Swansenreport

Sweet Jesus, what a generation of beautiful, contradictory bastards. They’ll crawl through broken glass, paint a sign, book a flight, and show up — synchronized, coordinated, caffeinated — in every godforsaken city from Portland to Pensacola on the same Tuesday afternoon to scream about kings. The logistics alone would make a field general weep with admiration.

But pull the lever? Cast the one ballot that actually matters in this crumbling American experiment? Suddenly the whole magnificent machine seizes up. Suddenly there are complications. Suddenly we need weeks — weeks, you understand — of mailboxes and postmarks and the gentle, forgiving arc of a deadline that bends like taffy in the August heat.

There is something deeply, chemically wrong with a political animal that can organize a national street carnival but cannot find its way to a polling booth. One of these acts changes everything. The other makes for good photographs.

I have seen this movie before, and it does not end well for the people holding the signs.