A Growing Wave of Nothing Much
It’s empty. And it’s hard to write about so much nothing.
I’ve said before that I view the Democratic Party as a court party, representative of institutional authority and status, rather than seeing it as primarily an ideological grouping (although the performance of ideological ritual is important to the demonstration of belonging). If you want to be someone important, like an actor, you can’t be some horrible trailer parky Trump person1 — it’s our “using the wrong fork,” our go-to cultural symbol of class status. Here’s a Venn diagram of the overlap between Democratic Party alignment and high status positions in academia, the administrative state, major corporations, and the news and entertainment media:
You know, for kids.
So what I’ve found interesting in the political campaign season, a horrible horrible horrible dull appalling miserable rotten worthless thing I haven’t otherwise found in any way interesting, is the moral, intellectual, and psychological exhaustion of the American establishment, as revealed by Democratic politicians opening their mouths. To sneak in a little Hack Watch on the side, Politico has just sent a reporter to Arizona to gaze through his pince-nez at the disgusting peasants, in a “you’ll never be a member of Bushwood, sir!” piece that actually, literally ends with the observation that a crowd of Kari Lake supporters smells like kettle corn.
An earlier paragraph describes attendees at a Kari Lake rally being in possession of “buckets of beer,” if one can even imagine such creatures being permitted the vote. But then here’s Kari Lake’s sophisticated mainstream opponent, the person who stands athwart the mob of kettle corn-smelling, Coors-swilling trash — and I apologize for the too-easy source of the video, but it’s a useful illustration of her seriousness:
That’s not something she’s contemplated, so. With vocal fry and upspeaking, like an extra from Heathers. Here she is doing little girl voice with a pair of sympathetic interviewers who open the discussion with a tongue bath before transitioning to what should be an easy question:
Or take John Fetterman, please, and let’s pass in silence over that weak satire of a political debate. Or Kathy Hochul, a governor you’ve met several times at HOA board meetings, where she wanted to cite your neighbor for his hedges. Who, in the party of the American establishment, the party of the respectable people, is merely interesting? The image of Charlie Crist just flashed through my head, and I can’t even.
Is there a Democratic Party politician in the country who’s sort of okay, right now? Who manages to sound more or less not horrible in public?
American soldiers are positioned near the Ukrainian border, as two nations armed with nuclear weapons fight an increasingly open proxy war. Meanwhile, here’s what the President of the United States is working on this week:
I will speak now on behalf of the American people: Wut?
I’ve been endlessly ruminating, with whiskey, over the nosedive in the character of our establishment political class — the metastasizing “concept salad imbecility” of our alleged leaders. The only thing I can come up with is that maybe no one of any character wants to run for office anymore because no one of any character still believes that elected officials actually run anything. (Takes another drink, stares off into the middle distance.)
And so we seem to be nearing a moment at which these idiots, like the Moon Unit gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, are going to be crushed by a population that increasingly can’t stand the sight of them. But what happens if we crush them — and then a decisive change election doesn’t produce much of a course correction?
What if we emerge from the increasingly obvious emptiness into still more increasingly obvious emptiness?
On top of which, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll smell like kettle corn.
LITERALLY SHAKING
In a myopic view, what is scarier: That Katie Hobbs is "this" close to being Governer of an American state or that she's CURRENTLY the Secretary of State of that same state?
Also, you people need Jesus!
The irony of all this is that the Democrats are becoming less popular as they become more publicly honest. Impoverish the proles, mask their babies, and then groom and mutilate them. Obama’s America!