To summarize:

 

The Fundamentalist has to reject pluralism.  He has no choice.  He has to be right, and god help you if you try and disagree with him.  Which is why you keep getting trapped between different versions of present history: you try and argue an opposing view and you get slammed down -- there's no debating the issue.  The Fundamentalist has to reject any "revision" of the official narrative, because an alternative reading that even suggests the country's Leaders acted mistakenly, or with ulterior motives, is heresy; questioning is sacrilege.  Like the Bible, what the Leader says is not open to interpretation or criticism.  

Of course Fear is the primary motivating force -- Fear of Others, of Change, of Differences -- but knowing that is scant comfort to the rest of us, so everybody eventually ends up feeling crazy.  As my sister the therapist says, "the Mind hates contradiction" (if there's time I'll get into that more) so what happens is, you go insane.  The challenge to reality, the contest for truth ends up being experienced as madness.  You feel like you're "possessed" or "invaded" or being Visted by either the Holy Ghost or the Bone Crusher.  Or Aliens.  Or illegals.  Or terrorists.   Or a Circus.

There, that wasn't so hard.  See?  That's how the circus fits in.  Which I didn't come up with at all, really.  The idea is very old, somewhere between salt and dirt.  Some people call it Dualism.  As long as you insist on being right and me being wrong (or hello, vice versa) we're left with this uncomfortable sense of Difference and Separation.  Of I and Thou...

Oh I know, I know, I know.  Some of you are saying, "Dude, stop.  Stop.  You had me at circus."

And others of you are saying, "WTF?"

But just wait.  I'm doing the heavy lifting here, just hang on for one more minute.

Boccaccio's "Decameron" is a collection of stories told by people who go up into the hills to escape the Plague raging in the city below.  The reason all those years ago I was living at Frank's is that Pittsburgh is in the hills and it was home to Skip and we had left New York because this was a time when the Plague was raging and Skip had decided to go home, which was Pittsburgh and some people ended up going home in those days because they were sick and wanted to die there.  Skip did because he could, and because I didn't know what else to do but I didn't want to be left behind I came along and so I was at Frank's for a while and okay, no one was thinking very clearly.  It was a very strange time.  People were sick and dying and no one seemed to be aware that people were sick and dying, certainly not the government.  Reagan, oh he-of-blessed-memory now, could not bring himself to say the word, could not even aknowledge there was a Plague, possibly because the Empress Nancy kept advising him to Just Say No.  Like I said, it was a crazy time.  A time of Them and Us.

Now, the Fundamentalist attempts to resolve Dualism with Faith.  Monotheism says, there's not a bunch of gods, there's only ONE (mine).  End of story.  Of course, the Dualism just gets bumped over a notch, shifted closer to the edge, nudged aside, ripping another seam in the seamless whole, creating Good and Evil, God and Satan, The Righteous and The Damned.

The NeoConservativeTheocrat attempts a similar policy of divide and conquer.  "Our Way is the Only True Path of the Patriot, all others are Traitors, and once we have rid ourselves of all who would question or challenge our Cause, or threaten the Father Homeland, once we have Purified the Nation we shall Rule for a Thousand Years!  Or something like that.

And then, almost as a contradtiction itself, the Pluralist says, oh for Crying Out Loud, don't be silly, you don't have to break it down like that!  We are all living in such close quarters, let us enjoy our seeming differences, let us celebrate our multiplicity, for surely we know in our hearts that what is True and Real unites us on our deepest and most significant level.  Rejoice in your choices, in the superficial diversity, but Know that there is more about you that connects you to your fellow than keeps you separate.  You are more like everyone else than you want to see or acknowledge, but in the core of your being, you are never separate at all. 

You are the lion tamer and the lion, the acrobat and the clown, the dancer and the dance.  You are Barnum and you are Bailey.  Let go of your need to be right, to be the one who knows what is right for others, to be the one others need.  You are not alone and no one needs you.  You are the Lover and the Beloved.  You are the Terrorist and you are his target.  You are the beggar in despair being blessed by the Saint, and you are the blessed Saint in her darkest despair. 

You are the man with the handlebar mustache waving his top hat in the center of the ring crying Look over here, the Circus is in Town, Look at Me.  And you are the child with a quarter wrapped in Kleenex clenched tightly in a dirty sweaty little palm, sitting high up in the darkness, in the shadows of the Big Top, smelling the popcorn, smelling the elephant dung, watching and holding his breath, feeling his heartbeat, feeling the infinite magic.