Little Pieces of Helicopter

Introduction

So let me begin by noting that I am going to be discussing what I think is going on, which is quite distinct from what I think ought to be going on. If we were dealing with what I thought ought to be happening, Frédéric Bastiat would be the Secretary of the Treasury. That scenario is going on in some alternative universe, if at all, and not in this one.

If This Were Any Other Election . . .

So Trump is starting to experience the wrath of the cool kids. They were largely silent during the primaries, waiting silently there in the bushes, preparing their ambuscade, because they thought—knock on wood—that if Trump could only get to the nomination, he was easily the most dismantleable, if that’s a word, and so they thought they would wait until the appropriate time to begin, which appears to be right about now.

But there is a tricky part to all of it. This is not an election cycle that promises to be friendly to predictions, or to tried-n-true strategies. If the times were normal, if we were dealing with ordinary forms of cause and effect, none of this would be going on.

I mean, think about it. We can apply the phrase if any other candidate in the history of American politics had ever done that! to either of the two major candidates, and we could do it with regard to multiple issues. If any previous candidate in the history of the world had handled classified material the way Hillary has done, said person would be in the slammer. Consider the fact that the “conservative” candidate is married to a woman whose nude lesbian photos have been featured on the front page of the New York Post. If this keeps up, we are soon to have our very own Eva Perón, with the addition of the soft porn element, about which more in a little bit.

We are almost at the point where the next revelations could be about the hard porn past of the future First Lady, and where Marvin Schneebknocker, spokesman for the Traditional Values Voters Coalition for Modesty, would start talking about the importance of “art,” the “beauty of the human body,” and the “importance of free expression.” Somebody — and I personally blame ISIS — successfully got some LSD into America’s water supply.

We are dealing with two completely dysfunctional campaigns and candidates. How we got to this point is the kind of fluke that sometimes happens in demolition derbies. Out of the entire American population, only 9% of us voted to have one of these two candidates be on the ballot this November.

But though Hillary is every bit as messed up as Trump, and perhaps even more so because she appears to be doing it on purpose, she has a media establishment that will certainly attempt to cover for her. Nobody will be covering for Trump.

So there is nothing we can do at this point to alter the dystopic election we are in. But what we could all do is to quit pretending.

So the Barrage Begins

So set confident predictions aside. We do not mean it as Beowulf would, but weird is upon us. The most we can do is comment on what we think might be unfolding.

With that important proviso, I don’t think the election is going to be close. I don’t know which way it is going to go yet, but I don’t think it is going to be a squeaker.  I believe the odds are against both campaigns keeping their disastrous performances in some kind of equilibrium. So I think that Trump is either going to win walking away, or he is going to lose in such a way as to make you think of little pieces of helicopter falling out of the sky.

A particular strategy is being run on Trump, and whether it works or not is a matter of whether or not the intended personal demolition in fact occurs.

Think of it this way. The politics of personal destruction will work if it gets under Trump’s skin—and he has the kind of skin that one can get under. But if he manages to subdue those unconquerable voices in his head that require him to get into meaningless spats with all the wrong people, and he gets through the presidential debates without wetting his pants, or anything like that, he stands a good chance of becoming what he never thought he would become, which is the generalissimo of a very large banana republic, one with fond memories of the old glory days—the old days being when people still thought that making America great again was still a possibility.

This is even possible because the wrath of the indignati means nothing to Trump’s supporters. They don’t have a thin skin. They are as surly as a cinnamon bear with a migraine, but they are not craving the approval of latte drinkers in Manhattan. They have no need to gain the approval of our ruling elites, which all works out actually, because they aren’t going to get it. So unless the Donald throws himself off the Trump Tower in despair over the disdain of our ruling creatives, all the enthusiastic Trump supporters will remain exactly that, and all the people who are very grateful for the fact that we have secret ballots will tick the Donald box in private, and deny they have done so to the exit pollster, and hence a win. This possible process could be accelerated by any well-timed collapse on the other side.

I have laid odds against it, but if both principals blow up, then we might be treated to a Pence/Kaine campaign in the last three weeks, and feel like that guy in that battle who had one bullet whistle by his left temple, and then another graze his right ear. Hillary might have trouble with rusty diodes, or with even more damnable email revelations, or a health collapse, and this could happen at the very same time when it is revealed that Melania used to be Putin’s girlfriend, the belle of the KGB Ball.

Why Would It Work Now?

Back to Trump. He got his reputation for bravado, bluster, and braggadocio in the primaries, when he was dealing with a host of Republican candidates that he really did look down on, that he really did feel superior to, that he really did hold in contempt. You could tell how thin-skinned he was even then, but at the same time he was clearly enjoying his role as wrecking ball. He had the whip hand, as they say.

But now, in the general election, we have come to the point when there will be a withering hurricane of criticism, insult, waves of contumely, just because I needed a word like that in there, and contempt, and it will all be coming from a crowd that Trump can’t look down on. It will be coming from the crowd that Trump feels vastly inferior to, and when they begin to taunt him (you know, they), it will be almost miraculous if Trump can ignore them completely. It will be remarkable if he doesn’t take their comments seriatim as his designated opponent in this week’s mud wrestling contest. If he ignores them, he will continue to appeal to a constituency that has been ignoring them for decades now. He will remain their candidate. But if he can’t ignore the cool kids, as I suspect he can’t, then he will blow up in some spectacular fashion, and it doesn’t matter how loyal his followers are—they won’t be able to vote for residue of Trump.

The media establishment, the Republican establishment, the conservative movement, the leftist creatives, are all trying to make this happen. Time for an intervention, polls in free fall, what happens if he drops out, pearl clutching, his advisors are chuckleheads, the RNC with dresses over their heads—all of this is political theater trying to make Trump feel like that proverbial canary that got caught up in the badminton game. All concerned are speaking about all this with great confidence, but these are the same people who, with the same level of confidence, predicted multiple times that it was all over for him in the primaries. We could make fun of them because their prognostication meters are busted—but this is not prognostication. It is a concerted attempt to make it happen. Nobody is predicting that Trump will lose it. They are poking him with sticks trying to get him to lose it. This is not political analysis; this is political baiting.

And always remember that this is a judgment, and judgments cannot be gamed.