This Is What Happens

The movie “Camile 2000” by glancing at the reviews appears to have been an insipid film.  But I’ve stumbled on to the Piero Piccioni soundtrack of the 1969 movie and it is rather pleasant and grooved out, if gentle and unassuming.  Originally a lawyer securing movie rights for film distributors, Piero made the switch to scoring movies and apparently became rather sought after, having eventually composed more than three hundred film soundtracks. 

Earlier, in the morning it was all about getting ready to watch the debate.  I suppose most people were in a form of suspended animation, considering just how the two of them would handle the Access Hollywood tape leak, from two days before.  These were not the Lincoln Douglass debates.  These were not even the Benson Quayle debates.  Trump, confronted, lied, bullied, equivocated and tried to move on.  Hillary did as fine a job as anyone of calling his obfuscation out.  Letting the grim reality of his campaign’s vital signs, speak for themself.

There have been many times on this campaign when I thought he had simply gone too far, or where I where I found his rhetoric outrageous.  The last time was over the summer, where he hinted that an NRA member might assassinate Hillary if she were elected, and picked judges inclined to reexamine the Second Amendment.   Calling out a hit on another political figure is vile.  Were anything to happen to Hillary, that blood would be on his hands.  He was, it seemed mocking fates of Kennedy, Lincoln, MLK . . . How dare he?

What got me in this debate was the outrageous, spontaneous suggestion that if elected, he would throw his opponent in jail.  This is no less shocking.  As has been pointed out by many in the post debate analysis, this is what happens in sham democracies.  This is what happens in dictatorships and banana republics.   Truly, this is what a drunken relative shouts out after having had too many.  This isn’t anything to be suggested with the whole nation watching.  He has no shame.  If he did, he should be ashamed of himself for letting spill, impulsively, that vile toxin.  Even Nixon, was pardoned.

It is the nature of every election cycle to think it is singularly important or that someone on the other side is singularly wretched.  That’s a perennial process.  But we all know, that this cycle is distinct.  We can only hope that this is not a harbinger for the new norm in political discourse.  We can only hope that the brush with insanity, results in an oppositional unity that holds, roughly, beyond this election.   

It’s been a very long contest. I am so ready to watch him be defeated.