Peggy Noonan writing in the WSJ
* * *
Have you had your 2016 Moment? I think you probably have,
or will.
The Moment is that sliver of time in which you fully
realize something epochal is happening in politics, that there has never been a
presidential year like 2016, and suddenly you are aware of it in a new, true
and personal way. It tends to involve a poignant sense of dislocation, a
knowledge that our politics have changed and won’t be going back.
We’ve had a lot to absorb — the breaking of a party, the
rise of an outlandish outsider; a lurch to the Left in the other party, the
popular rise of a socialist. Alongside that, the enduring power of a candidate
even her most ardent supporters accept as corrupt.
Add the lowering of standards, the feeling of no options,
the coarsening, and all the new estrangements.
(*SIGH*)
* TRUE... EXCEPT... GOING BACK TO HILLARY BEING
CORRUPT...
(*ANOTHER SIGH*)
* OF COURSE SHE IS... BUT... NO... NOONAN IS GUILTY OF
BELIEVING WHAT SHE WANTS TO BELIEVE - INDEED, WHAT I'M GUESSING ALL OF US WOULD
LIKE TO BELIEVE - NAMELY, THAT DEMOCRATS HAVE PRINCIPLES AND STANDARDS. THE
TRUTH IS... MILLIONS DON'T. HOW CAN I PROVE THIS? MILLIONS SUPPORT HILLARY
CLINTON. HELL... LET'S BE HONEST... IF HE COULD RUN AGAIN... BILL CLINTON WOULD
PROBABLY BE RE-ELECTED.
* FOLKS... HUGE SEGMENTS OF THE POPULATION ARE SIMPLY...
SCUMBAGS. NOONAN NEEDS TO GET THIS THROUGH HER THICK SKULL. WE ALL NEED TO GET THIS
THROUGH OUR HEADS.
The Moment is when it got to you, or when it fully came
through.
My friend Lloyd, a Manhattan lawyer and GOP campaign
veteran, had two Moments. The first came when he took his 12-year-old on a
father-son trip to New Hampshire to see the primary. They saw Ted Cruz speak at
a restaurant, and Bernie Sanders in a boisterous rally. “It was great and wonderful,”
Lloyd said.
Then it happened. “The Monday night before the voting we
were at a Donald Trump rally. A woman in the audience screamed out the P-word
to refer to a rival candidate. Trump repeated it from the podium, and my kid
heard it and looked at me.” Lloyd was mortified. Welcome to the splendor of
democracy, son. “I thought, ‘So we have come to this.’”
* WELL... THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG... (NOONAN'S ATTACK ON
TRUMP, I MEAN.)
(*SMIRK*)
* REALLY? SHE THINKS READERS ARE SO STUPID THAT SHE CAN
LEAD THEM BY THE NOSE WITH A STRATEGICALLY PLACED ATTEMPT TO GET THE MESSAGE
ACROSS THAT... "TRUMP BAD"?
(*SNORT*)
* SO TRANSPARENT...
(*SIGH*)
It didn’t end there. Lloyd’s second Moment came a month
later, the morning after the raucous GOP debate that featured references to
hand size. Lloyd was in the car with his son, listening to the original
Broadway cast recording of “Hamilton.” “I blurted out, ‘How exactly has America
managed to travel from that to this?’” American history is fiercely imperfect
and made by humans. “Yet in the rearview mirror it appears ennobling and grand.
And now it feels jagged, and the fabric is worn.”
* NOTICE... NOONAN DOESN'T MENTION RUBIO'S NAME...
(*GUFFAW*)
* SERIOUSLY... SO FRIGGIN' TRANSPARENT...
A friend I’ll call Bill, a political veteran from the
1980s and ’90s, also had his Moment with his child, a 14-year-old daughter who
is a budding history buff. He had never taken her to the Reagan Library, so
last month they went. As she stood watching a video of Reagan speaking, he
thought of Reagan and FDR, of JFK and Martin Luther King. His daughter, he
realized, would probably never see political leaders of such stature and grace,
though she deserved to.
* JFK. REALLY...?!?! SERIAL ADULTERER? THE GUY WHO WAS "SHARING"
SAM GIANCANA'S MISTRESS? THE GUY WHO SENT THE FIRST 17,000 COMBAT TROOPS INTO
VIETNAM? THE GUY WHO OK'ed THE BAY OF PIGS INVASION AND THEN LEFT
"HIS" FREEDOM FIGHTERS TO BE SLAUGHTERED? THAT JFK? THE GUY WHO
UNIONIZED FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WORKERS...??? THAT JFK?
(*SIGH*)
Her first, indelible political memories were of lower,
grubbier folk. “Leaders with Reaganesque potential no longer go into politics —
and why would they, with all the posturing and plasticity that it requires?”
He added: “I felt a wave of sadness.”
* PERHAPS "BILL" SHOULD FEEL A WAVE OF SADNESS
ABOUT... ACTUAL POLICIES... (OR WOULD THAT BE ASKING TOO MUCH?)
Another political veteran, my friend John, also had his
Moment during the New Hampshire primary. Out door-knocking for Jeb Bush...
* DO WE REALLY NEED TO CONTINUE...?
(*LAUGHING*)
* DO I NEED TO COMMENT?
(*STILL CHUCKLING*)
John wrote, “I was struck as I walked along a
neighborhood using the app that described the voters in each house. So many
multi-generational families of odd collections of ages in houses with missing
roof shingles or shutters askew or paint peeling. Cars needing repair.”
What was the story inside those houses? Unemployment, he
thought, elder care, divorce, custody battles. “It was easy to see a collective
loss of hope in a once-thriving town.” He sensed “years of neglect and sadness.
Something is brewing.”
My Moment came a month ago.
I’d recently told a friend my emotions felt too close to
the surface — for months history had been going through me and I felt like a
vibrating fork. I had not been laughing at the splintering of a great political
party but mourning it. Something of me had gone into it. Party elites seemed to
have no idea why it was shattering, which meant they wouldn’t be able to repair
it, whatever happens with Mr. Trump.
* Hmm... AND WHEN EXACTLY WAS THIS "GREAT
PARTY"... "GREAT?" (GIVE ME A YEAR, PEG!)
I was offended that those curiously quick to write essays
about who broke the party were usually those who’d backed the policies that
broke it.
* GOT ANY NAMES TO GO WITH THE GENERAL SLAM, PEG?
(*SNORT*)
(*SPITTING ON THE FLOOR*)
Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to
making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not
known they looked down on them. I deeply resented it and it pained me. If
you’re a writer lucky enough to have thoughts and be paid to express them and
there are Americans on the ground struggling, suffering — some of them making
mistakes, some unlucky — you don’t owe them your airy, well-put contempt, you
owe them your loyalty. They too have given a portion of their love to this
great project, and they are in trouble.
* AGAIN... I KNOW YOU'RE A WOMAN AND THUS...
"BALL-LESS" BY DEFINITION...
(*GRIN*)
* BUT AT LEAST HAVE THE GUTS TO ACTUALLY NAME NAMES IF
YOU'RE GONNA THROW OUT THE CHARGES.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
A few nights earlier, I’d moderated a panel in New York,
on, yes, the ironic soundtrack of election year 2016, “Hamilton.” At one point
I quoted a line. It is when Eliza sings, just as war has come and things are
bleak: “How lucky we are to be alive right now.” As I quoted it my voice
caught. I asked a friend later if he’d noticed. Yes, he said, quizzically,
comfortingly, we did.
The following day I spoke at a school in Florida, awoke
the next morning spent, got coffee, fired up the iPad, put on cable news. I
read an email thread from a group of conservative women — very bright, all
ages, all decorous and dignified. But tempers were high, and they were
courteously tearing each other apart over Mr. Trump and the GOP.
Then to my own email, full of notes from people pro- and
anti- Trump, but all seemed marked by some kind of grieving.
* I DON'T KNOW ABOUT PEGGY... BUT FOR ME... IT'S OBAMA
AND LEFT WHICH LEAVES ME GRIEVING; IT'S BUSH AND THE RINOs WHO LEAVE ME
GRIEVING; IT'S PEOPLE LIKE PEGGY NOONAN AND "HER KIND OF PEOPLE" WHO
LEAVE ME GRIEVING... AND PISSED.
(*MOMENT OF SILENCE*)
I looked up and saw Hillary Clinton yelling on TV and
switched channels.
* OH! ANOTHER MENTION OF HILLARY!
(*SLOW CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
"Breaking news," said the crawl. A caravan of Trump
supporters driving to an outdoor rally in Fountain Hills, Ariz., had been
blocked by demonstrators. The helicopter shot showed a highway backed up for
miles. No one seemed to be in charge, as is often the case in America. It was
like an unmovable force against an unmovable object.
* AND... BACK TO TRUMP.
(*SMIRK*)
I watched dumbly, tiredly.
* YOU SAID IT - I DIDN'T!
(*LAUGHING*)
Then for no reason — this is true, it just doesn’t sound
it — I thought of an old Paul Simon song that had been crossing my mind, “The
Boy in the Bubble.” I muted the TV, found the song on YouTube, and listened as
I stared at the soundless mile of cars and the soundless demonstrators. As the
lyrics came — “The way we look to a distant constellation / That’s dying in a
corner of the sky / . . . Don’t cry baby / Don’t cry” — my eyes filled with
tears. And a sob welled up and I literally put my hands to my face and sobbed,
silently, for I suppose a minute.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* SERIOUSLY... WHAT IS THIS... COMMUNITY COLLEGE CREATIVE
WRITING 101?
(*SNORT*)
Because my country is in trouble.
* DUH!
Because I felt anguish at all the estrangements.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Because some things that shouldn’t have changed have
changed.
* SUCH AS...??? (I TELL YA FOLKS... THE LACK OF
DETAIL...)
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Because too much is being lost. Because the great choice
in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal.
* A "CRAZY MAN." UH-HUH. THIS... FROM A WOMAN WHO BASICALLY
SUPPORTED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IN 2008... AND 2009... AND...
(*SIGH*)
And yes, I know this is all personal, and not "column-ish."
* NO. IT'S "COLUMN-ISH." IT'S JUST... AMATEURISH.
But that was my Moment.
You’ll feel better the next day, I promise, but you won’t
be able to tell yourself that this is history as usual anymore. This is big,
what we’re living through.
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