We Didn't Start The Fire

Like a blackout drunk at the ragged end of a three decade bender, ace Wall Street Journal political reporter and semi-aquatic alcohol beverage enthusiast, Peggy Noonan, has no idea how anything happened, or who did what, or why they did it, or when.  All she knows for sure is that when she woke up this morning sprawled on the dewy, well-tended lawn of the St. Ronald Reagan Tomb and Gift Shoppe someone had stolen her underpants, her youth and the last of the Beefeaters.  Also she vaguely remembers seeing some kind of orange-haired man-yeti drive off with her political party sometime in the night.

Trump Was a Spark, Not the Fire

The establishments, both media and conservative, failed to anticipate how they’d be consumed.

Yes, that other media. 

And those other conservatives. 

Who are part of that other establishment.  

Waaaay over there and not anywhere near Peggy Noonan.

...

It does not show an understanding of the moment to say Donald Trump by himself has changed the Republican Party. It is closer to the mark to say the base of the party is changing and Mr. Trump’s electric arrival on the scene made obvious what was already happening.

For this reason among others, I do not understand the impulse of the NeverTrump people to anathametize and shun those Republicans who will not vow to oppose Mr. Trump and commit to defeating him. They have been warned that if they don’t do these things they will not be allowed to help rebuild the party after Mr. Trump destroys it. Conservatives love to throw conservatives out of conservatism; it’s like an ancestral tic. But great political movements should not be run like private clubs. And have the anathemitizers noticed they aren’t in charge anymore? That in the great antiestablishment disruption of 2016 they have been upended, too?

We don’t know what’s coming in 2016, or what happens to the GOP if Mr. Trump wins or loses. If there is a rebuilding of the party, as opposed to an ongoing reinvention, we don’t know when that will commence. If it is a rebuilding, on what grounds do the NeverTrump forces think it will be rebuilt?...

But it all feels like it happened so far away. At such a great distance from where it all began. One minute, the Mighty St. Reagan was 70 feet tall, tearing down the Berlin Wall single-handedly as it were nothing. The next minute, a living YouTube comment section wearing a dead orangutan on its head was being borne on the shoulders of a great mob of weirdos who wore Reagan tee-shirts while systematically smashing every single precious Reagan icon that adorned the St. Ronald Reagan Tomb and Gift Shoppe. It made no sense!

TV producers were all sure he’d die on their show. They weren’t for Mr. Trump. By showing him they were revealing him: Look at this fatuous dope, see through him! They knew he’d quickly enough say something unforgivable, and if he said it on their air he died on their show! They took him down with the question! It was only after a solid six months of his not dying that they came to have qualms. They now understood they were helping him. Nothing he says is unforgivable to his supporters! Or, another way to put it, his fans would forgive anything so long as he promised to be what they want him to be, a human bomb that will explode by timer under a bench in Lafayette Park and take out all the people but leave the monuments standing.

It must be scary down there, among the little people, running this way and that, yelling things that are very rude and waving signs that are poorly spelled.

Sad and scary and hard to understand. Very hard.  Where did all these unwashed peasants come from with their large pores and old cars? Why are they so mad?  Do I know anyone who can go down and talk to them in the language of their people and find out what all the fuss is about?  And is my emergency cache of Beefeaters still intact?

So many imponderables.

So many unknown unknowns.