“The first time was a tragedy, the second time is a farce,” the third time is a sign of a clinical problem
Hi everyone!
It’s good to be back and able to write. Last week I had something (probably not COVID, I tested twice) that felt like Tom and Jerry running around and trying to kill each other in my sinuses and head/neck muscles. Not fun. Definitely not conducive to writing. Good thing nothing big happened while I was away (I am both laughing and crying).
As we continue our cycle of existential dread, it’s hard to decide what to write about. So I’ll start in an area where there is far more than I want to admit: times I was wrong.
A few months ago, when Donald Trump started selling Bibles, I suggested we are trapped in a sitcom. Friends, I was wrong. We are very clearly in a shitty remake. Apparently, even Celestial Hollywood is tapped out of ideas and just finding new plots by letting goats eat all the old scripts and writing what they poop out.
Sounds crazy? How else can you explain everything? Celestial goat poop is the only way. Or more RFK, Jr brain worms, that’s new.
Exhibit A: Joe Biden as Lyndon Johnson (LBJ)
I’ve previously talked about the 1968 student protests, but this is something so similar that goat poop remake is the only answer: the mind-boggling incompetence of the Democratic Party gatekeepers because they think they’re smarter than everyone else.
LBJ had the potential to be a democratic icon. His Great Society expanded the social safety net, he supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and he worked to chip away at the massive racism in the segregation South. But he also ignored that racism in the North, refused to even look at the Kerner Commission on urban violence because it implicated poverty, police, and other issues he wanted to have solved, and then there were the lies and escalation in that pesky little wildly unpopular “police action definitely not a war” in Vietnam. Ah, the duality of America.
Caving to social pressure, in March LBJ did the unthinkable: he refused to seek reelection. In stepping down he left a field that became chaotic, and resulted in the assassination of presidential front runner, Robert Kennedy.
Going into the DNC, the Democrats were already handing Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon everything he needed to run with his “law and order” campaign.
Exhibit B: DNC Chicago reprising its original role
When I found out that we’re trying to get Biden to resign AND that the DNC is in Chicago, that’s when I realized we’re in a remake.
Quick recap: DNC Chicago 1968, which Gloria Steinem referred to as a police riot and where my guy Dan Rather (love you, dude!!), got knocked around by a bunch of delegate (he referred to as “thugs”) who got so heated they came to physical blows. Outside the convention hall, it was worse.
The police, on camera, walked in and started assaulting protestors. Steinem said there were “pools of blood on Michigan Avenue.”
Police say protestors didn’t have a permit to protest, which is true because Mayor Richard Daley refused to issue them because he didn’t want those dirty hippies messing up his pretty convention. As the cameras rolled, protestors shouted “the whole world is watching.” Which was true, and this caused some international backlash.
When the dusty settled, and the guy with the most delegates dead, Hubert Humphry got the nomination. He faired better in the general election than anyone expected, but due to some possible treason by Nixon, Nixon squeaked by and there went American progressivism.
Now we’re much farther along in the election cycle and potentially getting into another DNC in Chicago among mass protests against an unpopular war and a number of people calling for his resignation. What could go wrong?
Editorial Notes
I’m going to suggest some notes to the writers who are clearly compressing the timeline for dramatic effect. First, if the Biden character does resign, a series of things need to happen:
A. All of the establishment politicians who did not call for this when it would have been a good idea (the primaries) need to be regularly shamed for being spineless yahoos. Extra shaming goes to those now “calling for Biden’s resignation” which is transparently a campaign tactic for themselves.
B. We should pretty regularly be calling wannabe JD Vance out for being such a no-identity poser. Check out Appalachian Reckoning or talk to actual hillbillies for reference. Additionally, can we stop framing every rural, southern, or poor person as lazy and stupid? (These can be worked into the script regardless, but especially if Biden resigns.) Or at least have Scranton Biden come out with that Keystone State right hook.
C. This is the most important part: Go Big or Shut Up. If the script writers are going to keep up with this plotline and add in the drama, the Democratic Party cannot half-ass it. If Biden goes, it needs to be yesterday, and there needs to immediately be consensus on a powerhouse of a ticket. While I love my girl, Elizabeth Warren, the ticket needs to look bold and appealing and under 65. My suggestions: Gretchen Whitmer/Stacey Abrams (this is my dream), Whitmer/Kinzinger (I’d vote for this as a cross-party ticket), Whitmer/Whitmer…basically any ticket with the tall badass from Michigan (I’m rooting for you, ma’am).
Conclusion: “The first time was a tragedy, the second time is a farce,” the third time is a sign of a clinical problem
This shitty remake needs to end better than the original, otherwise, it’s going to end so much worse. Democrats “taking the high road” and coming at cult members with logic and expecting that to work, isn’t going to work. If they’re going to gamble, it needs to be now, and every Democrat needs to be onboard ASAP. Or the Democrats are going to lose big and look like the same divided, leaderless, chaos goblins that through their incompetence turned the Great Society into Watergate.
We know where the Trump/Vane road leads, let’s hope the writers remember their history and decide to make this one of those inspirational win-at-the-last minute movies. I love those.
