Today is supposed to be the make or break day. Donald Trump appears to be on the triumphal procession toward being anointed the Republican nominee. Hillary, will, finally, be crowned heir apparent. Those who have not already put Bernie in the casket after South Carolina think they will finally bury him. These are distortions that we take to be reality in the (not-so-) fun house hall of mirrors—you know, those carnival refections that make us excessively fat, skinny or ugly, short, tall.... While we laugh, our secret fear is that the truth has finally been revealed for the world to see.
As a Senator Bernie expressed his independence from the two party system, running as a Democratic Socialist, only belatedly declaring himself as a candidate for president in the party he had always scorned. He should not be surprised that, as he attempts to work within the same Democratic party, he should be less than warmly received. He runs as the anti-establishment candidate seeming to revolt against the Obama legacy he claims to support. Democrats as well as Republicans distort his plans to salvage America, as learned economists debate whether they will throw the country into a tailspin or save America untold sums of money. Republicans just distort the “free stuff” everyone supposedly wants, and see, as do Democrats who term him unelectable, the reflection of the hammer and sickle as a perpetual overlay. And yet Bernie supporters have marched for him in multiple cities where, as a tree falling in the forest, it did not happen because the mainstream media did not report it. Bernie’s fund raising campaign before the all-important FEC deadline is well on its way to raising an unprecedented $45,000,000. They do not see Bernie as dead, though the mirrors want to reflect him as a portent of the Zombie Apocalypse.
Hillary, granted, wants to distort her campaign fund raising as a (zombie?) rising of small contributors, happily ignoring the Super PAC in the mirror. Though she is undoubtedly more Establishment than Bernie, which he celebrates, she is casting the reflection of a progressive, and one could easily point out the contradictions and distortions of her well documented past record that question her change of heart. She seeks to replace Bernie’s reflection with her own.
The ‘real’ question of the presidential primaries, if it can indeed be found in this hall of mirrors, is less who is Establishment or not, who is ‘insider’ or not, than who is not distorted in the multiple compromises and either/or thinking of increasingly extreme points of view. No I am not calling Bernie Extremist but there are those who would; Hillary as Establishment nevertheless threatens the entrenched beliefs of the Extreme Right. There is no undistorted position, especially in the heat of an electoral battle for our values and souls, for the future of this America that is so broken it has to fight for the socio-economic distortions that have been allowed to occur in the somehow still intact mirrors that have come to define it. Donald Trump exploits this ripple effect of shifting reflections. It doesn’t matter what he says, contradicting himself, saying unthinkable things from day to day. What seems to matter is that he says what people have been thinking without a filter. His reflection is larger than life. Establishment republicans and horrified onlookers wonder what can shatter the looking glass. John Oliver's epic takedown last night might do the trick, if only people listened and began to see clearly. How America is to be defined, what inequities and bigotry are to be allowed to happen, these are the questions that Bernie, Hillary and The Donald are engaged in, whether Donald knows it or not. As for the depleted clown car’s Hall of Mirrors, while recently showing signs of life, the republican establishment that has sold its soul to the far right have gotten the candidates they have created. It’s not even certain that Marco or Ted even know there are questions outside their limited reflections. Donald with a few zingers distorts even that; still they claim to have all the answers. They do not seem to understand their answers very well--let alone the questions. To paraphrase Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer is "42."
This is the answer. What is the question?However the specific question of the ultimate meaning of ”life, the universe and everything” has been forgotten. Let us hope that when the voting happens those who remember that there are meaningful questions outnumber those who purport to have the answers but have forgotten the questions. I continue to stand with Bernie even though it is disconcerting how quickly questions that matter so very much can be distorted or nearly forgotten. Bernie or Hillary supporters, don’t forget to vote. Your opponents will not. We all risk being lost in the hall of mirrors. Happy March Fools’ Day—oh, sorry: “Beware the Ides of March.” Oh, sorry, that's not the right day. But it is the day Diarist MattTX predicted Bernie would begin the come back. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. I hope the warning doesn’t come too late. We’ll be sweeping up the broken glass for years.
