Bully in the Pulpit

“Plenty people even in the middle of sufferation going pick the bad they know over the good they can only dream about, because who dream but madman and fool?” Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings

The bloated bag of wind plays by his own rules, always has, because craven people let him. Like a school yard bully, the obnoxious, loud, and petulant kid who somehow commands the respect of others like him, who never walks alone, who acts brave even if he’s shitting himself, boasting and preening, craving everybody’s attention, the kid who figures out that in America presentation rules over substance; it doesn’t have to be good, it only has to look good, smell good for awhile, and be sold like the most valuable object on the planet. Sell the name, the mystique. Go gaudy or go home. Even his failures aren’t failures, they are great successes. The man makes magic, you have to admit, like an alchemist, dog shit to silver, black to white, up to down, he flips it all on its head then flips it again, just to keep us guessing. We can’t help but watch the show, read the Tweets, get pissed or laugh our asses off at what has become of America. TV and the Internet and social media, and non-stop, everywhere-you-turn advertising, has made us fearful and stupid.

Bat’s in the belfry, mule in the stall, bully in the pulpit, damage done, how much more to come? You think it will be easy to scrub Trump’s excrement from the walls? Gonna’ need Captain America and the Ghostbusters, a Navajo shaman, a battalion of shrinks and the largest sage bonfire in the history of the world. Can an entire nation have PTSD? Trump trauma? How are we going to behave once this fool falls off, drops dead on, or gets pushed off the stage for the final time? Are we just going to return to peace and love and goodwill for all, civility on Fox News, maybe even a smattering of truth now and then? Like the Obama years? Back to business as usual? What about Trump’s people, the potent (heavily-armed?) base we are always hearing about, what will they do when the clock runs out on their man? Will the evangelicals lay down their bibles and their crucifixes, their fascination with female reproductive functions? Will Republicans lose their blinders and find their balls and their backbones, maybe reform their party into an actual, recognizable political party again, rather than a criminal cult? Yeah, let’s drift back to the good old days, follow this neoliberal, corporate-friendly, Anita Hill-shaming fossil named Biden back to normal times, forget that Trump and the GOP ever happened. Forget that Mitch McConnell ever disgraced the US Senate. Forget how a broken political system gave us Trump in the first place.

Part of our problem is that we forget too soon. We let the wrong people off the hook. We get caught up in the fruit, never get to the roots.  

Been thinking: How far will they let the bully go? What’s the bridge-too-far for Donald J. Trump? Rape, incest, murder? Video of him and Putin getting it on? Or Trump Daddy smacking Jarod’s bare ass with a riding crop? Or the both of them with a bobcat? C’mon, Nancy Pelosi. Give us a sense of the threshold that only you can see. Just want to know what to expect.   

Pelosi’s brain is working overtime, she’s a woman with as many problems as Medusa had heads. She’s got nervous people in her party, not sure of the best strategic move, today, and for 2020, but they are wavering as Trump tears at the Constitution and spits on the notion of the rule of law. She’s got a posse of younger, female, progressive, and insistent voices telling her to get the I-Train warmed up and ready to roll. These folks are fighting for the principle, not only the politics, but it’s not an easy fight. On a good day, the Dems are weak, feckless and incoherent. Turning advantage into defeat is second nature, ingrained. They want the cake, and they want to eat it too, as the saying goes, so they compromise or capitulate here, shave a bit of principle there, bargain with various devils, and wind up looking like they stand for nothing.  

Pelosi’s got to play this one like Lionel Messi making calculations in his head before his foot strikes the ball that skims across the turf with the perfect shape and pace -- a pass only Messi can make -- into the path of Luis Suarez who easily one-touches past the keeper and into the back of the net. Inch perfect. Does Pelosi have that in her locker? The corporate media says she’s smart. The more important thing to know is, is she also cunning? She’s got to understand she’s up against a wounded animal who is steadily backing himself into a corner of the shed. He’s coming out fighting, blowing smoke out of his mouth and his ass, holding an olive branch in one hand and a metal pipe behind his back. She knows this, right? The question she’s mulling is when to do what, when to commit numbers to the attack. Her play has got to be inch perfect, like Messi, neither too soon -- before the chance fully develops -- or too late, when the chance is past. Takes genius.