Many Americans will have a Ralphie-Ovaltine moment–and I feel for them
In our house the movie A Christmas Story is, as in many other households, a holiday staple.
In this perfect little movie, Ralphie has several loss-of-youthful-innocence moments. One of the most poignant (mild spoiler alert follows if for some reason you’ve never seen this movie!) is his effort to decode a message to save radio show heroine Little Orphan Annie.
Ralphie has eagerly awaited a special decoder pin’s arrival in the mail. He’ll tune into his favorite radio program, receive Annie’s coded message, and then use the decoder. This is important stuff!
He finally receives the decoder package (making him forget immediately about a narrow escape from bullies), hears the message, and rushes off to the bathroom, “the only room in the house where a boy of nine can sit in privacy and decode.”
While little brother Randy whines at the door about needing to use the bathroom, the narrator recounts Ralphie’s decoding. The tension builds as he deciphers Annie’s message, letter by letter, imagining he might be saving the world!
That’s until the whole message is clear: B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E.
A stunned Ralphie realizes he’s been duped: The message was merely “a crummy commercial” for the program sponsor. Ralphie throws down the pencil and decoder and leaves the bathroom, going “out to face the world again, wiser.”
It’s another bittersweet moment where he is yanked into the sphere of mature knowledge.
For some chunk of Americans, their Ralphie-Ovaltine moment is coming. I don’t think it’s funny. I’m not gloating about it. I don’t envy them it.
At some point, these Ralphies will be engaged, perhaps feverishly, with recollecting a lingering aspect of the chaos of the past four years of this president, and it’ll hit them.
Perhaps it will be when one of the many inside stories of a presidency driven by selfishness and greed and antagonism comes to light. They will hear about just who walked and tarnished the halls of their White House the past few years. They will see clearly the pardoning of those who abused their trust.
Perhaps, my god, they sent money the past few months to “fight” the bizarre claims of election conspiracy. They will see how a purported-drainer-of-the-swamp created the deepest fen in modern political history with their money.
Perhaps they’ll read a book about autocratic or fascist propaganda. Or they’ll read–or re-read–1984. They’ll realize that the person who hugs the flag tightest may be the least patriotic, the least American. They will see that a long and unfortunately reliable way to fool people is with what many call “The Big Lie,” which is that if you tell a monster lie, a preposterous untruth, and repeat it enough, some group of people will come to believe it.
Perhaps they will not have their moment for many years. Perhaps it will come when their kids or even grandkids will read about this era, read about how a purveyor of more than 20,000 lies set up a sloppy, stupid lie about the integrity of the U.S. election and how many enablers went along with it to get votes, and a young face will look up to them asking, “You certainly didn’t believe that, did you?”
Faced with that question, what will our Ralphies do when they think back on the unpatriotic and undemocratic actions of the past four years? Will they admit their culpability?
Or, even with so much time having passed, will they follow dutifully from the wreckage of integrity of the past four years and simply lie themselves?
Regardless, I feel for these future Ralphies, as many will have a moment when their belief in a movement will be abruptly shattered, splintered by the searing shock of knowledge that the past four years had been largely a sham: a bloated, “crummy” commercial.
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Scott,
Why are you limiting the “Ralphie Ovaltine Moment” to just the president’s actions? You should update this article with the current evidence about the democratic funded Steel dossier, the FBI illegal wire taps on Carter Page, and the Biden administration’s silencing of political dissenters on social media like Alex Berenson. Faucci’s tap dance around the NIH funding of virus research at the Wuhan Lab. The entire U.S. political class should be completely blown up and rebuilt. Both Dems and Republicans. My Ralphie Ovaltine Moment is wondering why there are not term limits on members of congress? No one should be allowed to be in government for 30 and 40 years – (Joe Biden 40-yrs and counting). I think most American’s would agree on this issue. Mitch McConnell, Pelosi, Leahy, Grassley – all should be out of government 25 years ago. Max 8 years in elected government positions. Then you must get a real job like the rest of us.