Been quite a month for political plot lines, no? Since Joe Biden went full Sling Blade in his debate with Donald Trump to a near-fatal assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania to the Democratic Party staging a Covid-inspired coup against Biden. And now Ms. Montreal, Kamala Harris, being retro-fitted into the Dems’ nominee against Trump while her media pals hastily erase her past.

You rarely get this much red meat from the people who run the American political system. Most of the time the public is encouraged to think that Aaron Sorkin’s version of politics on The West Wing is how it works. Earnest liberals gamely coping with venal right wingers and foreign potentates in airtight 60-minute chunks.

There have been occasional attempts to pierce the fog. Veep showed politics as Benny Hill farce, Wag The Dog showed Hollywood’s staging counter narratives. The Death of Stalin showed the totalitarian state managing leadership succession.

But thanks to mainstream news networks, American politics for the most part is shown as a horse race to the White House, one with show ponies, handicappers and media jockeys. That seems to be the way people wish to consume their constitutional republic. Show business for ugly people.

That’s likely why the naked bones of the process being shown so explicitly since June 27 has upset people. Like the making of sausage, the making of laws is a distasteful sight. Guts and tissue on a blood-stained abattoir floor are hard to un-see. The fainting-goat followers of The West Wing are upset that the man with his hand on the nuclear codes can’t zip his own fly anymore.

Gullible liberals, with their fondness for the Covid administrative state, are most upset with all this honesty. As we wrote in September of 2023 of this Gallup Poll : “It shows that from 1972-2022 that GOP trust of media has plummeted from 41 percent to under 10 percent, while independents have gone from 53 percent to under 36 percent trust. IOW, their former favourite news sources don’t jive with their everyday reality.

But Democrats in the poll have vaulted from 64 percent to 76 percent in trust of media. Why? One reason probably lies with being told the narratives that please them. That give them comfort. These consumers allow legacy media’s fact checkers to sort out what they should know from “disinformation” without getting their hands dirty with the original story.” IOW, give me The West Wing.

The previous occasion when political machinations were so stark was the Western cultural upheavals of 1967-74, when assassinations, race riots, civil disobedience and blatant political chicanery poisoned the culture. Faced with insurrection and Charles Manson’s flower-power insanity, the powers of the time abandoned politesse for bare-knuckled reality. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were dispatched to another realm, LBJ was told to go back to his Texas farm, and sources inside the FBI apparatus stabbed Richard Nixon after the greatest presidential win in U.S. history.

There was little subtlety. Chicago mayor Richard Daley saw to that in Grant Park. CBS reporter Dan Rather was gut punched on camera at the DNC convention for getting too close, and VP Spiro Agnew was canned in favour of the genial Gerald Ford, friend of the donor class and Warren Report booster. He and Jimmy Carter smoothed the anxieties of the urban middle class that went from protest to pacified. Martin Sheen über alles.

By the 1980s Ronald Reagan was crushing the Soviets, and Aaron Sorkin began his soothing epistles to the sanctity of the political process. Ted Turner’s birth of CNN cable news in the ‘80s codified the game. Guard rails were erected to keep news in its place. The true power brokers like donors and PACs were grated anonymity. Anyone defying the rules of the DC Media party— hello, Rush Limbaugh— was sent to the gulag of right-wing radio.

The emergence of brash NYC hotelier Donald Trump was first seen as fodder for the cable-news showbiz narrative. He’d be the sideshow carny to distract zombie voters from the coronation of Hillary Clinton. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough thought he was money, constantly pimping for Trump on his morning show. What a laff riot he’d be.

Then Donald got too close to the untouchables. He discovered there were probably 50 million votes just lying there waiting for someone to pick up. Certainly not the bespoke DEMs. Or the Bush Republicans with their pals in the armaments and pharmaceutical lobbies. It was free money, and when has Don Trump ever left money on the table?

From the instant he started talking about borders, foreign wars and the Swamp he had a target posted on him. Because there is no treachery like class treachery the Swamp sought to destroy him in 2016. Chuck “Schemer” Schumer confirmed it: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

When he punked Hillary in the voting they employed the FBI, CIA and Barack Obama’s machine in a coup attempt predicated on Russia. While it was a struggle, they managed to keep the real story from their MSNBC/ NYT devotees, who to this day, still recite the Russiagate tropes. To them it was a West Wing plot line in which their liberal friends would persevere.

For all that the game was in still peril. Then came Covid. The Left and Neo-Con Trump haters were able to orchestrate a quasi-election in 2020, replete with historic voting totals and hastily-assembled regulations— hello vote harvesting, unsupervised drop boxes— never seen before.

Aging longtime DEM loyalist Joe Biden “a blowhard senator, a bad guy, a fabulist, corrupt, and a preternatural liar who didn't hold a single consistent principle in his career” was appointed as place holder till the Obamas and Nancy Pelosi could orchestrate a new Barack in 2024. It almost worked, until Biden’s debate meltdown against Trump advanced the agenda and threatened the donors.

As the world watched in amazement it was out with Joe and in with Kamala. They don’t care who knows. Between now and the election in November expect more Black Swan events to unsettle the public and advance the globalist agenda.

During that time, never forget that confusion and chaos are the calling cards of the Far Left. Far from being a problem, the head-spinning reinvention of normal is their goal. Don't believe legacy media, they're happy for this.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Garbage In, Garbage Out: The Democrats 2024 Election Coup