“What we are witnessing is nothing less than the failure of the greatest propaganda apparatus in history.”
- Mattias Desmet
Have you noticed yet? — the weird thing about Veep Kamala Harris is how weirdly brisk her transfiguration was from a sit-com character to Wonder Woman, overnight in the reality-optional news media. In a party burdened with complex ideology, she was known only for tautology: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time,” she repeated solemnly on a tour of a Louisiana library in 2022. “So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.” Yes, ma’am. You nailed that ol’ coonskin to the wall, all righty!
Suddenly her time has come! Everything is Kamala Kamala Kamala. Lights! Camera! Action! But, as you have already been informed, time does not stand still. If it did, then everything would happen at once, which would be a great inconvenience to all. In what seems like a magically extended moment since someone told “Joe Biden” to go dangle, Kamala acquired a lance and halo and rode forth to save our democracy.
Yet, it’s a long way to the grand meet-up of Democratic Party delegates in Chicago, August 19, and that journey is cluttered up with long moments like the one we’re in now, moments when delegates are liable to stew, and maybe even think about more moments to come when the magic of the current moment has passed — because that, after all, is the significance of the passage of time! Here today, gone tomorrow! Hope and change! Go through enough passages of time and things can happen, or even un-happen, such as, perhaps, the rise and fall of the Veep as the champion of this figment known as our democracy. It’s kind of like what they used to say sixty years ago in Vietnam about having to destroy the village in order to save it. Only this time around, it’s democracy in America.
At the convention in Chicago, apropos of whoever selected Kamala Harris, someone might blurt out: “Say, who elected you boss of this outfit?” The answer, of course: nobody. Delegates may share their gnawing doubts in the hallways and state caucus breakout rooms. Metaphysical conundrums will arise. All that sub rosa chatter might even coalesce into. . . a movement! In the name of democracy, someone screeches, a public roll-call vote must be taken! Say, what? We thought that was settled two weeks ago when the virtual roll call happened. Nuh-uh, nah, no way, more delegates chime in. Here is your teachable moment: the virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic.
Meanwhile, riots in the streets outside the convention center. Antifa! Black Lives Matter! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
The police, successfully defunded, stand aside and let youth go apeshit. Inside the hall, pandemonium! And so, the momentous roll-call is induced to happen right there on the convention floor with all those colorful hats bobbing amongst the standards of the fifty states — plus a bunch of territories — swaying to the rhythm of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (Thinkin’ About Tomorrow)”.
Things grow complicated. There is the matter of the superdelegates, bought and paid for ages ago by. . . the Clinton Foundation! The passage of time goes from elongated to compressed. As good ol’ V. Lenin used to say: There are years when nothing happens and moments when decades happen — or something like that. Also, somebody recalls, it takes a village to . . . what. . . ? Why, to nominate a candidate.
And thus, ever so democratically, does Hillary seize the moment and the convention, and swoop to the podium on her great leathery wings crying “caw caw caw abortion!” The news media will go into super-overdrive shaping the narrative about the Democratic Party rank-and-file marshaling democracy to save democracy. The story will make the marginalized weep and the lame leap for joy. She-Whose-Turn-It-Is will not be denied! The pussy-hats come out again. The patriarchy runs for its life. . . .
At least that’s the dream.
In the passage of time from August through September and October, something else happens. Reality creeps back onto the scene after a long sojourn in the nether regions of human vicissitude. The economy goes to shit, the markets tank, and war breaks out.
A new consensus congeals through what’s left of the nation:
thank you Democrats for wrecking America. Now, go dangle!
Mr. Trump, having survived three more attempts on his life, gets elected and inaugurated. A great sorting of the mentally ill and the just plain criminal happens. Weirdly, we move forward into the weird. Wait for it. (Things take time.) That is the significance of the passage of time, after all.
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