The Land of Broken Toys
In each of the continuing films of Pixar’s Toy Story franchise, we have been introduced, in several ways, to the fates of broken toys. In Toy Story 1, we meet the mutant toys, who have been broken and mutilated by a cruel boy named Sid Phillips, who gleefully dismembers them and reassembles the parts into eerie grotesqueries like Barbie legs with a fishing pole attached as a torso, or a baby doll head atop an erector set construction of crab legs.
Throughout the films that follow, the broken toys play an ever more important role, sometimes representing Woody’s fears of being thrown out or discarded. The theme is embellished as most of the main characters lose an arm, or their beloved “kids”, or get collected or trashed. Many get rough treatment. But, somehow, they survive, fight and thrive.
Throughout all the films, including Toy Story 5, which I saw recently, I, like the rest of the audience, was swept up in cheering for love and teamwork and acceptance of diversity to win. Still, every Toy Story is tinged with an overhang of sadness at cruel treatment or loss.
Unexpectedly, TS Five was the perfect film to see just before America’s 250th birthday.
Why? Because, truly, the current regime seems determined to make this a nation of broken toys. I say toys, not in the frivolous way we think of them, but as friends, companions from childhood on, and touchstones. We have grown up and grown fond of our friends The Constitution, the rule of law, diversity as a strength, good healthcare for more than just the rich—heck!—good, evidence-based healthcare, period!
Little by little, Sid Phillips’ twin, our own evil little boy, tweeting, plotting, self-pitying, and fuming in the white house, has starved, twisted, and attempted to maim and destroy the childhood friends and icons that have become our mature touchstones.
Not unexpectedly, the sadness of this bully-boy’s actions, coupled with his totally mismanaged and mangled plans for any kind of a 250th birthday celebration, loomed, tragically, over everything in DC on this last July 4th. The white house squatter failed at everything he thought he could accomplish with the swish of a pen—a fair on the mall, repainting the reflecting pool, even the weather. The very few people turning out for the faux fair were evacuated because of heat and impending storms.
The orange phony failed, but the rest of America didn’t. Thank you New York for more fireworks than I’ve ever seen at one time, even on my TV! Thank you Hollywood Bowl for the Beach Boys and spectacular pyrotechnics. Thank you America for outrageous costumes and for making fun of the shrunken souls who are trying to rob us of our joy. Thank you Everytown USA for thousands of parades, demonstrations, high school bands—I’m talking to you wonderful lady covering yourself in that exact match of green paint to show up as the Statue of Liberty. We shouted out the Star Spangled Banner like we finally understood it, especially the part about our flag STILL being there (and belonging to us and not to him)…and so much more.
Like Jessie and Bullseye and Woody and Buzz in TS 5, dealing with the mind-numbing dangers of new technology as it strives to replace real friendship, we recognize the goals of the soulless, selfish, self-dealers in our national government who are trying to lug our ideals to the junkyard and, more importantly, we recognize the ways in which we are different from them. Like Sheriff Jessie and our long-time heroes, we will prevail.
Who knows, we might even shame some of them into finding their humanity. Holy butterscotch pudding! We can do this. Watch any one of the Toy Story films and be reminded. We embrace and save our broken toys and work to punish those who do nothing but break things. Yee-haw!
In The Land Of Broken Boys
And…you only have to look at the crowd with which the faux king president has surrounded himself to see why their major desire is to break things. They, themselves, are broken, else how could they convince themselves to blindly obey the orange tyrant?
The list of trauma-inducing histories is virtually endless; from the assassination of Bobby Kennedy Junior’s uncle in 1963 and his father in 1968 as well as his long addiction to heroin, to Kash Patel, whose parents were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in an ethnic sweep, and who, apparently having suffered from more than his share of taunting in high school, wrote as his senior quote in the high school yearbook, “Racism is man’s gravest threat—the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason”. Something twisted this toy into the obedient, president-obeying, alcoholic shell he now displays.
Marco Rubio is the son of Cuban parents who were not citizens at the time of his birth. Though he says his parents left Cuba to flee Castro’s government, their records actually show they left during Batista’s dictatorship. His grandfather went back to Cuba and, when he tried to re-enter the US without a visa, was arrested and threatened with deportation but allowed to stay as a “parolee”. Rubio apparently was very close to his grandfather, but seems to have learned nothing except ways in which to emulate his family’s oppressors in both countries.
Pete Hegseth strives mightily to live up to the image of manhood impressed on him by his parents, a high school basketball coach and an executive business coach. He worked endlessly to become a star athlete and to join the military (and to perfect the glower he displays on all his portraits, just like his cheeto-colored hero), and now seems to believe the role of the Secretary of Defense is to threaten and to bomb.
As a group, these presidential appointees gleefully exhibit the convictions drummed into them growing up about the superiority of manhood, as well as its stultifying responsibilities and repressions. Any emotion that betrays sympathy, empathy, the ability to cry or to feel sorry must be drummed out, else one cannot turn into a “real man”. Never display anything that may be considered female, or you will lose your man-status. Welcome to the world that many used to call “toxic masculinity” (though, recognizing that these boys might be victims of this brainwashing, as well as its beneficiaries, some have worked to find a different phrase).
Most importantly, although many of the traumatic histories experienced by these men have greatly increased feelings of empathy in others with similar life stories, the boys in the president’s Toy Cabinet appear have been chosen primarily because they have lost their stuffing and their hearts, leaving only bitterness and a deep desire to be seen as superior. Which makes them malleable and manipulable.
The close advisors to the regime bully are even worse. Poor Stephen Miller grew up not far from me in Santa Monica and was forced to go to schools that revered multiculturalism, and allowed students to choose whether or not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance! He was an unpopular and nasty little boy and armed himself with a fervent set of conservative anti-narratives which he carried with him into the white house with a vengeance. His regime career began just a few years after he had vociferously defended the poor lacrosse players at Duke (his school) who had been accused of gang rape.
And don’t get me started on Elon Musk, who said, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” But you get the idea. We know that not all who have been damaged want to destroy, but these Cabinet members and advisors have been chosen specifically because they mirror the personality of their godfather—broken boys who want only to break our toys.
I am happy to announce, however, that it’s not gonna work. Millions more have seen Toy Story than visited the mall on July 4th. Together, America found thousands of ways to keep the broken boys from screwing up our big birthday, and we will, eventually, find all the tools we need to mend what they are breaking.
Who knows, we might even men
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