Being There.......Peter Sellers

I have not watched this movie in over twenty years.  I always enjoyed Peter Sellers.  The incredible thing after watching this movie on Netflix was the powerful message that as humans we create an alternative reality in our politics.  The simplicity of Chauncy the Gardner was ignored on its obvious face value,  He was at a Party at the Russian ambassador, and it was immediately based on his clothing and mannerism implied he could speak Russian and before the end of the Party, people were talking about him speaking eight languages.

I think of the Illusion of Donald Trump.  How a person on the obvious face value is a sociopath and very limited in talent, intelligence, and temper who has created this illusion that he had wealth, that he was intelligent, that he understood complex issues, and that he was highly successful.  Donald Trump is Chauncy the Gardner.   God help us. Chauncy's reality was a remote control of the tv, and President Trump's is a twitter account. So it goes.

Life is a state of mind as Chauncy walked on water........reality however is that folks do not walk on water, and that this need to find some higher power to appease our sense of being lost. Monarchies, to fascist dictatorships, folks want strength and certainty, and they are willing to replace reality with this illusion. A total dangerous illusion.

Chance did not have a mean or petty thought in his head. Can that be said of Trump?

Chance did not have a mean or petty thought in his head. Can that be said of Trump?


The point of the movie in my opinion was that chance who could not read or write got all his information from a TV, and did not leave the house during his life, yet other people projected a higher capacity and wisdom unto a man who was really just a fifty year old child. Trump has worked hard to cultivate this illusion that he is smart, wealthy, and successful, but in the end people project their needs onto a presidential candidate, and the words become garnishments for a reality that does not exist. At the end of the movie they are burying Rand who had got to know Chance, and the Pall bearers had a discussion of running Chance for President........as funny and outrageous as that movie was over almost forty years ago, we all knew that the proposition of Chance becoming President was zero. We were wrong.

My message to trump & Raphael!

From the mind of someone who managed to evade the nazi prison camps with help. Took almost 50 years but now we get the punch line. Kosinski gets the last laugh and it's on us.