July 24, 2016

Best performance yet last night, to a big crowd, including David and his girlfriend, who are asleep in the guest room as I write. Youthful eagerness. . . I had almost forgotten. . .

Why is this election season different from all other election seasons?  I have given this thought, and believe it is because there are not, this time, two different, slightly modulated versions of reality bidding for the attention of the electorate. There is one vision of reality and another that is pure delusion, a world made from scraps of demagoguery, general fears inserted wherever they may do the worst harm, legislative bullies and executive vandals, liars in public places so blatant as not to be concerned when they are caught in the lie, for how is fact better than conviction? How is truth more powerful than the desire for power over others? Donald Trump’s–and now the Republican Party’s– proposed world is a kind of Mordor, where light must be shut out in order for darkness not to be shown for what it is, a world of deliberate misrepresentation, of paranoia lifted to the level of religion, where the worst are honored for their vehemence in a bad cause. Trump himself is clearly without conscience and will do whatever gratifies him at a particular moment, and his rhetoric appeals to those who are exhausted by the world’s resistance to their ignorance. Don’t worry about what is good and true, I’ll give you what you think you want. I have not lived through former times, but this is the worst choice presented in my lifetime. Trump offers the opportunity, in every spiritual or intellectual way, to recede to the Dark Ages, superstitious, prizing ignorance as a virtue, squalid, war-like, clannish, hopeless because the implicit power structure depends upon hopelessness.  Though there are aspects of Hillary’s policies with which one might disagree, what is actually used against her by the Republicans are blatant and infantile lies, which are breathed back into life by Trump’s dementors no matter how often they’re laid to rest by those who actually know (often embarrassed Republicans). Trump calls–listen to what he says and then dispute with me–for the end of humane civilization. Listen to him. Really. Now, checks and balances built into the government may keep him from achieving this, but the fact that some of us are happy to let him have a try is appalling. The some of us are willing to risk this holocaust because our favorite was defeated is infantile naivete bordering on crime. In a perfect world I would probably be a Green. There is not time for the  luxury of that now. That one faction is a little greener than the other must, in ths instance, suffice. No one who supports Trump can be my friend. It is hard to imagine how a personal both moral and sane could do so. Even to fail to give aid to his enemies is, in a time like this, lamentable.