Programming note: Please join Steyn later this week for a brand new Tale for Our Time.
~As you know, I loathe writing about the so-called presidential "election" "campaign" - because I regard its leaden rituals as one of the biggest structural defects of American self-government. At least other countries manage to produce their dismal wanker "leaders" without two years and a bazillion dollars of exploratory committees and caucuses and the faux-folksiness of Iowa state fairs and New Hampshire pancake breakfasts and all the rest.
So in theory this last month should have been right up my alley - as huge holes were blasted into the stately unhurried calendar on both sides:
In one party, the presidential candidate came within maybe an eighth-of-an-inch of having his head blown off on live TV.
In the other party, the presidential candidate was more successfully dispatched - and the millions of primary votes he'd supposedly received simply nullified.
Either of these would be extraordinary events in any other country. And yet, under the smooth narrative management of the American press, they were mere spasms of momentary discombobulation before the normal somnolent service was resumed. "Democracy Dies in Darkness," The Washington Post informs its readers every morning. In fact, under the court eunuchs of the US media, democracy dies in broad daylight.
First, the Pennsylvania assassination attempt was memory-holed - in an industrial-strength illustration of Orwell's brilliant coinage: any day now there will be some poll showing thirty-seven per cent of registered voters are entirely unaware that a would-be killer hit Trump in the ear. And this despite the fact that every few hours there are - oh, what's the word they use in nations with a real press? - newsworthy revelations about all that the Secret Service did to facilitate the operation, to scrub the evidence afterwards, and to lie to Congress about both.
At this stage, they might as well remake In the Line of Fire with Clint lying on the roof next to the goofball lining up his shot and helpfully suggesting, "Think you might be maybe a half-centimeter off there, sonny..." (On the other hand, if you're looking for some guys to break into a Massachusetts hair salon to use the toilet for two hours and then leave the joint unlocked for the rest of the weekend, this is the federal agency for you.)
In the American media, a tree can fall in the forest in front of twenty million people - and it still doesn't make a sound.
On the other hand, we have ...wossname, you know, the stiff who was nose-diving off the steps to Air Force One just twenty minutes ago. In the entirety of last week the so-called "President of the United States" had only one bit of state business to perform - a Monday telephone call with the King of Jordan. Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had a heavier workload the day before she died at ninety-six. But the same people who've spent the last three-and-a-half years insisting that Joe Biden was the chief executive of the United States can no longer be bothered with the elaborate pretence: the show supposedly has five months to run, but they've struck the set and sent the crew home, and left the star sitting slack-jawed and drooling in his Chinese Barcalounger in the dark on an empty stage. Joe's sole residual presence in the news cycle is when Nancy Pelosi goes on TV and breezily claims to be the one who had him whacked (although the party's other "senior powerbrokers" are reported to be mildly irked by her braggadocio: they assert that, as in Murder on the Re-Orient Express, everybody did it).
So who is running the United States? If the presidency is so important it's worth holding a two-year contest to decide who gets to occupy it, why isn't who's exercising those powers right now of any interest?
Well, that's been memory-holed, too. America's uniquely unique "peaceful transfer of power" has begun six months early, that's all.
So, on the one side, 24/7 coverage of the candidate being indicted, sued, tried, convicted and (coming soon!) banged up in Rikers Island will continue ...but it doesn't leave any resources to investigate him getting shot in the head on live TV.
And, on the other side, a candidate with not a single primary vote to her name has been imposed on the party by who knows who ...but it would be grossly disrespectful to the majesty of her office (President-Designate) to expect her to sit down for a puffball interview with George Stephanopoulos. ("Do you think all these GOP demands that you be able to answer questions on your platform and if you know where it's being kept are because many Republican men are still uncomfortable with the idea of a strong black Montreal schoolgirl running for president?")
Aw, pipe down: They're as corny as Kansas in August, high as a flag on the Fourth of July! Suddenly it's Campaign 2008, and Kamala is this season's hope'n'changer.
Er, wait a minute, isn't she the, you know, incumbent? In the sense that she's in the White House right now? Ha! Good luck with that! Her chums in the press are all agreed that the reshuffled deckchair on the Titanic has jumped ship and is now on the lido deck of the SS Joy:
"JOY" | The corrupt DNC/Media Complex marches in lockstep to propagandize the Kamala / Walz campaign: pic.twitter.com/ObiJfZNaMu
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 9, 2024
I know it looks like AI, but, in these early stages of development, actual AI still struggles to adapt as instantaneously to the morning's Democrat talking-points: apparently for that swift a turnaround you still need real-life American J-school hacks.
Oh, and did you catch the new guy in that montage? The hardcore leftist who mandates tampon-dispensers in every middle-school boys' bathroom just in case little Jimmy is being visited by his Aunt Flo - or Uncle Flo, as the case may be - and whose missus throws open the windows of the governor's mansion because she loves the smell of a burning downtown in the morning?
Hey, don't worry. The press has got this one, too: He's the very embodiment of midwestern nice, the archetypal centrist dad, not to mention a battle-scarred combat veteran who took out seventeen Taliban machine-gun nests on his forty-seven tours of Afghanistan:
BREAKING: In newly obtained tape, then-Rep. Tim Walz tells a gold-star family during hearing on PTSD that he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2004 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, and says he and his troops suffering from mental health issues were "shown the horse... pic.twitter.com/mUzrJJR10S
— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) August 10, 2024
"I can tell you this, having been one of those that came back - we were in support of OEF... When we came back, they showed us The Horse Whisperer and told us to be nice when we went home..."
In order to "come back" from Afghanistan, don't you have to have gone over in the first place? Or was he out there installing tampon-dispensers in the Sword of the Infidel Slayer Boys' School in Jalalabad?
How dare you! I'll have you know Old Blood-and-Guts Walz has an official "Congressional coin" with his self-conferred rank on it:
Hi, @Tim_Walz and @KamalaHarris—
Just wondering, did you also "misprint" your rank as Command Sergeant Major on your Congressional Challenge Coin?cc: @NBCNews https://t.co/KIILqMgj9S pic.twitter.com/fkZrb4luHv
— Bree A Dail (@breeadail) August 11, 2024
Ah, but the gentleman self-ranker, unlike in Kipling's day, is not damned from here to eternity. In the American media, if a tree never goes anywhere near the forest, it can still make a deafening sound. We are maybe a week-and-a-half from a poll showing that forty-three per cent of NPR listeners agree that Tim Walz, unlike Trump, at least took a bullet for his country.
The bad news is that the minimum necessary conditions for "politics" no longer exist in America.
The good news is that since 2020 we've put in place such stringent election-integrity measures that we're now able to tell you three months in advance that, unlike Denmark, Slovenia, Botswana, etc, there's zero chance we'll have the results for you on Election Night. From The Post-Millennial (a non-American publication, natch):
Pennsylvania announces election results won't be available on election night
Yeah, what's the hurry? As the Dems like to say, what matters is to count every vote!
Unless, of course, they're Democrat primary votes for Joe Biden...
~We thank you for all your kind comments these last grisly few months - and thank you especially to all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.
We had a very lively weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Mark's column on Viktor Orbán and the new reality revealed by the Ukraine war. On Saturday Steyn revisited the crude demographic arithmetic that will determine the world we live in, and for his weekend movie date Rick McGinnis picked a Hitchcock classic, Rear Window. Steyn's Song of the Week celebrated the varied career of Norman Newell, and our marquee presentation, Mark Steyn on the Town, marked the hundredth birthday of a great Broadway lyricist.
If you were too busy thinking about the work you're thinking about beginning in order that it will be going to be ongoing, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the ongoing and indeed foregoing as a new week begins.