A couple of years ago, when the ventriloquist Otto Peterson (of Otto and George) died, I listened to a conversation in which someone kind of unpacked the art of ventriloquism in a way I'd never heard before. I'd understood since I was a kid the mechanics of talking without moving your lips through phoneme substitution (where a phrase like "Spider-Man will be right back" becomes "Stider-Nan will gee right gack"), but there's this other component that I'd never considered... and it's mind-bending.
The ventriloquist has to deliver his character's dialog while his facial expressions convey the appropriate reaction to that dialog, which usually its exact opposite. If the figure is angry while you're surprised, you have to look surprised and sound angry. You have appear accusatory while sounding defensive. You have to appear smug while saying something that undercuts yourself. This speaks to a cognitive duality, an ambidextrous frame of consciousness that seems so distantly out of reach that I haven't even bothered to be curious about it.
And now, the results of this presidential election have left me duty bound to learn this very skill, inviting the question, "Can I root for a president even as I uphold my own private vow to donate to the legal defense fund of those he has promised to sue during the course of his campaign?"
I'm a badly-bruised independent voter who cannot even imagine a shower long and hot enough to wash off the past 7,000 months of this presidential race. The task that I (and slightly more than half of America) face is that we have to now root for this man. I am taking this responsibility very seriously. I'm tempted to hope he fails, but I'm pushing past that impulse and hoping for his success. It's all I want.
I know, Trump voters, that you know what this struggle is like. You must have hoped for the well-being of the country even as you saw people you didn't agree with being voted into the White House, and it must be obvious to you how difficult this is since so many of you didn't come remotely close. This is not a criticism. As I stand here in a hailstorm of partisan bullshit, having just been asked to choose from the two least liked candidates in the history of the Republic, one of whom has all but promised to rule as an authoritarian dictator, limit the powers of the press, pursue the prosecution of his political enemies, I'm a little tender. And I'm gonna kind of need a minute.
Conversations with people dear to me have revealed a perplexing route towards solace. I've had a number of people tell me to relax because Donald will be surrounded by people who will not allow him to act according to his own brash and childish impulses. I appreciate their candor, but also share this link to Merriam-Webster's website because I'm not at all sure they are familiar with the most common definition of the word "reassuring."
Many of my friends assert that this is what the 2008 election was like for them, although Obama, say what you will about him, did not see the abandonment of 20% of the elected officials from his own party. He was endorsed by some newspapers. Half of the living presidents deemed him fit for office.
The ventriloquist has to deliver his character's dialog while his facial expressions convey the appropriate reaction to that dialog, which usually its exact opposite. If the figure is angry while you're surprised, you have to look surprised and sound angry. You have appear accusatory while sounding defensive. You have to appear smug while saying something that undercuts yourself. This speaks to a cognitive duality, an ambidextrous frame of consciousness that seems so distantly out of reach that I haven't even bothered to be curious about it.
And now, the results of this presidential election have left me duty bound to learn this very skill, inviting the question, "Can I root for a president even as I uphold my own private vow to donate to the legal defense fund of those he has promised to sue during the course of his campaign?"
I'm a badly-bruised independent voter who cannot even imagine a shower long and hot enough to wash off the past 7,000 months of this presidential race. The task that I (and slightly more than half of America) face is that we have to now root for this man. I am taking this responsibility very seriously. I'm tempted to hope he fails, but I'm pushing past that impulse and hoping for his success. It's all I want.
I know, Trump voters, that you know what this struggle is like. You must have hoped for the well-being of the country even as you saw people you didn't agree with being voted into the White House, and it must be obvious to you how difficult this is since so many of you didn't come remotely close. This is not a criticism. As I stand here in a hailstorm of partisan bullshit, having just been asked to choose from the two least liked candidates in the history of the Republic, one of whom has all but promised to rule as an authoritarian dictator, limit the powers of the press, pursue the prosecution of his political enemies, I'm a little tender. And I'm gonna kind of need a minute.
Conversations with people dear to me have revealed a perplexing route towards solace. I've had a number of people tell me to relax because Donald will be surrounded by people who will not allow him to act according to his own brash and childish impulses. I appreciate their candor, but also share this link to Merriam-Webster's website because I'm not at all sure they are familiar with the most common definition of the word "reassuring."
Many of my friends assert that this is what the 2008 election was like for them, although Obama, say what you will about him, did not see the abandonment of 20% of the elected officials from his own party. He was endorsed by some newspapers. Half of the living presidents deemed him fit for office.
Most of us who voted to defeat Trump have had the experience of seeing two elections go to George W. Bush, so this is not our first concessionary rodeo. There's a difference. In the alternate universe where Clinton lost the election to John Kasich (dreamy, dreamy John Kasich) there is certainly disappointment, but no bewilderment. For years, my argument against the daily recitation of the Pledge of Alligence by school children has been that its immoral to promise the government that you'll do whatever they ask you to because, and this was the most laughably hyperbolic thing I could think of, you wouldn't expect your kids to support a government who was going to start rounding people up. In that imagined dystopia, I'd assumed the rounding up to be a whispering, shadowy policy -- not a campaign promise.
I've found some conciliation in the numbers. Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic notes via Twitter, "Without the electoral college, narrative would be: Trump so unpopular that Clinton got 6 million fewer votes than 2012 BHO and still won." So maybe our national identity hasn't really changed. A lot of us have been shaken out of complacency, which can't be bad. My support for our looming president is inexstricably entwined with the idea that almost everything he has said since the June before last was an overt lie -- and his Politifact ranking suggests that to be completely plausible. So, hooray.
Maybe this guy just built a step ladder out of klansman and Sandy Hook deniers so he could get into office and go super-progressive. At this point, that seems as likely as anything.
I've found some conciliation in the numbers. Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic notes via Twitter, "Without the electoral college, narrative would be: Trump so unpopular that Clinton got 6 million fewer votes than 2012 BHO and still won." So maybe our national identity hasn't really changed. A lot of us have been shaken out of complacency, which can't be bad. My support for our looming president is inexstricably entwined with the idea that almost everything he has said since the June before last was an overt lie -- and his Politifact ranking suggests that to be completely plausible. So, hooray.
Maybe this guy just built a step ladder out of klansman and Sandy Hook deniers so he could get into office and go super-progressive. At this point, that seems as likely as anything.
I don't know, man. Dazzle me.
"YOU'RE the puppet!"
-- Jerry Mahoney, Lester, Mortimer Snerd, and the 45th President of the United States of an Astonished America
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