Election 2016

I miss my column dearly now here in election season, and a particularly crazy season at that.

There's a lot to write about but the two most sensational stories, regardless of how you feel about them, are of course Trump and Sanders.

Let me say something crazy: I like Trump. Let me say that again: I like what Trump is doing to the Republican party. Surely, the passion out there for him as a candidate is lurid and disheartening, but without it, he wouldn't be able to do what he's doing. I don't believe for a second he's doing any of this with any noble sense of purpose either, unfortunately. I don't see him as a cunning troll or an insurgent candidate. I see him as a maniacal, crass, narcissist who will say anything and do anything for attention/ratings. Trump gets off on winning. That's all.

I'm teaching Death of a Salesman right now and while viewing the old CBS production of the play with my class, I was struck by how Dustin Hoffman's Willy Loman could easily pass as a Bernie Sanders skit on Saturday Night Live. And there's something of Willy in Bernie besides the old time Brooklyn roots. There's the underdog everyman who represents those who get chewed up and spit out by this great and terrible beast called Capitalism. It's funny how much Trump reminds me of Willy though at the same time. In his desperation to be "well liked" and to be seen as a cock of the walk business man, he will trample his own rhetoric and bend numbers and truth in dizzying displays of backpedaling and doublespeak.

But Arthur Miller seems incredibly prescient as his cautionary tale of how the American Dream is built on shifting sands rings just as true if not truer than ever.

But, anyway, here's the thing about Trump and the Republicans: Trump to me seems like a horror movie creation. He is the runoff of all the vile politics of the Republican party of the past 15 years spilled into some overlooked ditch and made sentient by a fateful strike of lightning one dark and stormy night. Take the caustic river of obstructionist politics, mix in a torrent of latent racism, add the festering ooze of white privileged patriarchy/chauvinism and blind American exceptionalism, and finally a heaping helping of the sensationalism found in a vapid crony-controlled media that stokes the suffocating flames of a lazy, amoral culture.

Of course, all of these aspects of the Republican party have been traditionally delivered with a certain sense of PR sheen. They have always been there as subtext. Half the battle with the Republican party has been to uncover, define, and un-spin these practices. They have always been lined up behind this notion that Republicans were beholden to doing "the right thing," as in what's best for the country, what is morally and constitutionally just, and not at all operating entirely on self-interest. There is this unspoken idea, at times certainly more spoken, maybe even increasingly spoken on the timeline, that they are rescuing America from the hands of heathens so that it might be returned to shine under the light of Christ. But this is the story of wooing particular outlier demographics (in the Republican case, fundamentalist Christians) through the adornment of some moral garb, while turning around and doing the bidding of campaign financiers and a long litany of special interest.

Take the debate after Scalia's death for example. The preened establishment candidates had their serpentine reasoning for not allowing an Obama appointee, all this talk of 80 year precedent and tradition and blah blah blah. But, Trump just came out and said it: "Delay, delay, delay." That abandonment of pretext is exactly what I'm talking about. That's just a pure declaration of obstructionism and really actually anti-Democracy.

And this is where Trump is doing something important. The poison of the constant back and forth my-word-vs-your-word bickering "nuh-uh/uh-huh" "I know you are but what am I" of two party politics has slowed the vitality of the entire country to near death. He is saying that these other candidates are phony and it's totally true. He knows what it takes to buy a politicians because he's done it his whole life. Watch the 2011 documentary called You've Been Trumped and watch a local government turn down his plans to build a golf course on pristine Scottish shore-front, and then continue watching as that resolution is mysteriously reconsidered by higher-ups and reversed. He knows that politicians are for sale and he's calling them out. 

More crucially important than anything is the GOP establishment response. Suddenly they are aware of their own laziness and entitlement which let him slip through. The more they circle the wagons of the party in this last ditch effort to try to keep him out, the more they prove his exact point.

Not only is Trump the amalgamation of the classic toxic GOP SOP, they were the ones who preened his audience. Their political husbandry over the past 15 years has reared an audience that is exactly frightened, disenfranchised, reactionary, xenophobic, myopic enough to ravenously gobble up everything Trump has to offer.

It should be kind of a GOP dream come true. The problem is that he doesn't play by the party rules. The party is getting more and more frustrated that he's crashed. He's drank too much and he's dancing with too many wives and generally rendering the traditional guidelines and tactics moot.

If you paid attention at all to how the Republicans were gearing up for this race, you would notice that they were seeking a new identity. They realized that the wellspring of frightened white Christians was pretty much dried up. They realized that the deeply religious and conservative slice of the Latino vote was their best chance and they were planning on dishing out a kinder friendlier (ie browner) version of Republican politics. Just the idea of running Cruz and Rubio should make this clear, but even Jeb(!) when launching his campaign delivered a line en espanol at the rally.

Of course, Trump laid waste to this idea right off the bat when he went hard on anti-immigrant rhetoric. The Republican establishment has been using latent racist attacks against Obama for the past eight years and now they act shocked that their constituency salivates when Trump rings that bell.

I don't feel Trump is all that dangerous in and of himself. The hysteria surrounding his campign is a bit much, on both sides. I think he's too disingenuous and honestly too daft to have any real agenda that would be any more or less reckless than standard American policy. I do understand that he is playing with fire and he ultimately is a child. Stirring up the primal forces of fear-based hate is never a good thing.

But, this race is a straight up fucking apocalypse. I mean that in it's literal definition as an unveiling. Because let's make no mistake: both parties are totally corrupt and totally worthless. Bernie's treatment on the other side is essentially the same though maybe not as sensational. The (D) wagons are circling just as much around their heir apparent. The media outlets that are beholden to the Democrats are spinning the headlines as fast as they can. From the obvious shill shows of CNN and MSNBC to the oft-considered reputable sources like the NYT and NPR.

I know Trump is scary and I know the suppression of Bernie is disheartening, but make no mistake: this is the coolest thing to happen in the time that I have been paying attention to politics. We need to take this opportunity to really smash the two party system. In a supreme show of arrogance, the parties allowed Trump and Sanders past their gates with no thought of them ever being successful. To their shock and dismay, they found that we, the public, are actually really really sick and tired of the status quo.

Mitt Romney spoke out against his own party's frontrunner. Every corporate media outlet includes Hillary's superdelegate count in their tallies. Democrat debates were suspiciously scheduled for inopportune times. Some out there are baffled by this behavior. It should be no surprise. These instances are evidence of the fact that these parties have their own agenda that is in absolutely no way beholden to the public at large. The scary thing is that they don't have to be. The government, yes, technically they should belong to us, but not the parties. They are these technically private entities who can make their own rules and present to the public whomever they feel fit to run. In our defense, the problem is that they have become monopolies. They have worked tirelessly to repress all possibility of a viable alternative party. They've kept third party candidates out of their debates, discredited them, and generally dissuaded the public from taking them seriously. The two major parties have become so lazy entitled and disconnected from the actual public that they let their undoing walk right through their doors.

Again, this is fantastic. Both Trump and Sanders are appealing to the idea that they belong strictly to the people. How true this is from either of them remains to be seen, but the public is surely reacting to it. The stranglehold the establishment thought it had is not as strong. The wool over our eyes is not as thick.

We should be focused dead tight on this idea. To all voters who have sworn allegiance to either party: look at what's going on. Both parties are spitting in the face of your will. This is the point worth making.

As a life-long leftist, I am still wary of Bernie. His foreign policy stances are troubling. But there's something revelatory going on. It's really hard for me to not see it in crazy cosmic terms. I cut my political teeth after 9/11, so for the Republican front-runner to stand upon the debate stage and call the Iraq war the disaster that it is... that's gigantic. And yes, Bernie is not the perfect candidate, but let's consider a few things. One: his long bulletproof career of being a progressive voice in American politics. If he is truly is a public servant, perhaps we can actually change his mind on certain issues. Let's not forget that this is how it's supposed to work. More importantly though: for years I have said that the one thing missing from the "national conversation" is the concept of class. The class warfare that began under Reagan has not truly stopped since.

Bernie, no matter what, has pushed the line forward, and really so has Trump. It's hard to think of what happens after this election. The status quo narrative is busted to pieces right now and I don't think the genie goes back in the bottle from here. So drop your worthless party identity. Both parties are dead husks wrapped around a rotten core of self-interest. Let's find ways to unite on this.

Trump represents the reality of who we are. If you are afraid of his authoritarianism, like it's something that could happen, sorry to say, that ship has sailed. Bush laid the authoritarian groundwork long ago and Obama perpetuated it through the NDAA and elsewhere. You already are living in the authoritarian world you fear Trump will bring about.

Bernie represents the reality of who we could be. I mean, it's not even all that special. We live in such desperate times that common decency sounds like a revolution. Bernie is simply reminding us of what we deserve as citizens of the leading industrialized nation on the planet. But it's good. It's decent. It's just.  

Strange times in this nervous year of America. 

Apocalypses are always scary and messy. Hold tight. And remember: it's just ride.