THE DAY OF THE LOCUST

Information has dribbled out over the weekend about David DePape, the would-be assassin of Nanci Pelosi who stands charged of the attempted murder of her husband Paul.

DePape identified himself many times as being “black-pilled.” The Urban diction defines the term as “When you believe there is no way out of a problem. ‘I’m so black-pilled I just don’t see any way out of this, no matter what we lose.”

In other words, it’s the ultimate state of nihilism - just burn it all down.

There’s an interesting novel that deals with this. “The Day of the Locust,” published in 1939, written by Nathanael West. Many people think of it as the “ultimate Hollywood novel.”

It’s set in Hollywood, and follows Tod Hackett, a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene design and painting. He experiences a loss of belief because he isn’t chosen to do work he wants while people who he thinks are not as good or talented as he get those assignments. (I can relate) He decides to pain an “important work” that will lead to his discovry and recognition of his talent. Painting it in his scruffy apartment, the title is "The Burning of Los Angeles;" it’s a portrayal of a chaotic and fiery holocaust which will destroy the city. Through the novel, Tod befriends a cast of characters who are a conglomerate of Hollywood stereotypes - the people who come to “make it” who generally get called “wannabees” here and sometimes “neverwillbees.” His greater discovery is to find the part of society whose "eyes filled with hatred," and "had come to California to die." These are the Americans who worked and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, that the American dream was more elusive than they imagine. Their anger boils into rage. The craze that has been built by the studio publicity machine over the latest Hollywood premiere for a movie titled “The Day of the Locust” erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos. The city is burned down.

As someone who has been here as long as I have, I have no difficulty understanding that. As I once said to a young (very good) writer I knew, talent will get you to the door and let you knock, you can’t get there without it, and they might even invite you inside, but talent will have nothing to do with what what it is you walk out with.

And that is very frustrating.

Particularly among the people who, in the dark nights of their soul, come to realize they are like the locusts in the novel.

And that is where many start looking for an explanation of why they have been denied what is theirs by some right known only to themselves. It leads to involvement in cults and belief in conspiratorial fantasies (mislabeled “conspiracy theories”). One of the more famous in Hollywood is Scientology, the church populated by “stars to be.” I know the phenomenon; I once became involved in a Hollywood cult that wasn’t as destructive as Scientology, but no cult is benign. Fortunately, one day I did “pay attention to that man behind the curtain.” And left soon afterwards.

Nowadays, with social media, it’s even easier, and the cults are as radicalizing as anything like ISIS. “QAnon” comes along and explains just how horrid “they” are and the distances “they” will go to deny “you” your god-given reward. DePape, who from all accounts appears to definitely be one of the locusts, the people one forgets coming across five minutes after the event, dropped into Qanon and the Pizzagate conspiracies. His online posts mention being against “pedophilia.” A far right researcher has examined the detritus of his social media and called him “classic.”

Last year, DePape posted links on his Facebook page to multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen. Other posts included transphobic images and linked to websites claiming COVID-19 vaccines were deadly. “The death rates being promoted are what ever ‘THEY’ want to be promoted as the death rate,” one post read. (Once you swallow one conspiratorial fantasy, the others are easy)

DePape posted links to YouTube videos with titles like “Democrat FARCE Commission to Investigate January 6th Capitol Riot COLLAPSES in Congress!!!” and “Global Elites Plan To Take Control Of YOUR Money! (Revealed)”

In other words, he is fully immersed in the conspiratorial fantasies and hate speech of right-wing rhetoric.

Political radicalization in the United States involves only one side of American politics. Rachel Maddow fans aren’t showing up at Kevin McCarthy’s house.

Adam Kinzinger, whose honesty I really respect, immediately placed the blame for the attack squarely where it belongs: “this morning’s terrifying attack on Paul Pelosi by a man obsessed with election conspiracies is a dangerous reality encouraged by some members of my own party.”

Those two sterling examples of Republican rectitude and integrity, Widdle Jimmy Vance and Ronna “Potato Face” Romney McDaniel, fired up Republicans at an Ohio get-out-the-vote rally Friday afternoon - within hours of the event! - attacking Nancy Pelosi on the same day her husband was assaulted. McDaniel asked the crowd “Are you ready to fire Nancy Pelosi?”

The crowd of defective drooling deplorables roared their approval.

The best any of them have managed over the weekend are pro forma statements hoping Pelosi gets better, and then immediately linking the event to “all the crime” sweeping America.

Not one of them has posted anything about opposition to the event.

Back in 1974, when I worked in San Francisco politics, I had the privilege of meeting the Paul and Nacy Pelosi; they were the younger brother and sister-in-law of my boss' main ally on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the late Ron Pelosi.

During the 1974 Democratic primary for State Controller, the campaign had a fund-raiser at the Haas Mansion. All the SF Movers & Shakers were there. Nancy, merely the wife of the younger brother of the candidate's good friend and ally, ended up in the back of the room near staffer me, while we awaited The Candidate's arrival and speech. We chatted (I had been introduced and met her maybe twice in passing), and I made a comment about one of the Movers - or was it a Shakers? - I forget which.

Nancy Pelosi proceeded to point out and name everyone there, why they were there and what they wanted, and what value their support brought to the campaign (in the majority of cases, not that much). It was a master performance. For those I knew something of, she was dead on, so I figured if she was right there, she was right everywhere (I later found she was).

When she finished, I said "Mrs. Pelosi, you ought to go into politics!" She smiled.

After that I found out who she was, daughter of one of the most powerful Democratic mayors in America, who had learned her politics at her father’s knee from the day she spoke her first word. She waited till her kids were grown, ran for Congress successfully in 1986, and I have never been surprised by anything she's done.

Up until the Rise Of Trump (ROT), I had her tied with Thomas Bracket Reed, creator of the modern Speakership, as Greatest Speaker. But then she became Greatest Speaker for the Ages, because none of her forebears had to confront the Subversive Threat of Trump and Trumpism (and hopefully never will again).

She's my favorite American politician and has been since before she was a professional politician.

The tinder is everywhere. “These are the Americans who worked and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, that the American dream was more elusive than they imagine.” The past 50 years of increasing inequality, of increasing lack of opportunity to rise in society without being born to the opportunity, of a celebrity culture that flaunts the accouterments of outrageous success in front of all the locusts, spreading the studio PR department lie:

Hooray for Hollywood

That screwy ballyhooey Hollywood

Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic

With just a good looking pan

And any barmaid can be a star maid

If she dances with or without a fan

A significant part of society thinks this is what they have been denied, that it’s their birthright. The tinder.

We have a whole political party following their Dear Leader in pouring gas on the tinder and throwing matches.

And that this event happened demonstrates we are far closer to “The Day of the Locust” than anyone would care to admit.

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