![Karen Knorr, "Ledoux's Reception [Carnavalet]" from the Fables series](https://jillpearlman.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Fables.jpg)
Karen Knorr, “Ledoux’s Reception [Carnavalet]” from the Fables series
You, candidate, can’t help imagining what it will be like to live there. The fight isn’t over – hardly – but days of all days, on Super Tuesday, you can almost taste victory. You let your eyes stray from the grittiness of poll numbers and grubbiness of populism to the picture in your head. Ah, the White House.
It’s been hard – you’ve been to the movies, and suspending disbelief in the masses is a lot harder than it looks. Most of the humiliation rolled off you like water off a duck’s back. The worst was, you had to fight along with those other misfits.
Who knows, maybe they are thinking the same thing.
An amazing piece of sustained ironical satire. To read it well is to see oneself AS one of ‘those people’ who still feel the libido in its demotic form expressed by Cruz et al. The last line captures the moment of self-recognition with the casual nervous idiom of the cynic. This is a perfect comment on the demented politics on display in the Republican Party. If liberals understood what is implied here there would be a lot less chatter.
This is a brilliant comment, Tom. You got it, and more. This is a world of deep and major misalignments – the White House is not even the White House but an even hotter fantasy of the “way things were.” And by the time the candidate gets there (if ever), he will be a stranger to himself. All seen with deep dread.