The most historic line spoken in this presidential campaign season

It didn't come from Donald Trump, Lord knows. Nor did it come from Kamala Harris. It was Minnesota governor and Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Walz, who, in their first rally together on 6 August, turned to Kamala and said,    

Thank you for bringing back the joy.  

With perfect brevity and pinpointed perceptiveness, Walz articulated a long-desired and widely shared emotion whose phrasing is fated to be quoted by journalists and repeated by politicians for decades. His words helped to heal an emotionally wounded nation. 

Trump blew a hole in the American spirit years ago. Backfilling it with hope, pride and forgotten joy is Ms. Harris, whose bringing had the most radiant of lanterns hung on it by Mr. Walz that night in Philadelphia. What Harris had been doing for days we knew, we could feel. What we still needed was someone to encapsulate it in a few memorable words. And Walz delivered beautifully. 

Beyond words we needed what can be the material and intellectual joy of politics; not only the ritualistic tub-thumping for what might be, but the joyful anticipation of the continued progress Americans and their elected leaders can accomplish with vibrant optimism.   

Our joy is heightened because the "American carnage" of  Trumpism is so fresh. The gloom and dark shadows of Trump's country were vivid and quite real in his eyes since he, in "his most natural state," writes The Atlantic's Peter Wehner, is "erratic, crazed, transgressive, self-indulgent, and enraged." Now, "his criticisms [of Harris] are not just vile, but witless."

He knows his market — itself a wretched mass of transgression, rage and witlessness. Perhaps they can sustain it. But on the stump, Trump appears incapable. He once seemed "ominous and threatening," continues Wehner, and "now he seems not just old but low-energy, stale, even pathetic." 

Pathetic he'll remain, but we must remember that "Man will never be free until this last, self-enthroned king is strangled with the entrails of his last valet.” (I've no idea how I got on a paraphrased-Voltaire kick, but there it is.) And by that I mean he might yet become even more threatening and ominous.

Should Trump lose the election, which is looking more likely by the day, his mercurial ego will morph into Mr. Hyde but his Mr. Jekyll will face multiple felony trials and possibly several years of some sort of incarceration.

And we know with absolute certainty one aspect of Mr. Hyde's personality: When cornered, there is nothing he won't do to save himself and remake his miserable existence into a counterfeit winning one, notwithstanding the enormous harm it might do to countless others. 

I'm in a long-standing debate with a writer friend about a Trump loss. He sees a civil war of bloody skirmishes at a significant cost of human life. I see Proud Boys et al. who've been intimidated by their fellow J6ers' prison sentences. Though violence there may be, I have argued, it will be rare and rarely if ever bloody.   

Either way, Trump will give all he's got to making America as miserable as he is. The pathetic little man is already re-priming his supporters to once again buy wholesale his election loss as, in fact, a winner, by emphasizing that what they see today, that which is right before their eyes, is actually unreal.

In speechifying rants and internet posts he's hustling with increasing intensity the totalitarian tactic of no real realities and no truthful truths — that all is a mirage that only he can remake. His opponent's crowd sizes are fake; his inauguration crowd was larger than MLK Jr.'s "I have a dream" crowd; President Biden was ousted in a "coup"; and Kamala Harris only recently "became" Black.

In short, the world is not what it seems. But Trump is there for them, "his people," to explain it all. And like small children indoctrinated into exotic fundamentalist fantasies by a fanatical, authoritative Bible-banger, the Trumpers will buy every word of his otherworldliness.

Then, for all others, will come the extraordinary challenge of maintaining the joy of politics. That most Americans succeed in this is imperative; that for a while they playfully mock the self-righteously irate, and then, simply ignore them.

America cannot afford to allow Trump and his hooligan millions to again betray the joy of politics. For this could be our last shot at it.

Comments

[VoiceOfReason]

Tolkien fans who deep dive into his works will recognize in this summer's abrupt change of fortune for the Democrats an example of what J.R.R. called Eucatastrophe is a neologism taken from Greek ευ- ("good") and καταστροφή ("sudden turn").

"In essence, a eucatastrophe is a massive turn in fortune from a seemingly unconquerable situation to an unforeseen victory, usually brought by grace rather than heroic effort. Such a turn is catastrophic in the sense of its breadth and surprise and positive in that a great evil or misfortune is averted." -- https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Eucatastrophe.

[Anne J]

Yes, Tim Walz articulated what so many were feeling without being able to articulate it. Maybe because joy as far as politics is concerned hasn't been felt in years.

Honestly, I'm more concerned about the supreme court deciding the election than violence.