They say bad things come in threes.
There were lots of elephants in the room -- with no offense intended to elephants. Most horrifying was the untamed elephant in chief, empowered by the freedom of having nothing to lose, running amok and spewing venom and stalking his enemy like a rabid tiger. I searched for the remote, wondering where the debate was.
Threes. Three women who had long ago very publicly accused the elephant's opponent's husband of sexual advances, and who have long hated his wife for not reacting well to their plight. Never mind her plight, or the fact that that particular circus rolled out of town a long time ago. Never mind that displaying these women like, well, circus animals, is abusive in its own right. Maybe this wasn't a circus. Maybe this was a National Geographic special, a virtual safari with the animals coming right up to the window, pressing their noses into my living room, wondering why we were all staring at them.
Threes. The holy trinity of role models -- Hassan Rouhani, Bashar al-Assad, Vlad. The ones we can count on to obliterate ISIS. Huh? Threes. The elephant's heroes. I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. I have tremendous respect for women. If you repeat it three times, it must be true. She'll be in jail. He only said it once, but that was enough. When I was flipping channels, had I missed our descent into third world authoritarianism?
Three zillion. The number of times he used the word disaster, which is one of his three favorite words. The others are "bigly" and "massively." Compelling.
When the circus ended -- I never found the town hall debate -- three CNN commentators told me, in rapid succession, that Trump did well. I was watching something else, so I'll just have to take their word for it.
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