Wilkommen . . .

I love finding absurd email subject lines in my inbox.

“You matter to me” from______(big star), and “A Heartfelt Thanks to You from Bernie Sanders.” Personal? Ha! Even if I were a fan of the star, even if I liked Bernie Sanders, I would find the notions suggested in the subject lines laughable. They are transparently disingenuous. BS. And they represent the swirl of deceit and subterfuge in which we live these days. Emails for show. Like so much else, devoid of substance, meant to dazzle and seduce the recipient to contribute to yet another cause to which the sender gives electronic lip service.

Showmanship promulgated for and by the masses is evident in the personal business plastered all over the airwaves, the proclamation of all things private, from the details of a morning stool to deep, dark struggles with mental illness. Nothing is too intimate to share. Very little is sincere. The innermost realms of personhood sprawl across a worldwide stage, stars of today’s performative society.

Public posts daily proclaim “I love you forever” or “Your love is my salvation,” or the equivalent expression of tinny affection in a grand display across a Facebook or Instagram.

A friend takes his husband out for a romantic evening, and his photos make the rounds of various social media platforms publicly exclaiming what he does for or with or by “my love.”

An acquaintance visits NY for the holiday and gives a homeless man a dollar. “I couldn’t help myself,” she tweets. “ ‘T is the season!. Hashtag Benevolence.”

White writers come alive in op-ed pieces that scold me for being white. Abundant faceless, nameless memes make empty promises of solace to the lonely. The words “amazing” and “incredible” caption photos of men being fathers to their children. Video selfies shot in subways, on buses, and in cars inundate TikTok and YouTube. “On my way home to a well-deserved rest,” the speaker declares as they hold up the hashtag finger sign and scream, ”Hardest working person in America, baby!”

Sound bytes and photos abound where politicians boast that they have brought sanity to a section of a city or closure to a long-standing feud or a promise of equality to a disenfranchised group. . . yet nothing changes.

There is a dearth of quiet heroic acts without self-congratulation, of honest work ethic without self-aggrandizement. Every small achievement is memorialized as a great triumph. Acts of love are demos, like proposals of marriage projected on an international sports arena screen.

I trust no one. If I am praised in public, I perceive the praise as performative. Like the nastiness in the comment threads on social media, the vitriol in private gossip will obviate any truth there might have been in such pronouncements.

Life is a cabaret, old chum.