The good news is that Trump failed to win over Iowans. The bad news is that the GOP is not likely to run out of trumped-up, self-important ignoramuses and egomaniacal know-it-alls anytime soon.
If there is a third wheel to this standardized joke format, it is that Iowans have only a 50-50 success rate in predicting party nominees, which is some relief.
(Now, let the debate begin about probability trees! At least, we will have something like facts to endlessly analyze, explore, question, and poke about with sharpened, fire-blackened sticks, and not just gut instincts, chicken bones, and leaden hunches to nudge around in the dirt.)
So, with that thrilling outcome in Iowa: Welcome back to Square One, where the Dems have so far appeared to split both hairs and candidates, and Repubs have gushed glory upon their top three choices, separating each one by a paltry -- I mean, significantly meaningful -- point.
For these clear-as-mud verdicts, we've been hauled to the woodshed in chains and been beaten to a pulp in the media anytime we've dared venture a news outlet of any sort, or by merely walking outside, and watching neighbors and strangers go at each other with conversational hammers and tongs!
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The Eternal Political Show we have in this country is the enhanced coercive interrogation technique version -- sorry, I mean torture, I must have slipped into the standard Orwellian speak which has taken firm hold here since 12/12/2000 -- of a snuff film we should be calling The Neverending Story, except that the title's already taken, by a decent and amusing fantasy entertainment involving literature, reading, and use of imagination, so we already know that can't possibly happen here, in Bread 'n' Circusville, where fear response is celebrated and critical thinking is tossed under the bus like clockwork.
So, we'll have to come up some other name. The Never-Ungalling Story? The Always-Appalling Story? The Constantly-Brawling Story? The Incessantly-Caterwauling Story? The Usually-Nauseating Story?
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Hell, I dunno. We should probably have a contest. Open it up to parodying all movie and book titles. Instead of Paths of Glory, say, we could easily have Maths of Gory -- a film alluding to the 100% statistical probability of having an insane, grotesque candidate in office, when the party in question runs nothing but insane, grotesque candidates.
Or, just go whole hog, and have it be something like this: Paths of Incomprehensible Madness Foisted on a Completely Buffaloed and Brainwashed Populace Desperate for Apparent Answers by Puppetmasters of the One Percent.
That last one comes closest to the truth, but I imagine the title would have to be cut down to something shorter, such as Night of the Demented Evil Socialist Democrats. That kind of change would cause a lot of press, of course, about how books are always changed when movies are made of them -- totally ignoring the fact for many years that there was no originating book in the first place, until, finally, GOP think-tankers decided they'd better re-Luntzify their position and actually write one, in order to shore up the billions in propaganda already churned out...
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The upside to all this julbilant jitteriness, jostling, and joshing around, is that some areas of Iowa have seen a spotty increase in revenues since they had their primary date rejiggered by the Democratic Party back in 1972.
See, the media crews boom in, like a tidal wave, and, for a while, you can't get a bed, a sandwich, a roll of antacids, or Dramamine, for less than a hundred bucks a go -- provided you don't mind back-alley, black markets deals, because the networks and major publications, and the Movers and Schmoozers, have cinched up all the legit deals in the every hotel, motel, campground, restaurant, deli, snack bar, roach coach, and drug store in the state, and at 500 or a thousand bucks a pop.
Supply and demand, they'll tell you, with a perfectly straight poker face.
Now, I don't begrudge Iowans their ultra-short-term spike in employment, or the high prices being charged. After all, they're going to need every spare penny in outrageous, free-market "invisible hand" overcharges to pay for Hawkeyes' first-aid mental health care and toxic spill speechmaking triage, in order to help combat a statewide downslide requiring shock therapy and massive depression treatment for all citizens, following exposure to the GOP's finest.
However...
This makes me queasy when I consider how easy it would be for an ongoing confluence of events in this country to create a series of cataclysmic domino falls from coast to coast.
Take our current need for constant political carnivals, for example. Now, bundle it all up, in one huge package, and shoot it off to the center of the sun, where it can burn up harmlessly, with the rest of the hot gasses in the solar system, and where no one can be further harmed by our psychotic penchant for political spouting and sparring...
No, wait -- hang on. I meant to go somewhere else with that thought. I'll try again...
Take our current need for constant political carnivals, for example. Take the attractiveness of a first-primary draw for a short-term uptick in revenue. Then, take the sudden realization that statewide primary dates are not carved in stone and can, in fact, be moved. Finally, take the fact that all Americans (more or less, cough, cough) simply adore cutthroat competition, and will trade you perfectly healthy body parts for the right to be Number One in almost any endeavor, now that the country has slipped to being number Forty-Seven in most categories....
Now, you're talking a perfect storm of capitalism and nationalism, with some faint vapors and whiffs of second-hand entrepreneurialism heaved in for effect.
Voila! Let the law-changing begin! Which state will be first for primary polling NEXT time? Stand back, ladies and gentlemen, campaign advisors and network consultants, hoteliers and food service workers, lawmakers and campaign contributors -- plenty of room at the political calendar! There's a new "first" born every minute. You got the wheel, and we got the deal! Hurry, hurry, hurry, to the greatest gold rush of the modern age...
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I understand brand loyalty, both from personal experience, as well as from a marketing. advertising, and public relations standpoint. It's the only thing, actually, that helps explains why on earth anyone would voluntarily be a Republican, or vote for one.
My daddy voted Republican, and my grandaddy, and his, and that's good enough for me...
OK, sure -- but what about periodically re-evaluating the product, especially in light of environmental, social, temporal changes? Hello -- New Coke, anyone? Edsels or Pintos, maybe? Corvairs? Need a new icebox or buggy whip?
You may find that you don't need the product at all, if the product has changed so drastically over the years as to have become so outdated, loathsome, or repellant, as to be permanently contaminated with something approaching the Cultural Cooties.
Oh, sure, you might wander over into the Teabagger or Libertarian camps, once you figure out the formula for Republicanism got changed, way back, after Ike, but, once the shock wears off, and you realize that you really shouldn't be subsidizing billionaires, not on your wages, you'll probably be all right. Take our word for it -- being independent, and being an Independent, may seem awkward at first, but allying yourself with friends that you can choose is an awful lot nicer than being forced to get along with a berserk family that gets foisted on you, without getting any choice in the matter.
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Republicans: Talk about having to provide a big tent, just to enclose the wide variety and wide, long sliding scale of egos and psychoses available on non-stop display!
Public Service Clue: If you find yourself agreeing with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and any of the GOP candidates for any office, in the last 40 years, or any of their Brainwashing is Fundamentally Political Entertainment! kin, on any subject whatsoever, please dial 911 and request a reservation at the Rubber Bungalow Inn -- a leisure service of Bait & Switch Enterprises, a fully-owned subsidy of the Tweetem, Tauntem, and Skinnem Corporation, a member of the fine FleeceCo family of companies.
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We have no royalty of our own, it is said, which is why we have to have 24-7 political wrassling shows running without a break -- but, I disagree.
We have Burger King and Dairy Queen -- or is it the other way around? Burger Queen? Dairy King? (I forget. The times have changed so much, it may not even be politically correct to refer to them that way now. If I have offended, I apologize, profusely, and in exactly the same reverent, deeply-felt manner exhibited by all Republican candidates.)
Even if we do have our own royalty available to us -- figure the number of companies with King or Queen in their names, or even Aces of Jacks, maybe -- we'll still need something to obsess over in terms of of our national need for box-score accountancy. In this, politics is excelled by few things...
... and, in this latest report, Representative Bonzo is polling well among the 12-to-19 year olds, and among those who purchased something red-and-orange in the previous six days, and who vacation in towns with more vowels than consonants, almost tying the high scores received by Candidate Zeroid among basement-apartment-hunting 24-to-29 years old, who have recently stubbed their toes, while working in industries primarily situated in countries with tax havens allied to....
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Quotes: They contain wonderfully compressed nuggets of authentic wisdom or humor, or, if you're lucky, both.
Primary season always makes this one from George Burns never stray very far from the edges of my remaining shell-shocked consciousness: Sincerity -- if you can fake that, you've got it made.
(In fact, this may be Trump's new unabashed slogan, following his slight misstep -- I mean, his crushing defeat -- in Iowa.)
From another master observer of life, we have in Macbeth, more stirring Primary Season commentary: ...It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...
Hmmmm. Funny. I could have sworn that last one was "full of yawn 'n' fury." Just goes to show you what wish fulfillment, paying attention to too many GOP speeches, and full-time exposure to radioactive politics, will do to your brain.
Therefore, being completely wrong here, I am willing to take my own medicine: I hereby declare and welcome my own personal self into the Land of the Idiot. (Why not -- I'm an American, after all, and being an idiot is my birthright -- a right no amount of logic, or gummint interference, or community good, can put asunder!)
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By the way, I've already got $25 on Alburquerque, at 12:01 a.m., January 1, 2017, and $35 on Fargo at 12:01 a.m. on November 9, 2016. Word to the wise, is what I'm sayin', if you're among the masses of the former middle class, now reduced to sleeping in your car, drivin' place to place on short term job hopes, lookin' for a head start to the next Big Economic Boom, before the bubble busts...
Again.
... for the tenth or twelfth time in the last 25 years, I mean -- not that you'll hear any speeches about that one.
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Meanwhile, back in Surreality: On to the New Hampster Wheel of Fortune!