Everybody's talkin at me / I don't hear a word they're sayin'
Only the echoes of my mind.
In the parlance of oldies radio, that's what's known as a classic.
Some oldies on-airs even dot the I by referring to the song as "the Harry Nilsson classic".
Okay, first. Yes.
And second, uh, no.
Nilsson's recording of the song released in 1969 did reach the top ten on the Billboard Top 100 chart of the time and went on to win Nilsson a Grammy for best male pop vocal performance. His version was featured in the Oscar winning Dustin Hoffman/Jon Voight movie, Midnight Cowboy and is still closely identified with the movie to this day.
Nilsson was, in addition to being a unique vocalist, obviously a pretty prolific songwriter, having penned such hits as Three Dog Night's "One", The Monkees "Cuddly Toy", another song that was used in Midnight Cowboy, "I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City" and the charming, if not more than just a tad gooey theme song to the sixties sitcom, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, "Best Friend".
But his two biggest hits were songs that Nilsson did, in fact, not write.
The first was the enormously successful ballad "Without You" which was written by Pete Ham of the sixties British pop band Badfinger.
And...wait for it......
Everybody's Talkin'.
Written, three years before Nilsson got his hands on it, by an eccentric and eclectic folk singer/songwriter named Fred Neil. I say eccentric because despite his highly respected writing and singing career within the folk industry and his obvious success as a songwriter, he chose not to tour and spent the last 30 years of his life assisting with the preservation of dolphins.
Even wrote a moving song about them, a song recorded by Neil himself and covered, to date, by a diverse group of talents including Richie Havens, Harry Belafonte, Al Wilson and Linda Ronstadt.
A song entitled, in a no nonsense style....."The Dolphins".
This edition of the story behind the song is brought to you for the purpose of backstory. And the backstory is brought to you by way of illustrating the primary point to be made in this piece.
That point would be this.
People in general and, for our purposes this time around, Americans, in particular, these days, in particular, have a habit of thinking they know a lot about, and talking a lot about what they think they know about, things that they don't really have much of a clue about at all.
Everybody's Talkin', the version recorded in 1969 and used in the movie Midnight Cowboy, is the Harry Nilsson classic.
Everybody's Talkin', the song written by Fred Neil in 1966 is not.
When it comes to illuminating the difference between what you think you know...and what you really need to know....well, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.
Stand by for that.
I'm afraid I have some bad news to share, today, with the more zealous of those who march passionately and proudly behind every little cute, quirky and/or monumentally contemptuous thing that Donald Trump does.
The Constitution of the United States is not a buffet.
The Constitution of the United States is not even a menu, with a column A and a column B, ready for you to mix and match, pick and choose what you care to chew on and/or what you care to swallow.
The Constitution of the United States is, to risk metaphor overkill by giving it one more snark, is more like the meals Mom used to make. At least the moms of the fifties and sixties, maybe even the seventies, before the era of let's stop being parents to our kids and just be good pals with them kicked in.
The meal consisted of a variety of combinations from one evening to the next, but the underlying theme of the meal itself never varied an iota.
Eat what's on your plate. Or go hungry.
Donald's penchant for Big Macs and Flame Broiled Whoppers notwithstanding, the Constitutional "Specials of the Day" are the same as they have been since Jefferson did his majestic dome version of the golden arches.
And in the spirit of too many people talkin' about Everybody's Talkin' being the Harry Nilsson classic when it is, in fact, the Fred Neil classic as recorded by Harry Nilsson and a host of others, let's put the concept of misspeak into a Constitutional context.
Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you that most fundamental of foundations, that rock upon which the church of America is built, number one after twelve thousand and sixty four weeks at the top of the charts......the Thomas Jefferson classic....
The rule of law.
Here's the dry dictionary definition.
The principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable to law that is fairly applied and enforced, the principle of government by law.
For those of you who prefer pie charts and big block printing...
The Constitution is law, the highest law and the President, Congress and Federal Judiciary, not to mention all the little leaders and leadettes on down the flow chart, are bound by its terms.
And for those who prefer a more dummy friendly translation of these kinds of things.
The rule of law means that no person or government is above the law.
And this is where we circle ever so judiciously back around to the cute, quirky and, more often than not, contemptuous things that Donald Trump does.
Or, to be perfectly accurate, the things that Donald Trump threatens to do.
Because one of the unspoken plot twists, thus far, in the madcap adventure that is the Trump "presidency" is the comedic, and at the same time pathetic, fact that this guy really is big hat, no cattle. All talk, no action.
Less Commander In Chief. More Puss In Boots. And thank you for your cards and letters thanking me for not going down the Pussy Grabber in Boots road.
We're above that around here.
But not above the law.
Cause that's what the rule of law is all about.
And here's the first of a few things I'm going to get you down with when it comes to what you think you know but you don't. And what you don't know, but you really need to.
You don't want to live in a society without the rule of law.
If you're a Trump supporter...well, first, yeah, I don't know what to tell you anymore except I'm really sorry things are going to turn out for you the way they're going to turn out.
But, back to the business at hand. If you're a Trump supporter, you cheer Donald as he thumbs his nose and flips his middle finger in the direction of tradition and sacred institutions and if he doesn't literally disregard or even break laws, you're not going to win any argument if you offer he doesn't flout law, disrespect law, show contempt for law.
The easy and obvious "well, now, how come he does that?" answer is that law is defined as a rule defining correct procedure or behavior.
Donald Trump only knows one definition of correct procedure and/or behavior.
Correct procedure/behavior. Noun. Whatever procedure or behavior Donald Trump feels like exhibiting or displaying at any given moment in the twenty four/seven cycle of an entire lifespan.
Overture, curtain, lights.
Whatever Donald wants. Donald gets. Or does. Or says.
And regardless of how many smoking guns, last straws, this is its, oh, he's finally gone and done it nows we experience until this little reality show/sitcom hybrid mutation comes to its inevitable end (and not a day goes by these days that we don't hear of a smoking gun, last straw, etc), the hard core truth/fact is that Donald is never going to be presidential, he is never going to be conciliatory, he is never going to be co-operative, compromising, reasonable or even common sensical.
There is one thing and only one thing that Donald will be. Today. Tomorrow, Forever.
And ever. Amen.
Donald.
He will, though, if only by the political and sociological spins on Newton's laws of motion, eventually run into a wall he cannot simply jump over or plough through with his trademark brand of bluster, bravado and bullshit.
The wall of law, baby.
And we'll save the whimsical irony of it being a wall that will eventually do him in for another time and another commentary.
Sooner or later, for no other reason than sooner or later a boiling pot boils over, an erupting volcano erupts, a shaken bottle of champagne pops its cork, Trump will be faced with fighting the unbeatable foe.
The law.
And he will be dreaming the impossible dream if he thinks for a second that when all he, and the law, have both gone all in and all the cards are on the table, he will not be "....subject to and accountable to that which is fairly applied and enforced, the principle of government by law...."
Meanwhile, though....
There is a growing rumble, a disturbing disturbance in the force that actually voices the opinion, edging now and then perilously close to belief, that when those chips are down and cards are tabled, that Donald will simply kick his standard operating procedure to yet another new level of outrageous unorthodoxy.
The law? The law?. Fuck the law. I'm the law, he said with a high quality porcelain smile, a comb-over a man of means should be embarrassed to settle for and a smirk that officially becomes the granddaddy of all smirks.
Not gonna happen, you say? Not possible, you say?
Hmmm.
I'd like to agree with you there, slick.
But I'm not prepared to do that.
You see, I lost a sizable amount of my faith that the impossible could never happen two years ago last November when the Electoral College proved yet again what a real burden it has become to the Republic for which it stands.
Put in a more dummy friendly style....
When it comes to Donald Trump....and the America that could even think about putting Donald Trump in the White House, let alone actually put him there....
I put nothing past either one.
I honestly can't tell you whether or not Donald would fold his arms, lean back in his ego plated chair in the Oval and say come and get me, motherfuckers.
Betting against that happening is a poor wager.
I do know this, though. And this is the next thing you probably don't know but you need to.
The day that happens, assuming it happens and, more insidiously in our little drama here, assuming that he isn't simply yanked out of that chair, shackled and hustled out of that sacred office as if it were any one of 452 episodes of Law and Order......that day will be day that the rule of law is broken.
And on that day, forget about wagers.
Because on that day all the bets are off.
And from there, round and round it goes and where it stops, nobody knows.
But what it's then called is already available in your finer bound copies of Webster's.
Anarchy.
A state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority.
Law? Law? We don' have to show you we care about any stinkin' law.
And that brings us to the last of those things you most likely don't know but need to.
Or, allowing for a little intellectual charity, maybe you do know, but you haven't really thought it through. Or even given it all that much thought at all.
There are two, and only two, conditions, states of being, if you will, that exist in a civilization when it comes to being civilized.
Or not.
Order.
Disorder.
And disorder, frankly, is much too nice and clean, even pretty a word. It evokes images of a sink full of dishes or a closet that needs to be cleaned out.
Maybe the way the living room looks on Christmas morning five seconds after the last wrapping paper has been ripped from the last gift of the season.
Oh, my. We have disorder, here.
That's not what happens if the rule of law is broken. And the bets are off.
There's no power switch or control lever to lessen or even divert the tsunami of water that comes roaring into the valley if the dam bursts.
Everything in the path is in immediate peril of being damaged or destroyed.
There is no remote control to dial down the intensity of the blast if the nuclear weapon detonates.
Everything in the vicinity is either instantly incinerated or subject to being blasted, burned and/or blown away for a radius of miles and miles...and miles.
If you're a Trump supporter, here's something very important you need to know. Or start thinking through.
If he breaks the rule of law and manages to benefit from it, whatever sense of victory, celebration, accomplishment you might experience because your primal instinct is to celebrate your boy's conquering of our traditions and sacred institutions and very way of life, you've forgotten something pretty fundamental in this life.
There's no such thing as a little bit pregnant.
And there's no such thing as a little anarchy.
And the only thing standing between you and disorder.....the only thing.....
...is the rule of law.
If that dam breaks, if that nuke detonates, if that rule is broken.....
Your life, as you know it, is over.
The lives of your spouses, children, grandchildren, families, loved ones, friends......
...are over as they know them.
Because this won't be about this law being bent or that law being broken.
This will be about the rule of law itself being broken.
Here's a pie chart, big block print explanation for you.
In every house there are walls that separate rooms.
Many of those walls can be removed for, say, a remodel with no effect on the integrity of the structure.
A load bearing wall, meanwhile, carries the weight of the roof and, if any, upper floors right down to the foundation.
Remove it and the building collapses.
A law is a wall.
The rule of law is a load bearing wall.
Not a buffet. Not a menu.
There is no picking and choosing involved.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
No rule of law?
Donald gets to do whatever Donald wants to do and you can celebrate that "victory" until you can no longer even see Mexico without a very very very tall ladder.
Until you find it a good idea to learn to speak Russian.
Until the billionaire closest to you forecloses on whatever small piece of property you might possess.
And, God forbid, someone you love with all your heart could be shot to death in front of your very eyes.
Oh. My. God. Call the police.
They're there to protect and serve.
To enforce...the law.
About that....
First, uh, yeah.
Second, uh....
...not any more.
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