Trump’s Getting Arrested.
"But a President?? Why not kill ... a President??"
Everything that annoys us, that is true or not true in that invocation, from Oliver Stone’s JFK (spoken, I believe, by John Hurt[*]), about the nature of kings ... well, why, presidents don’t imply the same awe and respect. And it’s meant to annoy us, and it does, but I still find myself chewing on it years later, like a piece of food stuck in my teeth. Because it’s meant to answer the question, "How could someone kill JFK??" Because the question is, how could you reach up so high, how could you imagine doing it?? Because you have to get past that, you have to be able to imagine reaching that far, to imagine who might do it.
So. Kings inspire awe and are other-worldly, George Washington choppes down the cherry tree and didn’t lie about it, Lincoln freed the slaves. That’s nice. But in terms of lore, presidents are still a big deal — that’s what the movie is grappling about, pre-George W. Bush, and pre-Donald Trump, before the notion of president had suffered, as William Gibson would say, "a bit of bit rot."
But I’m sure these people thought that about Clinton. He smoked pot, he was a hippie if even a Rhodes Scholar, it was unthinkable that he was president, etc. Therefore, they were justified in doing anything they felt like next to keep him and his out — Scalia and "Get over it!", Katherine Harris and the chads count, Al Gore drumming his fingers on the table, waiting patiently and not believing these people would pull this crap. Yes, but he was a hippie — they didn’t want him in there. "By All Means Necessary," like Allen Dulles fighting the Soviets. Al Gore didn’t understand that — he was Clinton, to them, a pot-smoking hippie, and they’d do anything to squeeze in the door with their guy.
Anything. And they got away with it, and the rest of us had to grumble, because the stakes — and with it, the apparati — had changed. Al Gore didn’t know he was a pot-smoking hippie with aims to replace George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, but he was to these people. There aren’t enough presidents yet — they were all great, or forgettable functionaries. They were Taft, or Hoover, or FDR — who cares. But who do you think you are, &c. Hence the unprecedented (and very modern — remember, the Internet got Obama elected) nonsense. Then 9/11 happened because they weren’t paying attention, Osama bin Laden was a "minnow" (in George W. Bush’s words -- cowboys go for big game, don’t cha know 🙄 ), and then they went to Iraq because they had wanted to, anyway. For various reasons. Who can say.
But ... now, Trump is a president who can’t be arrested, his protestors say, because he chopped down the cherry tree and didn’t lie about it and/or he freed the slaves, it would hurt our constituency as composed, acculturated Americans if something like that were to happen to him. It can’t be allowed, or something. Yes, these people are saying that, because they’re just like Al Gore — who didn’t know he was a pot-smoking hippie, trying to replace George Washington. But it’s not going to work. Trump’s getting arrested.
So who cares.
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[*] That’s what directors do -- they invoke people. They tap people to play roles because you know who they are. - ed.
