Makeup, America. It's Great Again!

There's nowhere left for Americans to hide. The political, social, and cultural conflicts of the last 40 years have culminated in the Clinton / Trump scramble for presidency, the unfolding of which is an inescapable dilemma. What these candidacies lack in political merit they more than make up for in stark comedic content, though few are left laughing. It is the grimacing ghost of laughter past. 

America has spoken. We want something that we simply do not deserve: improvement. There seems no better way to accomplish this than to vilify others. The best way to be innocent in America is not to be guilty. Those versed in accusation become the accomplished. Why we would expect our political landscape to reflect something other than our social and economic atmosphere is beyond me. We get the culture that we deserve, and we never have to accept full responsibility for what is ruined in halves. America might be more Zen in this regard than any Buddhist nation. Never before has national yin risen against rising federal yang with such complementary and effective balance. 

The processes by which these two candidates have risen to the top of their respective parties, which will now anoint each of them to become their party's nominee, is so rotten and fucked that it boggles the mind to consider how much actually depends on it. It's as if the gallows scaffolding can no longer hold the weight of the rope. They're bringing in a safety expert to see if the doomed can safely put themselves in the noose while the burlap sack remains snug over their head. It's a genuine safety issue. The rallies on both sides do have an air of public execution to them, which should be somewhat expected when rallying for the office of chief executive. There exists the underlying excitement that for one to rise then another must fall, and far.

I had wanted America to last for mostly selfish reasons. 

I don't think that either of them should be allowed to pardon the Thanksgiving turkey, much less appoint supreme court justices. The center of American society has rotted from underneath and is collapsing. Nothing else can explain the success of these two ongoing jokes. As old HST once said (paraphrased), There's no such thing as paranoia, everything you ever feared is actually happening.

Much has been said about Trump from the one side, but what I want to know is how the fuck did Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, ever rise to the presidency in the first place, and why is Hillary still knocking around in the Democratic party like an unleashed Godzilla? It's the Dems version of having Nancy Reagan run, except that Hillary actually does have a political career. Too much so, many say. She's corrupt and superficial, but at least she brings hot sauce with her in her purse when she enters black neighborhoods. Her naked efforts to secure her cultural and political cabal would have ruined a lesser liberal, one like Gary Hart. 

Much like her husband, she would probably be helped by a sex scandal at this point. It would chip away at the hideous flesh facade that is her face. America should brace itself for many things, and Clinton's sexual cravings will appear soon enough by media necessity. It is something that no citizen should be expected to endure, a political animal in raw heat for power. Endure it we will. It's going to be that kind of sex scandal: unanimously non-consensual. 

I was genuinely pleased when Obama chose Clinton to be Secretary of State. I thought, Well damn… that is an uncharacteristic expression of unity within the Democratic party. It made perfect sense at the time and few on one side questioned it. There will always be one half of the nation that questions the other half. We can safely ignore that for now. We are a divided country in every way except that the educated here are not expected to speak at least two languages. Everybody seems to silently agree on that in their own broken and local English. But when Clinton stepped down from the position everyone knew what was coming. Some of us even cheered our fate, as if viewing it from a safe ideological distance. 

Lots of people want to see a female president, it's understandable, but Clinton doesn't even pass the bathroom tranny test. I want to see her pedigree, the long form. She's a purebred, but of what species it is impossible to tell. She has the testosterone of a lion, the genetics of Caligula, and the face of an albino raptor. She'll be the first president with naturally red eyes.

Some would say, that's not fair. Well, fuck those people. Defend Trump against the sexism that has been leveled at him then, I say, or shut the fuck up. Hillary deserves to be observed and discussed, and her power cravings and flaunting of process should be noted and hopefully judicially punished. Where does one find a jury of peers for such a person.

That shiver that just raced through your body means something: She has no peers. 

The worst types of people are being emboldened by this election cycle. They are those that were personally crushed by Obama's dual victories on one side. Old whitey has had just about enough. Sarah Palin can still make the news, and one must wonder what sort of a society allows such a thing with seemingly no preventative measures in place.  

That said, it's the screaming and cheering new left that worries me. They are filling stadiums, also. There will always be the sleeping flat tire vote in America. The right has depended on it since the Christian coalition hijacked their party when they could no longer stomach the civil rights movement. The mobilization of the faux left in the form of Bernie supporters is perplexing and yet also makes a perfect sense of American funhouse symmetry. We rise and fall in response to perceived opposition. We produce sets, matched political pairs, that function as dually self-indulgent regressions of ideology. Everybody's demanding a new doctrine in the form of a new leader. 

Hillary Clinton is our Charlene Manson. She was involved in something horrific long ago, but she was just one of the ones who orchestrated it, which has mostly been forgotten and forgiven now. She has somehow kept her hands just clean enough to stay out of prison, though not by much, and many still dream of a faraway federal indictment, though it is tough to say what good that will do. That her hubby was disbarred came close. They should have thrown his lying ass in the clink after he perjured himself to the grand jury.  He should be the first ex-president to have his tomb and library be wholly contained within the federal prison system. 

There are those who look at some of the changes that we have seen - a black president, legalized marijuana in some states, gay marriage, trannie port-o-potties - and they marvel at the progress we have made as a people. It's true, these are all things that I never thought that I would see in my lifetime. Now, I want to see a sitting president in jail. That unraveled mummy, Nixon, should have viewed his final sunset from a cell in the medical ward of a federal prison. That he was allowed to evade captivity set the legal tone for most of what has followed. 

Again, as HST wrote about that same Prez at the time, If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.

Then: Bernie Man, 2016. He has somehow convinced America of his legitimacy as a possible president. I saw an article comparing him to Tonya Harding. He's willing to kneecap his opponent which could very well allow the Trump national nightmare to unfold, preventing Nancy Kerrigan from winning the gold and ushering in the era of Trumpidity. It was some astute snark, though the article is thin on additional observation. 

That Bernie's campaign has made it as far as it has, and has such ardent supporters, running on the vapors of anti-corruption is a testament to America's disgust with things as they are, far more than it is with genuine belief or any claim that Bernie is qualified. In fact, that question never gets asked, or answered. If it does, then it is only for the purpose of stating that genuinely qualified politicians are the actual problem.

Very well. 

The fear has been that unleashed democracy is only a version of mob rule, mob mentality; these political rallies are nothing if not mobbed. 

No other sweeping public sentiment can explain the rise of Trump better or more completely. It is adequacy fatigue. People are tired of qualified politicians. We need some good strong celebrity power back in the presidency. So many have focused on Trump being our new Hitler, but they miss the point. He is a John Wayne, and openly invites that comparison. That fact alone should be sufficient to cause terror in any liberal's heart. 

Let's all just agree that Hitler is overkill for the time being.

So, we're left with a populace that is suspicious of qualifications, intellect, and wealth. That last word can be effectively swapped out with success for some. Their focus is on the hard work that went into making all of that money by individual hand rather than any admission that those who possess wealth might not be wholly deserving of every single bit of it. In the right eyes, these victims have been robbed of so much more already than has the average tax payer. To have made that much money is a testament to their wholesome industriousness.

That is perhaps a conversation for another post.

Now, nothing that I've said here has not already been said much better in the national press and various opinion pieces that have sprouted along the media peripheries and at its center. I am just trying to make some sense of it all for myself.

Trump is not the real danger, though he should be kept from power for reasons that should be obvious enough. He, at least, has a sense of humor. Hillary should be kept from power because of her humorlessness. It is not the harmless grandmother kind that some have tried to portray it as. The hopefully desperate should be put on a waiting list until the background check is complete. 

The danger seems to be the emerging rise of extremism cloaked as popular sentiment. State tyranny only seems preferable to national tyranny for so long, and only remains state tyranny until it can achieve federal tyranny. The "hands off" message should not be believed any more than should the helping hand, though those same messages packaged differently have been used to justify all manner of horror. Prescriptions for national happiness are always untested, though many would have you believe that theirs is the true word and spirit of our Fathers. 

You see, what matters most in these trying times is that we all agree to get rid of one half of the problem, lest those hotter heads prevail once more. 

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. - Gerald Ford, Presidential Inauguration speech, August 9th, 1974

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