SHERLOCK AND WATSON GO CAMPING
SHERLOCK AND WATSON GO CAMPING
In the middle of the night Sherlock Holmes wakes Watson up.
Holmes: "Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce."
Watson: "I see millions of stars, and even if a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life."
Holmes: "No Watson, you idiot, someone has stolen our tent!"
It’s time to look up from the debate stage and ask: Is this election about America's outrageous income inequality, our racial wealth gap, our uneven access to healthcare? Is it about the predatory nature of big business, or the oppression of minorities?
I think it should be about the fact that someone has stolen our tent.
Like it or not, if Bernie Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee, Americans will deduce that Democrats want to replace our historic motto: “E pluribus Unum" – Out of Many, One - with: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Republicans will ululate hysterically in the streets; they’ll wail on the radio, on Fox News, and in every city in the US. The message will be that Democrats are the ones who want to steal our tent. Millennials will get a history lesson in everything Cold War; in what it really meant to live in a workers’ paradise. Baby Boomers will be reminded of the sartorial majesty of the mandatory uniform of the Mao Suit with its four pockets representing the Four Virtues of propriety, justice, honesty, and shame - and the five buttons representing the branches of Mao’s government.
We won’t be legislating access to healthcare, income equality, civil rights, or the safeguards of the rule of law because we will have lost the election. We will have handed Donald Trump the most effective hook of his entire life as a master marketer: a walking, talking, straw man Socialist. Our allies will look at this mess and conclude that Democrats, for the price of hot-dishes and fantasies of free everything, must have thrown the game on purpose.
But back to the tent. On November 8, 1923, right-wingers in Munich attempted a coup that came to be known as The Beer Hall Putsch. Adolph Hitler was convicted of high treason and sent to prison for attempting to overthrow the government. But he and his accomplices were out of jail by the end of the year. (see: Manafort, Stone, and Michael Flynn for more on this.) For Hitler, instead of a crushing blow to his Nazi ideology, his conviction was a marketing coup that made him a star. (see: “You’re fired!” on The Apprentice for more on this.) Germans were struggling under an economy in shambles following their defeat in WWI, and Hitler exploited the rampant discontent by appealing to the masses with the hateful rhetoric of racism and hyper-nationalism. (see: Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address entitled: American Carnage for more on this. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings…/the-inaugural-address/ )
Hitler’s inflammatory speeches blamed foreigners, Jews, and many other countries for the economic hardships Germans were experiencing, and this demagoguery distracted from the treasonous coup for which he and his followers had been convicted and imprisoned. Faux populist rhetoric found its target in an aggrieved populace, and public sentiment began to favor Hitler. And government leaders and Germany’s judiciary, threatened by Hitler’s young followers, failed to speak out against what was clearly a dangerous movement emerging in Germany. Hitler spoke of the corrupt German government and its justices at his rallies:
“For it is not you, gentlemen, who pass judgment on us. That judgment is spoken by the eternal court of history... Pronounce us guilty a thousand times over: the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear to pieces the State Prosecutor's submissions and the court's verdict; for she acquits us." (see: The Trump Administration on the judiciary, the intelligence community, and Congress for more on this.)
It has become impossible to predict who will win the Democratic nomination in 2020. How can we know with certainty that Bernie won’t have another heart attack; Warren won’t be found to have partnered with Hillary in another child sex porn operation; and Joe Biden won’t plagiarize one of Amy Klobuchar’s recipes for hot dish? Michael Bloomberg might be physically incapacitated by a phalanx of newly discovered skeletons in his various closets, and Donald Trump might have committed another homicide on 5th Avenue, knowing full well that there won’t be anyone left to arrest him, much less prosecute him.
This is the slow motion car crash that all Democrats have feared. After a contentious nominating convention, nobody will be left to universally admire - nobody will be left to enthusiastically hold up as an unsullied leader - a person our children can emulate. While we can’t find a leader with whom all Democrats can fall in love, the eternal court of history will, indeed, have its say. And that’s because Donald Trump presidency is a redux of the rise of a Hitler figure in American politics. It is the screenplay for the inevitable reelection of Donald Trump. It’s almost as if this Republican president of ours kept a copy of Mein Kampf on his nightstand decades before he launched his campaign and took office.
