In the Afterglow of Unity

The Mandate for Coalition

It should be evident to every Democrat that, for this year anyway, that's how sausage is made. Turns out sky pie doesn't cram into the casing as well as red meat and gut check, but that, as they say, is why they play the game. 

So there's this new Pokemon app. Have you heard about this? No, there's only one Seinfeld, I was just curious. Seems like the same featurette of your "smart" phone that picks up useless information as you walk down the street, is now a fun thing to do while waiting to fall into an open sewer.

There's been this media narrative (jathink?) that there's a dedicated cadre of Sanders folks who will just stay home and it's been touted just like the much ballyhooed "never Trump"ers of yore. The latter proved to be so much hacky-sack Jell-o; a similar fate is not the wildest of predictions for the former. Evidently the nation was not as fevered in pitch about the campaign so far as represented by the possessors (9/10 of the law) of our most reputable journalism logos, or maybe national principles have become like the latest lion-killing dentist not named Kone. 

Methinks a fad app is telling its own story about now.

Now I've heard, as have you, savvy reader, the impassioned support even Jim Webb got a taste of. Folks align - it's what we do. 

In the either/or of Bernie/Hillary a pall of disingenuousness envelopes anyone who now proves to have been an ideological scoundrel by showing utter poor sportsmanship. Of course there's a mandate for coalition.

But to any hold-outs, and I hope the number is less than any poll whose reputation is burgeoning in media narratives tries to okey-doke on your behalf: this is worse than "the rent's too damn high." 

This is so serious, John Adams just had a heart attack. 

No, no no! Don't convert any one of your positions. Please. 

Save your idealism for the next "make your own sausage day." But prove me right, please. In as non-rubbing-your-nose-in-it a way I can muster.  It's important.

You remind me of you at your age. 

The streets were ablaze on several counts. The plutocrats entangled the nation in ways nobody really appreciated except them. The old farts then had been Joe McCarthy lovers. They bought that stopping communism snake oil the moment it came through town.

We were put in a lottery to die. No, really.

Trust that you are surrounded by old farts who merely lack your physical energy.

Above all, that Bernie made Hillary better. 

Who knew?

Lastly, I have to wonder how much effort is being spent at this critical juncture on posing whilst surreptitiously trolling? They know who they are and we must greet them like the latest distracting app.

Whether for pay or bragging rights, there's going to be a flood of disaffected sounding, supposed Sanders supporters calling into every last show with open phone lines or Twitter feeds to rail against the Democratic nominee. Screeners on the shows we love will be up against it. And when I say "we" I do mean in that 1st person plural way which should be the afterglow of our unification. 

The saddest part of the process which makes commonweal is that it is so readily co-opted. I can't explain the fact that people gave thumbs up and thumbs down to a YouTube video of the president consoling Dallas today. Call Seinfeld. No please, call Seinfeld.

Retweets-per-minute as a statistic has always struck me as theater of the absurd and this is right in there with it. It's instructive. Perhaps the ups are an atta boy for the president we, on our side, have come to really, really appreciate. I venture I know who the downs are but they only use more subterfuge if they think you're on to them. (Walks away, whistling... 

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You're welcome.)

72.4% appreciated the president's speaking for the nation to the grieving. The remainder did not.

You need a pajama-wearing guitar player pundit sometimes, I've often found, to vigorously clench the scimitar of the obvious, and at that I remain your humble servant.

Man, You've Changed

Since the John Birch Society adopted its mission statement, "we will lose nothing, ever," in the early sixties, there has been their acceptance of defeat (for politically correct reasons despite the irony today) along with a renewed determination to get past that hiccup part of pushing their agenda when given another chance.

Yes, they built whatever it is that they have and behind closed doors. I'm sure they're mighty proud of it. I'm just a pajama-wearing, guitar-player pundit (like the one two doors down from everyone in the United States), but the rules of losing an argument with the American people, to these guys, commands them to re-package, re-purpose, re-use.

Their best kept "tell" is when things are going precisely as they intended. They take actual breaths and use punctuation. (It's the pajamas which render up a pundit's clairvoyance.) Meaning: when the gear noises suddenly cease, you are in really dangerous territory.

When the co-opting and the Machiavellism was going down in real time, you thought something was hinky, but the fourth estate had that covered, right?

The War Lust is Strong

A framework for future peaceful negotiations with Iran has now gone past, albeit not way past, the "size and shape of the table" phase which so often derails things. It also benefits from the support of nuclear proliferation experts and has provoked an international chorus of job well done, which anything involving America hasn't heard in a long time.

The Senate almost super-majority, which is intent on chucking ample spanners to halt the work so far, will be blowing up the only thing around with a chance to keep us from actually blowing things up.

The war lust is strong again.

Douglas Feith's new boss (same as the old boss but with a more camera-beguiling evil) is Tom Cotton (he of letter to the Ayatollah from forty-seven senators fame).