I’m Off To See The (Trump) Wizard – (March 9)

I’m Off To See The (Trump) Wizard – (March 9)

Yes, I’m getting ready. I’ll be going quietly, disguised as an over-the-hill, chunky-plus, 47-percenter, straight white male, ball cap and all. With luck I’ll get some pix and do some tweets, and maybe even blog.

But don’t worry: the whole time I’ll be recalling what Paul Krugman wrote today,  about the GOP Con Artist Quartet (& Their Establishment BS Backup Band)–

“Just to be clear, I find the prospect of a Trump administration terrifying, and so should you. But you should also be terrified by the prospect of a President Rubio, sitting in the White House with his circle of warmongers, or a President Cruz, whom one suspects would love to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.

As I see it, then, we should actually welcome Mr. Trump’s ascent. Yes, he’s a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people’s cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.”

For that matter, I can hardly remember the few other times I’ve been on the same page with that Tory of Tories George Will. But today is one of them, even tho George, with trademark twittish superciliousness disdained 

“Donald Trump’s distinctive rhetorical style — think of a drunk with a bullhorn reading aloud James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” under water — poses an almost insuperable challenge to people whose painful duty is to try to extract clarity from his effusions. . . .”

(Actually, I think what Will is really aiming at here is the Pulitzer Prize for the Year’s Most Pretentiously Opaque Pundit Metaphor — a category in which he’s a perennial front-runner.) But whatever; George does then have the redeeming good sense to quote a poem I first heard from the lips of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:

“Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,/In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.” So begins James Russell Lowell’s 1845 poem protesting America’s war with Mexico. The Republicans’ moment is here.
We are about to learn much about Republican officeholders who are now deciding whether to come to terms with Trump, and with the shattering of their party as a vessel of conservatism.” 

Well, you ask me, such a shattering can’t come too soon to that particular vessel. And perhaps Lowell was mistaken in the claim that such crossroads-choices come but once in a lifetime. Still, we can do no better than hear some more of his verse, 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,  
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems to and fro;  
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,  
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,  
And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future’s heart.  

So the Evil’s triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,  
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill . . . .
They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,  
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;  
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,  
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away  
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?  

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;  
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth . . . .

See you in Fayetteville?

Oh, and one more thing: these are my hands. Just for the record;  (This photo may not be safe for work.) But I’m not running for anything.