I felt glad I was living in a state where recreational marijuana is allowed because QAnon seems to be just as bizarre as LOST. It made me feel like I really missed something by not playing Dungeons and Dragons in my youth. I think I would have had better insight to this realm of the reality that is being foisted upon us: pizza with pedophilia toppings. We go in the opposite direction of the Sherlock Holmes maxim: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

So who is Q? Maybe he is today’s alter ego of LOST’s Smoke Monster: somebody blowing a lot of smoke up our knickers.