That was the headline on my log-on page, and I know exactly how they feel. (Are they catching mutant flies, who scream "HELP ME" in tiny voices?) "When you awake, you will remember everything," The Band sang long ago. That's the problem. Am I awake? I kept waiting for the Trump campaign to burn itself out or suppurate or something, but no. It's as if, at the climax of
A Face In the Crowd, Lonesome Rhodes went off on his audience and instead of outrage, they just smiled and said, "He's right, we
are dumb shitheads. He's so honest. Arthur Godfrey would never say that. What a guy. Let's give him the launch codes."
Surreality is the new reality. Last night America was apparently informed that Rafael Cruz (the senator's father) was an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald. (I have to say "apparently" because all I have is a Trump transcript, and it's easier to parse the Dead Sea Scrolls than his authentic Queens gibberish.) That his source is the National Inquirer makes me long for the good old days, when Ronald Reagan got his information from the Reader's Digest, and Sarah Palin was unable to name any periodicals at all. There were giants in the earth, we just didn't know it. Trump is amoral, narcissistic, detached from reality and a pathological liar. If it's true, does it matter that this acute character analysis comes from the equally disgusting Ted Cruz? And that even John Boehner called Cruz (in an uncharacteristic burst of eloquence) "Lucifer incarnate"? At what point does this enemy-of-my-enemy-of-my-enemy fugue turn into a wilderness of mirrors? (Fugue? Mirrors? You see what I've been brought to?) When do we awake?
I have an apocalyptic vision of my own, and it's called an Open Convention. On the streets of Cleveland where Harvey Pekar once walked, I want a Second Amendment face-off between the Tedophiles and the Stormtrumpers. I want the National Guard to come in at the end and kill the wounded. I want American splendor and deformed spider webs.
Jesus, I can't face another six months of this.
