The idea is for the goblins and zombies and monsters of our darker nature to come out on Halloween, do their scary gig safely and without fuss, for the amusement of little children and the bank balances of candy manufacturers and costumers, and then properly retire back into the Crypt until next year, without making a nuisance.
The year 2016 is proving the exception. The real hobgoblins and scaries, the spirits of envious hatred and fear, seem set on holding on all the way to Nov. 8 and beyond, four years at least, wearing especially unpleasant garb like pointed white hoods or swastika armbands, dreaming of high walls built by somebody else to keep the “other” at bay, while so many of the “wrong” sorts get stopped and frisked along the way. The disgruntled angry have been there all along, of course, lurking in the shadows of regions bypassed by the highway of general progress, but are being kept alive in the public realm past their Crypt date this time by the sinister nourishing breath of a Great Vile Orange Jack-O-Lantern, who will not give up nor learn the lessons of humility and decency and public virtue. No Jack Skellington he, discovering the innocent blessings of Christmas Town before it’s too late.
This strange apparition began as the merest of toddlers, pampered and privileged and coddled even as he dashed apart the building blocks of his siblings, just for the cussedness of it. He learned ruthless competition in prep school, and came to believe there were only two kinds of people in the world: superior winners like himself, and all who stood in his narcissistic way, losers and wretches incapable of making “the Deal”—or of appreciating how wonderful and clever and superior the Orange One was, for did he not readily remind us all of it?
This monster-in-training learned to stiff his contractors early on, threatening to send the hounds of legal Cerberus upon all who might want to get paid what they were due whenever the Orange One found it convenient to do otherwise. And as the creature’s ambitions grew, so too did his failures (which could never be any of his own fault, of course). We won’t even dwell on his domestic tranquility, but instead observe the concrete and steel of it.
The 8th Wonder of the World arose on the strands of Atlantic City, a Taj Mahal of avarice and exploitation, intending to feed on the gambling predilections of rich and poor alike. Yet one servant of the public press dared to see the nakedness of this new emperor, doing the sums on all the extravagant gilding and crystal saddling this temple of useless kitsch and predicting its imminent collapse. That the Orange One did not like, and using his great power and influence saw to it that the impertinent naysayer lost his job, even as the Taj Mahal collapsed on schedule, just as the unemployed scribe had predicted. Such are the pitfalls of speaking Truth to that Power.
That was the Orange One with only wealth and arrogance at his command. Now imagine such a one with the dread instruments of the Justice Department and the National Security Agency at his bidding, cleansed of course of more naysayers who might quibble at the Constitutional proprieties of due process or human fairness. And furthermore, appointing court justices of temperament congenial for his wispy running mate, and his associates, a rancorous group who demand all institutions not conflict with their certainty that the Earth is but 6000 years old and that climate change is only a foul plot spawned by the Chinese.
All are slated to receive an education most “bigly” to go along with the one obtained at as high a price at a certain ephemeral University, part of a long string of ventures the Orange One found suited to his talents of huckerstering ambition, but not ones that met the test of a valid market. You could fly on his planes or devour his steaks or swill his liquor, until you couldn’t, but always watch as you paid income tax, while he didn’t. And if you were rich enough—oh, if you were rich enough—you would always be welcome at the many watering holes of his true heart: hotels for the affluent, apartments for the affluent, resorts and golf courses for the affluent, all proudly labeled in his name. But not a hospital nor an honest charity nor even the smallest block of low income housing among them.
This was the only world the Orange One knew, or recognized as of value, however much he might bleat on the populist flute, hoping to play Pied Piper for those who could never afford to see the indulgent tasteless gold and marble of his persistent efforts.
Hypocrisy is one tune the fellow knows by heart, note for note.
Against this specter that refuses to disappear in a puff of acrid smoke on Nov. 1, was the Lady in Pants, diffident and wonky and prone to stumbling on too many emails and not enough open disclosure, with a husband whose cleverness and skills were matched only by his inability to keep his zipper zipped. And yet the “nasty woman” plowed on, year on year, schmoozing and working and never giving up, getting most well paid by people of affluence for speeches that just told them what they needed to be told. Not beloved nor easily so by those who watched her from afar, perhaps, yet respected and admired by virtually all who knew her well, from colleagues in the halls of Congress to the alcoves of state, foreign and domestic, and even a President or two or three in ex-President land.
Such a contrast to the Orange One, whose diet of fast food and even slipperier Internet mythologies filled his head with abject certainties that sounded oh-so attractive whenever he repeated them back with waving hands and shriller tone to his admiring and cheering throngs. He saw things on TV that he hadn’t, and recalled numbers on this or that that existed only in the hysteria of some website he retweeted without reflection or checking. An echo chamber where the demonized “media” were no longer welcome, for they persisted in committing the cardinal sin of doing their job and reporting honestly on all that they heard and saw.
The Halloween of 2016 has become an unwelcome episode of “The Twilight Zone” or “Night Gallery,” except with no sage Rod Serling on hand to remind us of justice and dignity in a swirl of cigarette smoke. Though the saints of Late Night have tried to play their part, striving to make light of something that appears far from Light. Keep it up, Stephen and John and Samantha and James and Conan and all the rest. While you still can.
For “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” and it refuses to slow down on Halloween and retire to its deserved oblivion in the catalogue of bad political jokes. Only the voices of the people can stop it now, each one by one, exercising that most sacred right of a free Republic, the “rigging” of an honest vote.
The Postscript for this tale of the macabre is up to all of US to write. Let’s get on with it.
