Watching the Wheels

--Alice considers the matter 

But I don't want to go among mad people,
said Alice.
Oh, you can't help that, said the cat. 
--Alice in Wonderland,
 Lewis Carroll 

Ah, people ask me questions
Lost in confusion
Well, I tell them there's no problem
Only solutions 
--Watching the Wheels,
John Lennon 

Our time is limited, we forget that 
--Anomalisa (2015)
______________________

Subtitle: Lisa in Wonderland.
 
This week The NYT reported above the fold:

Hillary Clinton Assails James Comey, Calling Email Decision 'Deeply Troubling' By PATRICK HEALY and JONATHAN MARTIN Mrs. Clinton's campaign opened a coordinated attack on Mr. Comey, the F.B.I. director, accusing him of smearing her with innuendo late in the race.

Hillary Clinton assails the Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and calls his actions, "deeply troubling", as though she is a person of some legitimacy. As though the "investigation" is the problem, and not the problem.

As though even the President of the United States, if he comes under investigation, has the right to shut down a legal investigation into possible criminality associated with his person. (See former President Richard M. Nixon vis-a-vis Leon Jaworski.)

The takeaway is clear: The next President calls "foul" on a police agency for investigating her possible malfeasance. Mr. Comey's action is basically like a gnat on a cow's patootie. A "swoosh" of the Clinton-DNC machine's tail, and it goes away. A done deal.

Just like CNN's Donna Brazile got thrown under the bus for secretly funneling debate questions to Mrs. Clinton, so Mr. Comey's time may be drawing nigh. Lots of people have to exit stage right to pave the way for Mrs. Clinton's ascendency to the Presidency.

Understand: it is not the actuality of the investigation and the very real possibility of serious wrongdoing on Mrs. Clinton's behalf which should trouble any of us. It is the temerity of the F.B.I. director to do his job.

Not cricket! Now, of course, compare Clinton's entitled posture to that of an excoriated Trump who would not say if he would concede the election if he were to lose when asked the question by Mrs. Clinton in a debate.

Mr. Trump is skewered as being a dangerous obstructionist to the result that must occur; he is, in so many words, off his rocker. And of course, the same question is never put to Mrs. Clinton, because we all know she will be/is the next President, right? No election needed.

For perspective, if Mr. Trump is accused of groping by a much lesser preponderance of evidence than that held by Mr. Comey, he simply IS a groper. And that's about the baddest thing a person can be, in this time of Nirvana. Q.E.D.

This is because he has the temerity to run for the highest office in the land without the correct associations.

My liberal friends point out that candidate Trump feels the press is against him, therefore he is paranoid, therefore he is mentally ill, therefore, he is a fascist. It all makes perfect sense to them.

I am reminded of the saying, “Is it paranoia if they really are out to get you?”

I suddenly had a vision of myself like Heinlein's Stranger from a Strange Land, dropped into this country one year ago. I envision myself with antennae with golf balls on the ends; I eat only a food spread, like Nutella or Vegemite -- straight from the jar.

I am familiar with the history of great nations over the past 200 years. I am told to make sense of the news coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign:

It is clear that a man named “Trump” is an unwelcome intruder to the process. There is only one electable candidate, Mrs. Clinton. 

It appears that Mr. Trump has her by the snatch, like an Iron Maiden, and she is trying to escape. He is large and threatening, like King Kong, and the press wonders how he was “created”, much like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.

He is a Bad Man ® -- a title given to other national leaders who were “taken out” over the previous 13 years. Against the odds, he has crawled out of the primordial ooze to become his party’s candidate (though mostly, they do not recognize him.)

If elected, he will upset the international clock. Planes will fly backwards and the dead will emerge from their caskets, ready to danse macabre in celebration of Klaatu.

The great horror will occur at his swearing in, when he will unzip his human carapace and prove to be one of David Icke’s Lizard People. (Yup, I’m ready to rack muck for Gawker or HuffPo; no pay, thanks.)

Only the voters who favor him see him. However, they are being vigorously prodded to see the light and understand that they cannot vote for him.

This is obviously a time of revanchist goddesses, led by a matriarch with an unfortunate stridulous quality to her voice. The fact that there is only one viable candidate is reminiscent of Stalin's USSR. Oddly, this nation fought a 60+ year Cold War against that Soviet system. 

Well, that was scary. When I re-inhabit my body, I see a country in denial. They have surmounted the last great civil rights barrier in 2015 when gay people achieved the right to marry. There are no more Great Rights Issues to be won. And yet, the country is far shy of Nirvana.

So the crusaders must now turn their walrus tears to the inhabitants of other nations. They must act as if the Civil Rights era was a great success. 

Somehow a person called Donald Trump made it through the chicken wire. He is a threat to the simulacrum of the dream, and so he must be crushed.

Presumptive-President Clinton proclaims in her mincing, screeling voice that she will stomp all over wid her "nasty feet". The image of her and BFF Liz Warren tripping the light fantastic in their sensible shoes is almost too much.

Poor Lisa, in her red, bill-backwards “Trump hat”. Poor, provincial Lisa, drinking the berry Kool Aid. Actually not, thanks.

It is just all very strange to me.

The Fool on the Hill

--Hillary Waves and Smiles,
 (El Nuevo Dia) 

And the face of the nation
Keeps changin' and changin'
The face of the nation
I don't recognize it no more
--The Face of the Nation,
John Mellencamp

The truth is incontrovertible.
Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it
but in the end, there it is
--Winston Churchill

They got little hands
And little eyes
And they walk around
Tellin' great big lies 
--Short People,
Randy Newman
_______________________

This last year of incessant, relentless press excoriation of Mr. Trump and those who voted for him is dispiriting. The burden of hatred which spewed forth from nearly every outlet a reasonable person might access has been daunting. It has been a year of detestable press.

Entirely ignored by the press has been the investigation of the momentous and unlikely phenomena of Trump's nomination, without resorting to the ad hominem. But the press is an institution which also feeds at the political trough.

Mr. Trump is the court jester who revealed that the other would-be emperors were naked. The sour- grapes simpering of Mr. Cruz at the Republican National Convention gave lie to the fusty Republican trope of being the party possessed of true red-blooded American bonhomie. If it ever was, it is no more.

For this, Mr. Trump shall be rewarded as the next Fool on the Hill. And for those renting their garments, tell me that you voted for Uncle Bernie with joy in your heart (in the Kondo-ian sense). And will you hold your collective nose as you check the box for the supposed heir to the Clinton dynasty?

In Trump, Republican voters did not see a fundamentalist Christian or any of the myriad vested interests represented by the other 15 stuffed shirts fronted by the Republican machine. The majority of Trump's followers did not vote for him out of any great love for the man, but for the fact that he was Other.

The Democrats never had any such option.

These voters said "no" to the party icons and scions. They refused to eat the lie which said, "Here are 15 candidates from among which you may choose, but choose you must, if your party is to have a chance." The voters for Trump said NO to tyranny and political dynasty.

 Trump would not have won his party's nomination if a straggling band of Naderites or Perotians had cast votes helter-skelter in a kamikaze mission. These voters got it and said "No" to the Fortunate Sons ("no" to a Bush III). "No" to pandering special interests (Rubio couldn't take his home state). "No" to the religious fanatics. They know that all emerged from the same bag, and paid obeisance to the same dirty machine.

This perspective should have been revitalizing, but the press could not allow it, for it did not fit into their gestalt of a "backward-looking, hopeless uncool and bigoted" Trump electorate. 

They refused to say that Mr. Trump's "Yes" was a "No" to all the rest. For all the money and concerted press effort to deconstruct and unravel him, top-down, inside-out, it did not matter. You may call it what you will: the last gasp of the white chauvanist male (a view which provides succor to most academics) or flyover state ignorance, but derisive labels do not change the fact.

They could not fully construct him as grotesque, because it was not he, per se, who captured the voter's  imagination. It was that he was NOT they (i.e., the Others). If elected President, hopefully he will recognize the gravitas and great yearning which lies behind the facticity of his nomination.

Theirs is a hope for a nation which does not spin apart, enervating itself with self-destructive diversions. The Good Liberals call this necessary progress, but the commonweal is suffering. America still lives between the extremes, and it is their hope which is on display in this nomination.

The press is wholly beside itself, waiting like wolves at the door this week, hoping for the eruption of some violence -- something, anything, to mar the reality -- all the while demeaning those Trump supporters who held signs which expressed a desire for a safer nation. They cannot spin fast enough, and they must soon confront their failed project.

No matter, there will be evermore to carp about.

Mr. Trump is outside, and is not bought and sold; he is therefore, unsafe to those who would continue the current disarrayed status quo. He, moreso than the other party puppets, is a man situated in place and time.

He may not be a man for all seasons, but he is a man for this season.

[cross-posted @ milpub.]


Part II:  on press violence -- "Carp Diem: A  Year of Living Dangerously in the Press."