About Last Week...
...And About Tomorrow
Sometime between 9 p.m. Monday and noon Tuesday, you will see the following headlines:
MAGA Parties While California Burns
Trump Oversteps Constitution on Day One
Trump Inaugurated in Rotunda Insurrectionists Claimed Four Years Ago
Look, it’s just going to happen so be ready for it.
But what will happen after that blurch of “resistance” is anyone’s guess.
Because this time it’s different.
Trump knows what he is up against, he has been self-funding the entire transition to avoid deep state infiltration, and he has a team ready to hammer home his policies from the start.
In 2016, only he and maybe one or two other people in his orbit thought he might just win and all of them were unprepared for that to happen.
And now there is a sense of embarrassed defeat amongst the progressives, save for the purest of the pure.
It is a sense that will never be openly admitted, but one can almost feel a “well, um, maybe, um, if we keep our real power base in place in the bureaucracy and the foundations and academia and media we might get through this.”
But deep down, in that lizard brain place, they know that will not happen.
It will become a desperate Jacobite rearguard action as opposed to an active resistance. And while the word resistance evokes realities of bravery and fantasies of “I would have killed Hitler,” it has never quite actually been that – it’s been about status and paychecks and power and everyone now knows that.
It has always been about keeping jobs and power and societal purchase and sitting at the cool kids table in middle school.
True, it did drive Trump from office for four years but, well, see what happens tomorrow.
Bits and bobs will surface here and there; the Daliy Beast will still continue to quote “Republicans,” the networks will keep showcasing their anti-Trump friends, and the cultural chum will still continue to be stirred just to provoke a reaction.
But it just won’t be the same Monday afternoon. It’s Trump 2.0 and this time he knows what to do.
Speaking of 2.0, California Gov. Gavin Newsom – besides giggling and dressing so purposefully down it was actually more up than showing up at a fire looking more out of place than Nixon on the beach -
He actually referred to the fires as a chance to create “Los Angeles 2.0.”
Oddly enough, this has not set off a maelstrom of internet oddity like that occurred after Maui tragically burned.
I think it has to do with Trump being elected president, in a semi-sideways way.
Newsom calling for “Los Angeles 2.0” should have promoted the following:
Newsom Borrowed Oprah’s Space Laser to Burn LA to Create Smart, 15 Minute Cities to House the Olympics!
But that didn’t happen, in large part because the failure of the government agencies was so all-encompassing that no conspiracy theory was needed to explain the devastation – it was too obvious that it was largely man-made (or woman-made or trans-made or fluid-made.)
The election of Trump has allowed eyes and ears and mouths to be opened and it has allowed those with those newly opened eyes to actually say – grounded in reality – what they really think.
Conspiracies are unnecessary when the facts are staring everyone in the face.
For this week’s epigram, I thought I’d reference one of the most astonishing turns of phrases in recent publishing history.
In the film “Schindler’s List,” there is a scene in which a little Jewish girl, wearing a bright red coat, ambles down the street, in full view of the Nazi horde lining up and gunning down her family and fellow ghetto residents,
It is almost as if she channeled Obi-Wan Kenobi’s ‘these are not the droids you are looking for” as she just walked by – unnoticed by the Nazis.
If you recall, it was the only speck of color in the film.
And why was that? Because Thomas Keneally’s book, originally called “Schindler’s Ark,” contained one moment of pure evocation.
To be blunt, the book is a clunky read and the film is in general far better at telling the story.
But Keneally wrote that the child was “imperceptible in scarlet,” an astonishing balance between two words that have never been paired before.
As we all know, scarlet is never, ever imperceptible.
Imperceptible in scarlet, indeed.
A lesson we can all learn from.
Final note – in the film the girl dies. In real life, she lived.
Truly imperceptible in scarlet.
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