"In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line." - George Carlin, Comedian
***
There's an old saying about singing, dancing and/or swimming: Those who can't, shouldn't try. It applies, clearly, to professional comedy as well.
American politics, at least so far as this century can tell, has reduced itself to a level not (or rarely) seen in our rather short history. We are literally bombing on the world stage.
See how that kinda doesn't work for me? If I tried to play the oboe, it would illicit the same response, because that's not my thing. But if want to tell you a story about Bobo the Hobo and the Oboe from Rio Lobo... See, that's my thing.
With the Trump presidency came the blaring amplification of political violence fueled by right-wing anger. Those embers on the fringe, which never fully cooled after the Civil War, were fanned by politicians who are frankly exploitative of hard feelings, and who are otherwise without many, if any, ideas.
Because that's their thing.
As a strategy, tapping into negative emotions of voters is cynical in the best light. Is it sufficient to win primary elections? Sure. Will it prevail in Congressional districts? Or statewide elections? In some states, reliably and predictably, the answer is yes. But not all.
The militarization of politics is nothing new, but it is something bad. The most overt purveyors of hostility, rather than civility, are on TV and the Internet all the time. They know who they are, and so do we.
In the grandest of Republican traditions, however, the war-talk has trickled down to the Party's lower branches. Like the toxin that it is, the ill-intentioned vitriol filters its way through the cellular membrane of the very social contract that built and sustained our country. Now this partisan belligerence pops up, like a parking lot carnival, at every other school board meeting.
Accordingly, paraphrasing Sergeant Rock has become a localized pastime, with linguistic potato mashers being hurled by even the lowest among the rank and file:
"We were in the middle of hand-to-hand combat trying to win and those resources could have helped here." said Bill Palatucci, described generously by CNN as a "national RNC committeeman" from New Jersey. He was griping about the $121,000 that the Republican National Committee gave to one of Donald Trump's legal firms while the Garden State's gubernatorial election was taking place.
By no means is this normalization of clarion calls for political violence confined to conservatives; they just happen to be better at it, that's all. Yet, look, and see Ari Berman, of old 'Mother Jones' fame, valiantly using Twitter to label GOP redistricting efforts in Georgia as "Total Asymmetric Warfare".
Hand to hand combat. Total asymmetric warfare. Delivered with a straight face - and appropriately so. It's not a joke, it isn't funny. We're not playing a game. We're playing with fire.
- GG
