--Hillary waves and Smiles,
(El Neuvo 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 maty 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.
Part II: on press violence --
"Carp Diem: A Year of Living Dangerously in the Press."
[cross-posted @ Rangeragainstwar.]
