With 2020 Hindsight, the Buffoonery Ahead

I was musing inconsolably, a picture of Donald Trump seated with Recep Erdoğan at a Taksim Square cafe in the Golden Horn, broken heads strewn everywhere, pigeons out of control, fishmongers singing the blues — Don and Ceppi, good buds comparing notes on how much they hate journalists, demi-tasse pinkies high. “Enemies of the state,” they harmonized over blood-kurdling screams. Two men talking up what they would do and what they have done. Leaning in, getting evil, sharing Khashoggi jokes — how much fun it was to pull MbS’s chain. Trump saying, “Mohammad got back to me and mewled, ‘That wasn’t very nice, Donald.’” They finished and headed toward the Red Light, Ceppi saying, Pulp Fiction style (to Donald’s ticklish delight) glass-caged Red Sparrows were on display.

When my attention was diverted by further hijinks. Hillary Clinton came rushin’ in to the already turgid news cycle to announce she would be interfering in the 2020 presidential election. When last we saw Clinton, the tears of her true supporters (about a glassful) had been tossed at her and she was melting, melting in her humiliating loss to the Cowardly Lion she had wanted to face in the finals of the Ugly Pageant of 2016.

Here she was back again for more. Hilarious Hillary, who’d once quipped of Daffy Gadaffi’s death: “We came, we saw, he died.” And she laughed so hard about it they made a haw-haw porn. Appropriately, her joke derives from Caesar’s famous lines, Veni, vidi, vici. Word is, Caesar, in turn, derived his rattling words from overhearing (on his right side) two centurions talking — one snorting: I came, I sowed, I cankered. (Translation?) Which is, of course, what happened to Democracy. Eventually, all great ideas get hospitalized with venal diseases.

And after Benghazi, nobody but nobody wanted to fuck with Hillary. Everybody on the DNC knew Bernie was being flipped, but, when the chips were down, he lacked the cajones to stick up for the “socialism” the campus kids cuddled up to so much. (Now, they’ve luke-warmed on him). It was reminiscent of Al Gore, who kaputchoolated to the Spy President’s son in 2000. And now we have climate change that came at us like a new Pearl Harbor.

Anyway, there she was again, back for more, taking the mickey out of the first female war veteran to run for president. Implying that Gabbard was a Russian asset because, as the “failing” NYT reported, she’d received unsolicited support from the deplorable fringe-dwellers. Then she accused Gabbard of wanting to run as a Third Party candidate, for the sole purpose, as an asset, of taking votes away from the Democratic nominee for president. She also took the opportunity to have a go at Green Party leader Jill Stein. When asked if she was gossing that Gabbard was a Russian Scabbard, a Clinton spokes-acolyte said, “If the nesting doll fits.” What an assoh!

It got ugly from there. Likening Clinton to a bad case of food poisoning the DNC had finally Linda-Blaired out, Gabbard said that Clinton was a “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.” Sweet Cheeses! Let the exorcism begin. In a tweet Gabbard went on, “It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.” Meow and hiss. High stick hockey was back.

There was Clinton back to whinging about why she lost — just as sickening as having to listen to Trump continually whinge about why he won. He won, not because he was more popular, but because he garnered more votes from the pay-to-play elites who make up the Electoral College system that Clinton adores — a system that Trump has criticized in the past. A system that seems almost arbitrary in some ways, with electors in about half the states not bound to vote according to popular outcome.

She didn’t lose because of a Third Party candidate (unless you want to count James Comey). Jill Stein didn’t kill her. It wasn’t Ralph Nader all over again. The presidential election shouldn’t be a taste test between the less evil flavor — exclusive of all others, year after year. Why, that would be anti-trust territory. Who is not tired in consumer-driven America of hearing neo-libs say citizens have only two choices at the polls: Coke or Pepsi. Fuck that. Some people like 7 Up. I myself don’t mind a shot of Mountain Dew once in a while. If Sanders had balls, he’d run as Dr. Pepper. Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too? What do you mean two choices only? Is this America?

Clinton didn’t mind working with Russians (through Christopher Steele) to dredge up kompromat on Trump’s touchy feely doings in Moscow, which, no doubt, would have come in handy as an October surprise — if she’s needed it against the foe she hoped to face. But who knows? If he got through PussyGate without any serious setbacks, then maybe details of golden showers delivered from a gaggle of would-be Red Sparrows would have seen him win in a landslide. It’s a porno world.

And the MSM has not helped — taking pot shots at the candidates, just to remind us all, it seems, just how nasty, brutish and long the campaign season can be. Bernie’s been blasted for speaking truth to the Press, calling his legit crit of their sensationalism Trump-like. There’s been picking at the scabby white lies of Pocahontas’ past. And Joe “Jiffy Pop” Biden, who has had people come from miles around to pick his brains, endured the humiliation of being challenged about his mano-a-mano moment with Corn Pop. And Trump has been savaged so frequently in recent weeks that it’s as if there’s a press pool bet to see who can drive him to drunkardhood and ruin first.

There’s enough ahead to worry about in the coming presidential campaign season. Wonky databases continue to disenfranchise voters. Voting machines are a catastrophe waiting to happen. The electoral college continues to warp the will of the people. Two-party taste-test politics continues to bore the buds. And also it looks like the world’s about to end. Just sayin’.

And if that weren’t bad enough, naughty Putin is taunting the Americans — whispering that he intends to meddle again in the presidential elections.

You could ask: Why bother?

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia.  He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times.