The Laugh, The Ditz And The Showman - Trump vs Harris And The Side Show Of American Politics

That laugh! That cackling! That shaking, camelback, hysterical faux hilarity. Kamala's campaign aides have cautioned her - that laugh is costing us votes, referring as they did to the viral memes showing up everywhere, coarsened and made even more ridiculous by AI.  Hundreds of comedians and would-be comics on social media were having a field day with The Laugh, so Stop It! please, Madam Vice President; but as hard as Kamala tried she simply could not help herself; and when The Laugh and the incomprehensible philosophical wanderings combined, she was a one-person side show of clownish head-bopping and freak show channeling. 

 

'You are running for the highest office in the land, Madam Vice-President', said her closest advisor, hesitating to complete the sentence which should have been, 'so act like it', but came out far more cozily and accommodating, appealing to her sense of entitlement and national purpose. 

'She put two thoughts together before', said another in the candidate's close circle, joking that her boss's dementia was catching, but stopped himself before going too far with the allegory.  The thought of the two of them yakking away making no sense whatsoever, talking over each other, stepping on each other's lines with one bit of nonsense after another made him laugh out loud, but this was not a time for humor as the polls showed the race tightening.  With a closer look at her scripted speeches, The Laugh, and the old chestnuts reheated and sold as Christmas generosity, the American public was losing interest. 

Reprising George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who shouted .'Segregation now, segregation, tomorrow, segregation forever!', Kamala much to the dismay of an older campaign aide who remembered Wallace and the defiant days of Bull Connor and his thugs, channeled the man in a speech to women in Peoria when she howled, 'Abortion now, abortion tomorrow, abortion forever'.  Yet, the aide reflected, at least she was staying on message. 

This message thing was the issue, for while not as bad as Biden - the poor man had been rambling incoherently at the end - and with a lot more pzazz, she continued to make no sense at all once she departed from the teleprompter's text.  Like yesterday in Chillicothe when after a compelling speech about labor and its contribution to America, she wandered into the weeds and talked about labor in the abstract, the higher value of toil, and began a homily about the workers at the Ford factory who 'despite the mind-numbing routine of tightening one bolt after another, the soul-crushing monotony of the assembly line, the American worker holds his head up high, fixes those screws in place, bangs those nails...'  

Then she completely lost her way, pulling out old childhood memories of Pinocchio being hammered together by old, kindly Geppetto then carried off in a wagon in the rain, and the Mexican gardener who still trimmed the hedges with a machete, and realizing she was in the weeds, closed with, 'Well, you know what I mean' and a horrendous, loud, echoing laugh. 

 

There was little her staff could do, for after all she was not tethered, and being her own woman was the whole point.  They would just have to keep their fingers crossed, cringe at the worst of it, politely remind her of the importance of the teleprompter, and hope for the best. 

Meanwhile across town Donald Trump was at his tummler, vaudevillian, showman best.  With bombast, braggadocio, and sheer chutzpah, the man brought down the house.  Cheers were wild and enthusiastic, hats thrown in the air, women rushing to the stage like Easter-hatted black ladies seeing Jesus for the first time in the AME Zion Church of Our Lord, men embracing their neighbors, shouting 'MAGA, MAGA, MAGA' until the rafters shook.  

Trump never made sense either as free and easy he was with the facts, disassembling them when it suited him, confabulating them to make a point, yelling and shouting invectives at unseen enemies.  To his supporters, however, he made complete sense, for they heard what he meant and ignored how he said it.  The circus antics, the fol-de-rol, the Fourth or July fireworks and Mardi Gras floats and pasties were just an act, a defiant, spectacular defiance of the lawfare, villainy, and endless ad hominem attacks from the Left. 

Americans would vote for this man because of not in spite of his bluster and rodomontade.  He was the whole package, a real American, cut from the rawhide of the Old West, honed and readied on the mean streets of New York, perfected on The Apprentice, Hollywood soundstages and Las Vegas runways. 

'Four more years', the crowd chanted as the former President and President-To-Be stood on the platform, arms folded, chin up, scowl on his face just like Mussolini in Rome in 1941, Il Duce, the King of the Realm, playing to the audience who understood the message, the in-your-face hilarious, Saturday Night Live response to progressives' cries of 'dictator, fascist, insurrectionist'. 

The man was irrepressible, unstoppable.  Nothing fazed him, not the show trials, not the childish smearing, and certainly not the crazed allegations of evil.  He went from city to city and spoke to thousands at each stop, while his opponent read from the teleprompter which had, at the insistence of her aides, insertions which said 'Don't laugh here...stay focused...'  

She banged away at the old progressive saws of fairness, equality, justice, inclusivity, and compassion but without juice.  The crowds cheered because the screen behind the Vice President shook like an NBA Megatron and shouted  APPLAUSE!!!!

And of course she simply couldn't help herself when the adrenaline started pumping and the sheer joy of being a woman and the next President of the United States filled her to the tips of her toes, and she wandered off.  'I am Jezebel', she shouted.  'I am Delilah...I am Lilith....I am Eve', recalling the famous temptresses and harlots of the Old Testament, mistakenly assuming they were simply strong, good women but causing a stir in the audience who knew better.  An aide frantically gave her the throat-slitting 'cut' sign, but once the Vice President got on a roll, she was unstoppable, and in this case, she was a whirling dervish of mythic insanity. 

Europeans chortled at this raucous display of American crudeness and lack of political sophistication.  Theirs was the place of Churchill, De Gaulle, Thatcher, and Brandt, commoner heirs of kings while across the pond the cheapest, low-brow, scuttle and broomstick, Punch and Judy, Ringling Bros. show went on unfazed.  American exceptionalism at its most ridiculous best, Sturm und Drang over nothing, the silliest, most inane proclamations, the most transparently empty promises. 

'We are the greatest nation on earth, and always have been', shouted Donald Trump to boisterous cheers, while Kamala toned it down a la Lenin when she said, 'The people will decide'.  And so it went until November, the nation on tenterhooks and increasingly amused at the hilarious exaggerations, the Grand Guignol virtual bloodletting, the smarmy accusations, and the febrile lies.  'Fuck 'em both', said a voter in a mine shaft in Appalachia.