Government by Bob Ross

Before he passed away, Bob Ross, the frizzy-haired host of the PBS painting show, “The Joy of Painting,” became a somewhat iconic figure for his soothing, sedate voice and repeated references to “happy little trees.” Ross didn’t believe in errors, often stating “we don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents." Ross would often tell his audience that they could have as many trees as they wished in their world but that he preferred a lot of trees in his.

For my friends and I, Ross was must-see-TV; a curious oddity, a faintly quaint relic from a bygone and more agreeable era. We always imagined Ross as someone that had previously undergone such a traumatic experience that he beat a hasty retreat into happy fun-time tree world and checked out on the rest of us. But we really wanted to believe that it was more of a transcendent choice rather than a reactionary necessity. Either way, it was an oddly appealing, Tao of Bob Ross-world for us to envision.

Soon, we referred to others that seemed divorced from reality, or just slightly off, as “having a lot of trees in their world.” Our ode to Bob Ross and a recognition that sometimes people create an alternate reality that’s perpetually at odds with objective evidence. And we usually allowed these people to operate in their alternate reality as long as it didn’t have an adverse effect on us. No one wanted to be the bearer of bad news and deny someone their Bob Ross moments of Zen.

However, the philosophy doesn’t work quite as well when the person with “a lot of trees in their world” is in charge of governing the most powerful nation in the world. The president and current administration – and neo-cons in general, are so scarily divorced from reality their bizarro-world seems wholly impenetrable. And it’s definitely not a happy fun-time tree world.

In the president’s world, boogeymen lurk around every corner and the world is perpetually beset by the forces of darkness. It’s a dichotomous world of good and evil and with-us-or-against-us false choices. It’s a world of Old Testament eye for an eye rather than New Testament turn the other cheek. The president is the un-Bob Ross. His carefully crafted alternate universe is a dark, foreboding place that’s locked in perpetual violent struggle. In his world we’re only allowed to have as many trees as his faith-based messianic worldview sees fit.

At times I find myself wanting to retreat from the avalanche of bad news; to divorce myself from current events and fashion my own little Bob Ross world. But whether its stem cell research, the war in Iraq, government intrusion into our private lives, Terry Schaivo, spiraling deficits, faith-based initiatives or a host of other issues, the president’s world of endless struggle between good and evil only leads to endless struggle. And it must be resolutely resisted. There are only mistakes in the president’s world, not happy accidents.