You may think: Am I being sucked into a black hole? Is this not how time works when you are being sucked into a black hole?
The good news about approaching a black hole is that you will live a very long time.
The bad news about approaching a black hole is that you will never die.
The best news is that as you are sucked into this hole, you get to relive some critical moments of the recent past!
Relax and surrender to the new physics!
Part ITHE BRIGHTEST TIMELINE
YOU MAY FEEL THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT has been happening for the past four years, but I assure you, you do not. Probably at some point you have imbibed a Bad Fact by mistake, instead of a True Fact. A Bad Fact makes you uneasy when you contemplate it. A Bad Fact has a seasick feeling about it. You may feel that things are going wrong, and that you are powerless to stop them. I pity you! It is time to expel such Bad Facts from your system! Embrace True Facts. Don’t you want to see the world as it is, in all its shining glory and magnificence?! I want you to see it that way, as I see it. I am much happier now that I see things correctly. Are you not sick of seeing only failures and hobgoblins? Hold still, I am going to show you everything that is beautiful and true. Hold still, and listen.
© 2016, Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post
Chris Christie’s Wordless Screaming
It was March of 2016. Donald J. Trump was securing his party’s nomination. And behind him stood Chris Christie, who made a face of such absolute horror that it filled the minds of all who beheld it with Bad Facts. A description of it follows, which you must certainly purge from your memory as quickly as you can.
IS CHRIS CHRISTIE OKAY?
I believe that Donald Trump was talking, tonight, and that he, in fact, held an entire press conference. But it was impossible to hear him over Chris Christie’s eyes.
Chris Christie spent the entire speech screaming wordlessly. I have never seen someone scream so loudly without using his mouth before. It would have been remarkable if it had not been so terrifying.
Sometimes, at night, do you still hear them, Clarice? The screaming of the Christies?
His were the eyes of a man who has gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back, and then he endorsed the abyss.
It was not a thousand-yard stare. That would understate the vast and impenetrable distance it encompassed.
He looked as if he had seen a ghost and the ghost had made him watch Mufasa die again.
He had the eyes of a man who has looked into the heart of light, the silence. A man who had seen the moment of his greatness flicker, and seen the eternal footman hold his coat, and snicker.
And, in short, he looked afraid.
He had the face of a man who has used his third wish and realized too late that “may my family never starve” could be twisted to mean that the genie should murder his entire family.
He had the face of a man who has just realized his own mortality.
Look into those eyes and try to deny that Chris Christie has seen something.
Someone just told Chris Christie that there is no God. Or Chris Christie has just discovered that God does exist but She is an enormous snake who hates or is indifferent to mankind. Or Chris Christie has just discovered that there is no God but that Hell is real.
“When are they coming to airlift me out?” Chris Christie’s eyes are pleading. “Please tell me that they are coming and that it is soon.” But then his expression hardens. Chris Christie knows that they are not coming back for him.
This is his life now.
Soon he must return to the plane onto which Trump humiliatingly sent him before. Soon he must return to the small cupboard under the stairs where he is kept and occasionally thrown small slivers of metaphorical raw meat. When he asked to be part of Trump’s cabinet he never thought to specify “presidential cabinet, of course, not a literal cabinet underground where the ventilation is poor and there is no light.” It just did not occur to him. Why would it?
And now it is too late.
Nobody is coming for you, Chris Christie. Nobody is coming to save you.
Chris Christie has seen things. Things you wouldn’t believe. Things that would make your hair fall out and turn gray all at once. But he cannot speak of them. He can only stand there. Chris Christie is the bearer of a hideous knowledge that hangs on him like a horrible weight. But he has no way to say it.
He is embroidering this hideous truth very slowly onto a handkerchief, but it will not be ready in time.
Chris Christie must stand and watch as his city is overrun with Imperial troops and his friends are frozen in carbonite.
Chris Christie has the glazed and terrified look of someone who has traded his inheritance for no pottage at all, who has watched his credibility dry up and is about to be led back to his basement cage, having lost Winterfell for good.
Chris Christie is realizing that the steak he gets to eat inside the Matrix is not worth this.
Chris Christie has made a yuge mistake.
Donald Trump won at least seven states on Super Tuesday. His path to the nomination is clear.
Chris Christie has no mouth, but he must scream.
March 2, 2016
Waiting for Pivot: A GOP Tragicomedy
THAT YEAR WAS A TIME when people thought Donald Trump might “pivot” to a “more presidential” tone. It was a time of much waiting.
Vladimir Ryan and Estragon Priebus, members of the GOP establishment, sit glumly in rags beneath a small leafless tree, next to a slowly decomposing elephant carcass. They wear matching flag pins. Estragon struggles mightily to remove his “Jeb
