‘The only thing being raised at the moment are the ideas of political twilight.’ ~ SPIN DOCTOR
When the GOP choice for presidential candidate is between Donald Trump and the person preferred by Dracula’s great grandnephew, Mitch McConnell, you know something’s gone terribly wrong.
Disturbing as the prospects are, they’re no surprise. This is exactly what happens when you steer a party in the wrong direction, flirting with fundamentalism and populism; a showman comes in and steals the show, and you’re left wondering where the party’s gone, who let the dogs out, why no one’s listening and what on God’s good earth has come over everybody.
Good morning, sunshine! You’re it! Get it?
Which makes me think. If the system is that vulnerable — dare I say inept, pliable, and unable to get a grip — it deserves everything it gets.
Call it a huge case of the shakes met with a vicious binge, leading to a huge, terrible hangover and more shakes, and a case of the runs, or, in salt-of-the-earth terms mixed with fiscal responsibility tones, a doggone liability from which the GOP may never recover.
Mitch, you and your ilk have succeeded in making a mockery out of a party that once stood for a balanced budget and the unwillingness to kowtow to the fads of political correctness. It’s quite the achievement, redeeming from end to end, if by redemption you mean disaster. Lex Luthor would be proud.
So would your great uncle.
No matter. Let the pieces fall where they may. Anything’s better than the status quo. Time to move on. Even if things get worse, they’ll amount to some good. Trump, Drumpf, whatever, let it come. Shake it up. At least that way we’ll be one step further away from you and your poisonous brinksmanship, one step closer to an eventual turnaround and transformation of today’s political scene. Sooner or later Trump will fall like a sack of cantaloupes — he’s a clown, what do you expect? — and so will you and the useless direction you have been charting, everything you have been building, every toxic ideological sabotage you have been engineering and every tripwire you have set will be decommissioned and removed like a scab falling off the body.
Getting rid of you, of course, will be hard, and not without pain (and the same holds for the menaces you have spawned, you and your lackluster opponents, politicians and partisans equally useless in capturing the pulse of today’s realities, to each their own across the chamber aisle, handing the initiative over to the populists). Your exit will be complicated. The hurt following the operation will sting, the recovery fraught with agony.
But it will be worth it. The way to Heaven passes through Hell and Inferno (you like that analogy, don’t you? You got a little hard right now, admit it!), and creation follows destruction, and progress follows entropy and reorganization — well, bring it on! Let the dice roll and the vectors fall, the agony, turn it up, let all hell break loose so that US politics may break free from your brainless stalemates and venture forth into something entirely new, come what may.
Meanwhile, in Congress, in the time it took me to write and post this piece, an eager aide on your side of the aisle put in an order for five metric tons of thick black curtains and a tankerful of fresh blood for the fangsters to sign the bills with, and to sip on, to sip on while machinating over how to help Dracula’s great grandnephew and his minions engineer more sabotage and division by digging into the constitution’s neck a little deeper, after they have trashed the party, the campaign, and the country’s political prospects, all in the name of getting it right.
Not to be outdone or left out, the politicians across the aisle are busy placing their own special orders: a freight-train of prohibition and cheery-no-nos, all in the name of tolerance. Don’t speak your mind, don’t raise your voice. Don’t do anything without a health and safety stamp of approval. Get a thousand forms signed before you do anything, then get a thousand more. Don’t be angry. Don’t display negative emotion. Smile all the time. Fit in and make others feel welcome all the time, even when they’re crashing the party. Flatten everything down to a flatline so that everything is equal, and never mind the vital signs. Never mind the demise of perspective, or the loss of depth of field. Do as you’re told in the name of not offending anyone and don’t roll your eyes at me, little man, little lady, or you’re grounded. Civilization needs constant nurturing, so here’s a great big teat for you to suck on. Nanny state milk. It’s the new craze, if blood’s not your thing.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul says it like it is, and everyone pretends he’s a crazy, senile old man. Redundancies abound. Granted, he’s kooky, as in slightly out of touch with today’s realities — he’s still in 18th-century mode, 19th tops, on certain topics anyway — but at least he’s raising issues that need to be raised, though you wouldn’t know it when watching the media and their obsession with the absurd.
And then you wonder why the greatest economy in the world is coming apart like a Chinese toy, or, to stick to the Impaler-Freight-Train crossover reference, going off the tracks in the sunrise, rolling off the cliff and breaking into a ball of fire in broad daylight. The only thing being raised at the moment are the ideas of political twilight, the walking dead, shadows that thrive in the spotlight, but these are just shows with an expiration date. An economy needs more than primetime entertainment to survive.
So does a continent, of which the economy is only a part. A great part, but still just a part. The people need leadership that respects their rights and declares for them in ways that work, not just in the short term but down the line. Not just in balance sheet terms and cold numbers. They need leaders who understand the human condition, who mindfully consider the facts, not make-believe and dogma. Who operate on common sense, not ideological nonsense. The GOP needs men and women of substance, not mannequins, or harlequins, or heartless caricatures. It needs character. It needs statesmen and stateswomen, people who understand the bigger picture, and so does the donkey camp across the aisle, and so does the country as a whole.
Amurica, watch yourself!
From your trend-watching Spin Doctor,
Eyes open, mind sharp.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mcconnell-trump_us_56eea6c0e4b09bf44a9d804c