Two, four, six, eight: Who is going to radiate?

Painting by Herbert James Draper, showing his radiating lines used to unite the subject with the foreground. Image (and caption copy) via Ipox Studios.

From the Revelation of St. David the Brooks:

...And then I saw two mighty whirlwinds arising, one that did come from the right and one from the left, and they were wildly impractical; and the one that rose from the right spake from the id and its answers were vivid, and its name was called Trump, and the one that rose from the left was free from the constraints of reality and spake boldly, and its name was called Sanders, and their appearance was entirely symmetrical, for so it is written in the book of the pandits, and I stood at the center and cried, Mommy, Mommy, make them stop.

But they stopped not, but tarried on calling to the people, and the people took heed, saying, These whirlwinds speak what we feel, and take outrage from what outrages us, and lo! there was energy, magical thinking, and suspension of disbelief. And they were full of passionate intensity, and I really hate that shit, and widening gyres, you know, I'm big on lacking all conviction.

And then there came four horsemen, or rather three horsemen and one horsewoman, and they held their fingers to their lips and said, Hey, calm down and be pragmatic. And they were called Marco, John, JEB!, and Hillary, and Marco was the cutest.

Actually Marco did not say, Hey, calm down, but said rather, That Hillary cannot be commander-in-chief for she is disqualified, and the taxes upon the usurers must be ended for their money is holier than ours, and this president knows exactly what he is doing, he wants to change America, and my dad was a bartender. And John said some shit about Ohio, and JEB! said that Marco was a little turd, which was true but not very helpful, and he loved his brother and his father and his mother, which was nice but less helpful still. And Hillary alone did say, Hey, calm down and be pragmatic, but in my vision this was the most frightening sound of all, for I feared she might raise the cap on the payroll tax, and I could hear nothing else, and everything the four said sounded the same in my fever, and I grew faint and the light fled from my eyes.

And then I understood how the people felt like the victims of a natural disaster, and yet they blamed the usurers who sucked up the rent or the strangers who came to the land to work for peanuts, but never nature itself, for they were innocent of Econ 101 and saw not how every man must sacrifice for globalization and technological change and the destruction of the family, the rich man with his tax receipts and everybody else with his civic engagement, because that's just how it rolls.

And when at last I opened my eyes I saw a vision of two saviors, from the right and the left, and their appearance was entirely symmetrical, and the one on the right told golf jokes, and his name was called Ike, and the one on the left offered fireside chats, and his name was called FDR, and they radiated sunny confidence, joy, and neighborliness. And I said, Lo! This is what Marco should do! For is it not written, If we can't have a fireside, can't we at least have a radiator?

And then I did wake up and there was a deadline. 

I found one instance where Eisenhower listened to a golf joke, for what it's worth, and seemed to have a pretty good sense of humor about it, and one where he said our forefathers had to "sacrifice the safety of the lands from which they came", which lolwut? What does that even mean? If you want to learn something from today's column you can try Driftglass, but I'm not guaranteeing anything.