Jack Gould: Untitled [boy doing backflip on trampoline] (c. 1950)

"Weird seems to be the word of the moment."

Early yesterday morning or the morning before, I Googled "Jamie Raskin Speech At DNC" to find Representative Raskin's Banana Republican speech, which I'd seen mentioned in a New York Times piece. I'm a huge Raskin fan. We lived just around the corner from him when we were exiled to The People's Republic of  Takoma Park in Maryland, and I appreciate his wisdom and wit. We also share the tragedy of losing a child filled with promise for our future. Having survived two bouts with Cancer, he seems exceptionally courageous and purposeful, the soul of effective opposition to the Banana Republicans. He also stood as a manager of the House's January 6 hearings. He chose the right side of history when making it. Google delivered the link, and I clicked on it, whereupon the Google Gods selected an appropriate advertisement as a preface, for, if anything, the algorithm is known for its prescient context sensitivity.

It served up one of those rambling, incoherent Trump ads featuring the chief Banana Republican failing to make either a case or a point. The ad seemed ironic rather than purposeful, fulfilling the opposite of its creators' intention. It seemed as if it was a particularly clever and courageous advertisement produced by the Harris/Walz campaign. It worked in that frame much better than it ever could have worked in its original. I do not precisely know how it happened, but the Democrats seem to have Flipped their opposition's messaging.  Now, however their opponents might respond seems destined to seem ironic, as if produced to undermine their intent, whatever that might have been.

For people like me who could never determine what message the Banana Republicans were broadcasting, this comes as a welcome turn. I abhor incoherence, and the Bananas seemed to be the very soul of it. Their messages seemed like so much noise, Bananas in the Bat-Shit Crazy sense, a monumental waste of effort, except now they seem prescient. They've become parodies of themselves, amplifying the opposite of their intended message. It's as if we're all suddenly on to a previously inside joke. The Chief Banana was always crazy, and his appearances seemed to amplify his insanity, with his out-of-context cultural references and distant innuendos, his questions "nobody ever asked before," as if that made them somehow understandable. His insistence upon calling people names suddenly seems like moves in a game he's deliberately trying to lose. He was always a master self-saboteur.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, reporting from the convention, insists that she's witnessing a once-in-a-century realignment of what politics means in this country. The memes that have been reliable tells since Ronald Reagan's candidacy have lost their immediacy. They either peg their user as elderly and far behind present times or have Flipped their historical associations. Freedom has broken free again to correct conditions created by its prior wide-scale misattribution. It means Freedom From now rather than Freedom To, and the libertarian interpretation just seems stingy now. The once-infallible churches have shown their Christian Nationalist cards, and nobody wants to play their hand. Their plans for 2025 can't bear the light of dawn. Once entrancing to many, their perversion of the American Dream seems fitfully sleepless now and weird.

We seem to be entering a period of Quantum Politics where the traditional calculus can't predict what's likely to happen. A general collapse of the wearying status quo started when Good Joe Biden passed his torch to his vice president. That selfless act, resonant with Washington's willing surrender of power Napoleon criticized him for making, has always been a defining element of the American presidency, at least up to and exclusively including the prior incumbent, the one now campaigning ironically with all his theatrical heart. His words suddenly carry meaning, and they exclusively say, "Vote Harris/Walz." He's powerless to reverse this trend, for he was powerless to avoid it to begin with. He's become the pawn, however many billionaires and crooked Supreme Court justices take his side. To back him is also to become ironic, a parody actively campaigning against yourself.

Grace often leaves political races out of her reach. She's usually content to let popular opinion govern. She's a Died-In-The-Wool Democrat. This year, she might have seen something more treacherous coming and decided to intervene. Not directly, because that's rarely her strategy, but to ironically intervene in perfect harmony. Making America Great could never have been a repeat performance. There was never a time when this place lived up to its greatness, yet it almost always maintained its innocent intention, however soiled it seemed to become. Its greatness has continuously resided in its future, never once in its past. Nostalgia never qualified as either an objective or a recipe. Again could only ever repeat past mistakes, our previous shortfallen attempts, which might have at best motivated us on toward something better later. The great perversion of Making America Great Again has finally fallen on hard times. Our eyes now focus upon an infinitely more alluring horizon, one not ruled by any backward-looking Bananas, one where Freedom From such delusions as returning to any past resides. One where Bananas seem just as crazy as they never weren't. Weird seems to be the word of the moment.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz