The Summer of Our Discontent

More Brake, Less Gas

Summer has traditionally been a time of release, a carefree interlude between the busier times of the year. But lately the season seems to have been dragged into the more frenzied precincts of the calendar, yielding diminished rest for the weary. The summer of 2024 has offered a notable case in point.

The drama began in late June, just a week after the solstice, in the form of the big debate, which was really more of a big reveal, at least for those who hadn’t been paying attention. The strangeness of this episode is that if Biden hadn’t accepted Trump’s challenge we’d probably now be subjected to a summer rerun of that hit 2020 show, The Basement Campaign, featuring Biden secure in the bunker and his flacks insisting on his rude good health. (As things stand, Kamala Harris is putting on a pretty good performance as the understudy, dodging the press for three weeks now, clinging to her teleprompter, and committing to, at most, one debate with Trump, rather than the expected three.)

Biden’s woeful debate performance presented the Democrats with a sudden, and previously unforeseen issue, dispatching the heretofore fit as a fiddle president to the memory wing of the party’s retirement village. That task fell to the Democrats’ Nurse Ratched, Nancy Pelosi, who advised the reluctant subject that this process could be undertaken the hard or easy way. The latter involved a simple deal: Abandon the campaign, and we won’t abort your presidency. You will still have a job to go to during the day. And come January you can pardon your “honorable” son Hunter, and yourself, if need be.

That solved one problem while producing another. If Biden was unfit to participate in a pseudo campaign then why was he qualified to remain in a demanding job with grave responsibilities? Moreover, what was the point of the 25th Amendment if it could not be invoked in a textbook case like this?

Those pesky questions, along with Biden’s sudden disappearance from view, went unanswered because the mainstream media didn’t ask them. Leave it to the captive press to help with the cleanup and gaslight the public - after doing such an effective job of confecting the prior illusion of Biden’s sharp-as-a-tack stature, before obediently doing a 180 and declaring the president unfit to carry on. 

You would think the defenestration of the legitimately chosen nominee, affirmed via the assent of 14 million primary voters, would produce questionable optics for the party tasked with saving democracy for the rest of us, but with the Democrats expediency is the mother of invention. And, as noted, the Democrats control the mainstream media as their inhouse information organ just as they control the administrative tools of government. This, apparently, is how democracy works.

Makeover

The installation of the voteless, delegateless Kamala Harris ensued, proving to be of a piece of the nominee herself, a virtual blank slate. Harris appears to have no record on which she can run because she has done nothing, aside from being the formally designated “border czar.” In that role, she has presided over the wholesale influx of millions of illegal immigrants into the U.S. Perhaps in her mind that would qualify as mission accomplished, 

Aside from that policy success there are a few personal details for the curious voter to consider. Harris may not be the perfect boss, given high staff turnover and her penchant for swearing like a sailor at cowering underlings. She may not be the most motivated or intellectually curious vice president, as she spends little time reading briefings prepared by staff. Those shortcomings might explain her unpalatable word salads, reliably served with generous sides of cackle.  

But never mind all that. With Biden erased from the politburo lineup, the press and party could get back to the important work of photoshopping  Harris in. 

Kamala, the once cringy veep. was now - choose your verbiage - “surging in the polls,” “a fresh youthful face,” “breathing new life into the campaign,” the very embodiment of “joy” and “hope.”

That done, the machine could return to its shopworn script, casting Trump as an existential threat while floating a messaging campaign straight out of Pyongyang. In that effort, every Republican in sight was branded as a running dog counter revolutionary, e.g. “weird,” horned and hoofed, less than human, and therefore persecutable.

The weirdo meme was barely aloft before crashing back to earth with the introduction of Harris’ running mate, a corn-fed, public sector drone Bernie type named Tim Walz. While Harris' problem is that she has no record to run on, Walz’ is that he does. He is Tampon Tim, the governor who signed a law putting menstrual products in every public school boys’ bathrooms. He turned Minnesota into a sanctuary for minors seeking transgender surgery, handed out drivers’ licenses to illegals, and set up a hotline for neighbors to snitch on one another breaking the stay-at-home rules during Covid. 

And then there is the issue of Walz’ doctored military record. In addition to inflating his rank, Walz cut and ran, leaving the military when his unit was deployed to Iraq. Not a good look for a guy who conceivably some day could be the Commander in Chief.

Walz’ appearance gifted the Trump campaign the political equivalent of an empty net goal as it dubbed him “The Weirdo,” sending the Democratic marketing apparatus back to the drawing board and Walz, like Harris, through the rebrand process. This time the loyal chorus of media and party apparatchiks chirped in unison that Walz was “folksy” and “affable.” Tim was that reliable neighbor you bump into at the hardware store on a lazy Saturday afternoon, offering assurances that he’ll keep an eye on your place while you’re off on vacation.

But the big fat fly in that ointment is that Walz wasn’t much of a neighborhood watch guy when it really mattered. He dithered in 2020 during the “mostly peaceful” riots of 2020 as Minneapolis burned and the Democratic mayor, a garden variety lefty to boot, pleaded for backup law enforcement. When the smoke cleared, parts of Minneapolis resembled a hellscape more on the order of Mogadishu. Perhaps the incineration of a number of local businesses, e.g. private property, might help expound Walz’ thinking on the whole neighborly thing, or as he has put it: “One person’s socialism is another’s neighborliness.”

Maybe, as well, this is why Harris chose Walz; they share a special bond. Each has had a hand in transforming, arguably, the two most livable cities in America into places in which most sane people wouldn’t be caught dead. 

Subplots

While all this political theatre took center stage this summer there were competing subplots that did little to lower the heat or dispel the mundo bizarro tenor of the times. Three come to mind.

Dog Ate My Homework

The first occurred in Butler, Pa, with the miraculous escape of the charmed Donald Trump. The spotlight soon shifted from what happened to why and how. After all, the Secret Service projects the image of a martial, buttoned up, can do outfit. The resulting inquiry, alas, revealed just one more plodding government agency degraded by the DEI fetish, one more brick in the Great Stonewall. The public soon learned that the Secret Service is invested in having “a diverse workforce” with a 2030 goal of having 30% of its agents be women, leading some to wonder if inclusion, and not protection, had become job one at the Secret Service.

The public also met this heretofore faceless agency in the person of its recently promoted girl boss director, Kimberly Cheadle, whose resume got a boost toward the top of the pile by none other than Jill Biden. Cheadle, it was revealed, had led the security detail protecting Biden. (It’s unclear why the good doctor, who is a civilian, should be involved in such an important governmental personnel decision.)

Asked in an interview why no agent was on a nearby rooftop which afforded a clear shot at the target, Cheadle replied that the “sloped roof” presented “a safety issue.” But not to the 20 year old shooter, hardly a military-trained sniper, who encountered no difficulty clambering up the barely sloped roof, resulting in the only person experiencing a safety issue that day being Donald Trump. Plenty of civilians observed the shooter’s ascent and alerted authorities to his presence. Moreover, the individual had been seen wandering the grounds with a rangefinder, no less, a full hour before Trump’s appearance, and had been noted as a person of interest.

Perhaps the most wondrous element of this whole affair, aside from Trump’s flirtation with death, was that Cheadle lost her job, a unicorn moment in government. Cheadle grimly held on, declining to resign, and no one above her asked her to. Finally, after a thorough Congressional roasting, with Democrats (gasp) even posing a few uncomfortable questions, she jumped.

Tone Deaf

In the United Kingdom riots broke out after the horrific murder of three girls and the wounding of eight other children and two adults in the town of Southport. Soon forgotten were the victims, and the savagery of the attack, in favor of the government decrying the “far right thuggery” displayed by the rioters. The British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, promised that he would have the court system up and running 24/7 to bring the miscreants swiftly to justice. And there would be more. The government would harness its digital tools to “scour” social media for what it deemed prosecutable “hate speech,” and there would be an overall more coordinated security response by the state to impose law and order wherever said thuggery dared to raise its menacing head in word or deed. 

Violence is never an excuse for the expression or remedy of grievances and should indeed be dealt with by the courts. (Just ask Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, who, after the riots in Minneapolis in 2020, encouraged supporters to donate to a Minnesota non profit that helped bail out rioters and get them back on the streets for a fresh round of mostly peaceful protesting.)

The issue in the U.K.resembles that now emerging in the U.S.: So called “two tier” justice. (Just ask Donald Trump.) Native Britons get the book thrown at them, while immigrant offenders are treated with relative leniency, so as not to offend ethnic sensibilities and raise communal tensions - while insulating the elite overlords from charges of racism. 

As a possible case in point, one recent flashpoint was the city of Rotherham, long since memory holed by most people - if they had ever heard of the city to begin with. It was in Rotherham a few years back that a sex grooming scandal was fully exposed involving the exploitation of up to 1400 young women over a 15 to 20 year period. (Surely adding up to a heap of trauma to rival the recent Southport horror.)

For years local authorities had failed to act on information about the horrendous sexual abuse, perhaps owing to the ethnicity of those involved. Many of the victims were white females from working class backgrounds and troubled homes - non-posh individuals who, sadly, society might see as expendable folk, collateral damage in the noble march to multicultural nirvana. On the other side of the equation, a large majority of the perpetrators were described in the press as “South Asian,” which translated into realspeak as Pakistani and Muslim. Strangely missing from this sordid episode was anything approaching Keir Starmer’s brand of swift justice. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Excessive immigration into the U.K.has been a significant concern for many native Britons for more than a generation, but the government, has done little to slow the flow, or speed the assimilation of groups that resist integration into the British culture - and, in fact, might even be hostile to it. Elite inaction and indifference have strained the social contract, as the pressure on public services and housing keeps rising. Running in the background, the British economy stagnates, offering diminished opportunity and increased competition for its meager fruits. This has left many everyday middle class and working class people frustrated, if not hopeless. When people believe they cannot go to their government for redress they sometimes feel they have no recourse but to take to the streets.

Baguette et Cirque 

The Summer Olympics in beautiful Paris was meant to be a joyous distraction - which it was for the wrong reasons. Things went south, well, before the games could even begin. A big nod here to Beelzebub, artistic director of the opening ceremony. 

The freak show continued, notably in the boxing ring, with a malelike boxer entered in women’s boxing. (Spoiler alert: He/ she won the gold medal.) Social awareness of domestic violence has grown significantly in recent years. Leave it to the Olympic organizers to showcase it as an official event. 

Other issues plagued the games such as no air conditioning and fake food (in Paris!), as athletes pleaded for steak and eggs so they could perform at peak level. This was the Olympics, after all. The organizers were bent on signaling their green bonafides, but the polluted Seine, in which triathletes were forced to swim, sickening some, marred that visual. Finally, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo had had enough. She issued an apology. Not.

What was delivered, rather, was an expletive-laden rant in which Hidalgo went off on the remainder of the human race not offended by the opening ceremony: “F*ck reactionaries, f*ck the extreme right, and f*ck those who want to shut us in a war of everyone against everyone.” Sounds a bit like Hidalgo herself.

Hidalgo, it should be noted, is a dyed in the wool socialist, so she’s likely no stranger to the Oppression Olympics. Another possibility here is that she’s simply taking a page out of Tim Walz’ playbook and expressing her own special brand of neighborliness.

Running on Fear

The world right now is in a bit of a state, and one has no option really but to take the long view. Hunker down, ride out the storm. We appear to be in a period of regress, ruled by lesser people, asking less of us in exchange for taking more for themselves. It’s not very healthy, like swimming in the Seine.

And yet, our evolution into a less violent and more civilized species does continue - fitfully - as we search for an opening out of our current doom loop.

Reflecting on that, I wonder if the remedy lies within, in our very own biology. 

To offer a simple analogy: Just as every car comes with a brake and accelerator, so does the organism. In scientific terms we come equipped with- and are governed by - a Central Nervous System (CNS), composed of two major strands: The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).

Think of the (PNS) as the brake and the (SNS) and the gas pedal. The latter is involved in our immediate survival, also known as the “fight or flight” response. The former is involved in maintaining our ambient, longer term health. It is also known as “feed and breed.”

Use of the SNS in the fight for survival consumes nervous energy, which depletes us. The PNS is there to restore us and regain equilibrium. But overuse of the SNS can hog our emotive energy and tax the capacity of the PNS.

A present day observer of the world from on high might well conclude that humanity is relying overly on the SNS, crowding out the ability of the PNS to perform its vital repair and maintenance function. People are at each other’s throats. Everything is a crisis. The world is going to hell. The gas pedal is stuck to the floor, and the brakes are shot. Fear, high octane fuel for the SNS, rules.

That’s ironic, given that, in toto, we have never been more comfortable, free from danger, and assured of our immediate survival. Maybe humans just have a perverse innate need to invent dangers, create enemies, and fear the worst in order to feel alive. We need the hot sauce.

Fear, to be sure, is easy. It can feel pretty good when life is upside down. Trust, in self and others, takes work. It also takes time, faith, and the discipline to go within - not without - where the meaningful answers always and inevitably lie.

This is why we need summer back, the way it used to be.

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