I might start wearing a MAGA hat. We, as a country, need to grab that hat by the visor, place it proudly on our heads, and understand what it finally means. What is it that truly makes America great? Is it the unemployment rate? Is it healthcare? Is it manufacturing? Is it free trade? Is it our conflicting views on immigration reform and wall building? Is it our conflicting views on religious freedom's, free speech, and free guns?
These arguments are simply conversations about an idea. The conversations themselves do not make us the "City on the Hill". The fact that we can have these arguments without destroying one another is what makes us the "City on the Hill". It's different. The medium is the message as Marshal McLuhan has told us. It is not the actual text of the message it is the conveyance for that message. It is the reason our forefathers came. It is the reason our immigrant families came. It is the reason we have waves of immigrants knocking at our southern border (not withstanding the possibility that the current surge is directly correlated to the belief that the doors of the "City on the Hill" will soon be closed). Nothing has changed significantly about our desire to have these conversations or our freedom to have them. Yes, having these conversations open, visible, and viscerally on Face Book is annoying but we are slowly getting used to it. Civil discourse is catching on, at least among friends, or people are choosing not to start riots with their keyboard as we were doing frequently last year.
But this doesn't tell you why I might go out an buy a MAGA Hat today...
In the climax of the blockbuster movie SPLIT by M. Knight Shalamalan, James McAlvoy exclaims through clinched and bloody teeth, "The Broken are the More Evolved". To me, this quote applies as equally to a body of people, as it applies to the an oppressed individual who has been through the trials of life, suffering extreme abuse, and has emerged, stronger, not broken. This, beside, the genius of creating an entirely new super hero galaxy to rival MARVEL and DC COMICS behind our backs, is the beauty of "The Horde" Shalamalan created. In his creation he uses 24 separate personalities to comprise his final character. How is that final beast not us? True we don't go around resisting bullets, crawling across ceilings, or eating cheerleaders for fun, but that's just an analogy for the corruption within a society that has no checks and balances. It's total anarchy. Unchecked, seemingly normal people will take every advantage offered to get a better deal on a purchase, a loan, a job, or on a position that affects them. Unchecked, seemingly normal people will take every advantage offered (or not offered) to get their kid into a better class, a better program, or a better college like USC (seriously?). The Horde is trying to set straight the corruption inherent in this normalcy. Remember the "Bell Curve". The Bell Curve is the normal distribution, or the Gaussian. I'll spare you the intricacies of the normal distribution but just about everything we see in our daily life can be modeled with the normal distribution. Overtime, the convolution of multiple disparate probability distributions will also become normal. So this means, over the long haul, everything is normal. Even Black Swan events (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) events become normal over the course of billions of years. But we don't have that long...we have enough time for one, maybe two Black Swan's in a lifetime. Let's digress for a second to consider one scene from the movie Black Swan with Natalie Portman. Ok, moving on... The only way to beat the normal distribution is to cheat (or to be different). Once everyone is normal, everyone is the same. Once everyone is a Super Hero, No one one is Super (to quote form the Incredibles). Evolution cheats the normal distribution with genetic defects, at least until it catches up. It takes a defect to evolve. The Horde was right, the broken are the move evolved...or more correctly, they help us evolve. Without them we become normal, homogeneous, the same...maybe you see where I am going with this?
The internet has been the great equalizer. When everyone has access to the Kelly Blue Book Values, stores like CARMAX become the norm. We now all pay a fair price for our cars, even at the dealer. You know who prides himself on the art of the deal. Yep, our POTUS, 45, The Donald, TRUMP. He wrote the book on the "Art of the Deal". Actually, he didn't write it. He cheated. Someone else wrote it and he got the credit. That single act was not worthy of headlines since there are a lot of professional ghost writers out there. But Trump will perhaps had the greatest increase in personal equity by a book he didn't write once elected President. That book didn't do it alone, but it was on his CV. As was his continual appearance on 14 seasons of the Apprentice. So too were his constant media appearances and his tweets. He has personified there is no such thing as bad publicity. Summed up in his statement, "I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot someone, and not lose voters". His core supporters loved this statement. The rest of us threw-up in our mouth. Not because we were disgusted, but more so because we knew it was true...
The Battle with Trump has been lost. He won. Yet the war is not over. The two years we've stressed and agonized over the Mueller investigation has come to an end. Every possible correct belief we have had about the lack of ethics, honesty, moral compass, and unfettered narcissism of our POTUS has proven out on the pages of that report. Yes, I rejoice for the Country that Trump was not colluding with Russia in the sense he was not plotting with Putin in some smoky back room. Although the love he gave Putin on stage in Helsinki still defies logic. But Trump saw the advantage of what was happening, and allowed it to play out in his favor. Many of us would also let something like that play out to our advantage...again, his supporters don't see anything wrong. If Russia takes down Hillary Clinton, and all I do is standby and watch it go down, that's to my advantage. And if Russia gets caught doing that, bad Russia. Duplicity runs a muck. Duplicity is prevalent in both parties. Neither one is immune. It's a human condition. It's a defect. It makes us broken.
But with the publication of the Mueller investigation, our system of government has prevailed. We will win the war. Through ten documented attempts to quash the Mueller investigation the Cheater in Chief was unable to bring the advantage of the Presidency to his rescue. He was unable to make a deal. He had no fixers, no facilitators, no cronies...although he tried. Even though Barr is clearly in Trump's camp, he has released the report. He made it public. The damage is been done. The Mueller Investigation is now the most important document to our democracy. It should be held under lock and key, and protected from the elements, for the next several centuries, for as long as our Country stands. It should be wheeled out on the 4th of July. It should be curated among the many letters of state, the Articles of Confederation, The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, The Gettysburg Address. It is that great of a document.
We don't have to impeach Trump to win. We just did. Our Country came face to face with the broken, both Trump is broken (morally), and our Country is broken, split in half by our politics. But we have emerged on the other side with a comprehensive investigation and exposure of his wrong doing. And we will evolve, just like we did as a country after we made other mistakes. We have to be broken to heal. We have to be broken to evolve. And in the words of Kelly Clarkson, "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger.
So it took Trump, the corrupt of the corrupt, to highlight how bad it can be. On the brink of doing everything wrong, we will now set upon a course to do everything better. And it was our system of government that has prevailed. Ironically, after his broken Presidency, Trump will have Made America Great Again by being the worst President in our Country's history. And that is why I may buy a MAGA Hat...
