Balderdash, Poppycock and Hogwash

Sounds like a law firm in the Beltway with Falderal up for partnership as well. For the next six months our threshold of noise pollution and mendacity shall be put to the test. The assault on our hearing will lead us to shut down our antenna and cultivate our cynicism. Maybe that’s the whole idea.

Both presumed candidates have opened themselves up to volleys of negative ads simply because there is so much to be negative about. One represents establishment politics with all its dysfunction, exhausted language and tone-deaf ears. The other is the poster boy of exurbia, know-nothing, pseudo-evangelical, pandering populist claptrap.  

Hillary has the Benghazi albatross around her neck along with her email indiscretions, husband Bill’s peccadilloes and the Goldman Sachs speech to answer for. The Donald blurts for breakfast, boasts for lunch and spouts blathering nonsense for dinner. Then he bloviates his way to sleep.

It’s all part of the great American tradition of political vitriol except back in 1790 the average guy could tend his field or garden and never hear the foul mouth and forked tongue of our illustrious founders.

Jefferson called Adams a hideous hermaphroditical character with neither the force nor firmness of a man or the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. T.J. was scolded as obnoxious for his hypocrisy and liaisons with Sally Hemmings. Even Martha Washington got into fray calling Jefferson, detestable. Hamilton was attacked as illegitimate, vain and a self-conceited coxcomb. Too bad he couldn’t have answered these scurrilous attack with a hip-hop number back then.

Parliamentarians in our mother country make sport of their well-rounded vituperations. Prime Minister Cameron has already engaged in verbal combat with Trump. The Donald has all of Europe holding their breath but not their tongue. All except Putin who has a muscle in his head where his brains belong.

Insults tend to slide as hides get thicker but hogwash has a way of sticking to the commonweal. Trump supporters care nothing about fact-check. His poll numbers get a bump with almost every fib. At least lies are fresh and authentic while canned rhetoric hits the snooze button. Trading barbs is fast becoming our national pastime. I’d rather watch the hum-drum chess game on grass we call baseball.  Even as politics worms its way onto the sports section and entertainment pages it is neither spectacle nor amusement.

None of the words in my title actually describe the gravitas of Trump’s poisoned rhetoric. Just as Hitler was dismissed as a clown so too has media been complicit in legitimatizing Trump into public discourse with a shrug and a smile.