On one side of the splitscreen plays, some people say, one of the greatest stories ever told. A band of pilgrims wanders the desert wilderness of the American West, maybe the Mojave. The brilliant light of the afternoon sun–punishing, ecstatic, purifying– floods the ready metaphorics of the landscape.
An already difficult and already complicated opportunity for laughter becomes that much more difficult and complicated and, ultimately, difficult and complicated jokes are not usually very funny, precisely because they are so difficult and complicated.
Although riddled with omissions, Pyle wrote and became popular with the presumption that the truth, well told, however personal, degrading, and personally horrific, was a communicative act that could unify. Curiously, once upon a time, truth did work this way, in the stylistics of American propaganda.
And now, in her real life, in her public life, as a weaponized and faith based political operative, she says, through sobs–having recited her struggle yet again without a trace of insight, the doctor notes–she swoons and sometimes even passes out whenever anyone uses the words: “public restroom.”
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
At the height of his authority, in addition to presiding over county jails and the official deputies of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Joe commands 36 different all-volunteer posse groups.
“Yet we have a whole race of people, a whole republic, who believe the myths to the point where even today they select political representatives, as far as I can tell, by how closely they resemble Gary Cooper.” James Baldwin
“Manifest Destiny”: Journalist and newspaper editor John O’Sullivan coined the phrase in 1845. It captures a conviction that glosses a century of colonial expansion. A verbal anchor for the heartfelt, pervasive belief that the government and citizens of the United States have been divinely ordained to stampede across the North American continent–no matter the cost to principles or to life–and to claim it as their own.
So the battle must be joined. McEnany has done her part by helping to transform the previously secular tradition of the White House Press Briefing into a sacred act of Christian Nationalism. She has also provided a glimpse of the forces she believes she is personally up against.
In the coming days, the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its full-Covid press to approve the originalist-textualist Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States. Her lovely autumn nomination ceremony in the White House Rose Garden was a family affair, full of kind, well worded tributes and good GOP vibes. The ceremony has, in the shortest of hindsights, turned out to be a superspreader event, one that has exposed a great many attendees and their families to the coronavirus. It is a textbook case for the contact tracers, whose earnest calls to the White House have gone unanswered.
