Immunization In Progress

     Normally, we speak of immunization in a medical context: when describing the action of a vaccine, or a childhood exposure to some disease that renders him immune to the disease henceforward. However, the process of immunization bears close comparison to other sorts of acclimatizations:

1. The initial exposure is mild, certainly mild enough to be non-lethal.
2. Subsequent exposures increase in strength, though they have diminished effects.
3. At the conclusion, the “patient’s” physiology is thoroughly armored against the “infection:”
   • Sometimes through the emergence of “antibodies” lethal to the invading microorganism;
   • In other cases, through the strengthening of the “patient’s” metabolism.

     Something of this nature is under way as regards the political farce system and the American electorate.

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     American politics up to the Civil War was fairly tolerable. Yes, the contestants were in the habit of slandering one another. Yes, they routinely forecast the most dire of consequences should “my opponent” be elected. Yes, the Sturm und Drang was seldom a good match to what actually followed...though a few neo-Copperheads would argue that in at least one instance it was far worse. What’s most salient about that period is that with two exceptions – slavery and import tariffs – the American legal order was a settled matter. Only those subjects carried sufficient emotional heft to evoke genuine, lasting passions.

     After the Reconstruction Era, it appeared for a few years as if the pre-Civil War legal and political order might be restored, or nearly so. Yet it was not to be. The rise of William Jennings Bryan and the decline of the Constitutionalist / proto-libertarian Cleveland Democrats resulted in the destruction of the national consensus. With the addition of our first international fracas since the War of 1812 and the rise of the Bellamyite Socialists, the political stew became too hot for many to eat. The percentage of eligible voters who took part in quadrennial elections began to decline.

     Keep your eye on the voter participation rates if you wish to understand the immunization that was taking place:

Year	Percent
1896	79.3
1900	73.2
1904	65.2
1908	65.4
1912	58.8
1916	61.6
1920	49.2
1924	48.9
1928	56.9
1932	56.9
1936	61.0
1940	62.5
1944	55.9
1948	53.0
1952	63.3
1956	60.6
1960	64.0
1964	61.7
1968	60.6
1972	50.6
1976	48.8
1980	47.5
1984	47.4
1988	44.9
1992	51.3
1996	45.9
2000	47.1
2004	51.6
2008	53.3
2012	50.9

     (Sources: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2015)

     Throughout the Twentieth Century, Americans, ever more burdened by federal laws and regulations that wove a constricting web around our formerly free society, disaffiliated themselves from the legal and political order. They kept an eye on it, to be sure, but ever more of them regarded it as a disease, something to hold oneself apart from, “got nothin’ to do with decent folks.”

     There were glitches in the curve, to be sure, usually when a candidate bore less of the patina of the established political class. As the Twentieth Century wore on, the major parties developed tactics by which to suppress such emergent threats to their order. From 1972 until 1992, no true "outsider" to the system achieved enough impact to cause much of a disturbance.

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     In 1992, eccentric industrialist H. Ross Perot mounted a credible challenge to Democrat / Republican hegemony. Though his personal quirks resulted in a third-place finish, Perot's showing (19% of the votes cast) was sufficient to alarm and anger the major-parties' kingmakers. The upstart could have fatally upset their calculations. Further measures, centered on media access and the presidential debates, were taken to reduce the probability of a recurrence.

     Until 2015, it appeared that their fortress walls were unbreachable. But then, no one intimate with "the system" could have predicted the rise of Donald Trump.

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     Regardless of what happens to Congress, a Trump Administration is unlikely to make much headway against the inertia of the "permanent government:" the millions of Civil Service employees and careerists who really determine how the federal government will interact with the citizenry and private American institutions. If Trump's candidacy is to have a lasting impact on American national politics, it will be by reviving the conviction among private citizens that "the system" is not sealed against them. That might retard the immunization underway against politics, government, and everything related to it.

     On the other hand, we have this reaction:

     The faux-outrage from shitweasels like Ryan only show who the worms are. It’s like watching a 500,000,000-lumen light shining down as the cockroaches scatter.

     Trump could run as the candidate from the Scientology Xenu Collective Party, and he will get my vote.

     Trump could whip his Dugan out and piss in Anderson Cooper’s face on live TV…

     …Still voting for him.

     Enough is enough.

     Trump is harder than woodpecker lips. He ante’d up. He’s all-in. And if he doesn’t win, it will be the biggest failure of his career. Period. The demonization won’t stop if he simply loses.

     He threw down the gauntlet, stepped up to the plate, and has been a thorn in the side to every corrupt plutocrat, every sniveling millennial cockweasel, every social justice sissy, every man-spreading offense-taking-horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing-soon-to-be-spinster-vegan-cat-lady, every TelePrompTer-regurgitating dick-squeezer working for state-run media, every deadbeat-handout-sucking-grifter, every tip-toeing-closeted-pedophile-politician, every crony-corporatist-tax-payer-subsidized-offshoring-swindler, every lowlife-border-serpent coming here to mooch, every Stars-and-Stripes-asswiping-Old-Glory-burning-Communist-cocksmoker; in short, he is an affront to the sensibilities of the worst in America.

     He’s the radical Left’s Antichrist; he is everything they hate about America.

     And he is the last ticket out of this mess.

     Be sure to grasp the core message: It's Trump or Armageddon. Should Trump fail to gain the White House, Americans such as the above will be convinced beyond the possibility of contradiction that "the system" isn't merely closed to them, it's actively hostile to them and doesn't care whether they know it.

     The immunization has progressed past mere invulnerability to the disease. We now have corpuscles eager to go on the attack, even if it means a second Civil War far less "civil" than the first one. Frankly, that warms the cockles of my spiny little heart.

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     We're less than four weeks from the climax to the campaign. I'm certain the vituperation and mudslinging will intensify still further. I'm certain there will be further "October surprises," some of which won't be much of a surprise at all. I'm equally certain that the media will only cover the ones it deems favorable to the Establishment Order -- but it will cover each of those as if it were the Second Coming. And I'm completely uncertain of how the final tallies will read.

     Still, isn't this a great time to be alive, an American, and a lover of freedom and justice?