A companion note to The Iron Key, where ash and ambition meet.
Author’s Note
This Field Note is a companion to Waypoint 3.1: The Iron Key. I had intended to release it later, but Newsom’s warning this week at the Politico California Summit made the themes of vaulting ambition and burning theatres too urgent to wait.
Field Notes are meant to step off the main trail and look around. This one does so with a clown, a stage, and the smoke we pretend is only a joke.
“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, and they shouted even louder. Thus, I think, the world will come to an end: amidst general applause from wits who believe it is a joke.”
— Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Kierkegaard’s clown returned to the stage this summer, for the closing act of August, in Sacramento, CA. This time the role was played by Governor Gavin Newsom, who warned the audience that the theatre was burning. And again, the audience laughed uproariously.
Earlier this summer, in a desperate display to warn the people about the spreading flames, he took to parodying the president in full clown makeup — all caps, buffed bravado, and painted-on tears. He caught their attention.
As the curtains opened, he stomped out to center stage, puffed up his clown chest, raised a bruised fist, and bellowed that the president that he had pushed California too far: “THIS IS YOUR SECOND‑TO‑LAST WARNING!!! (THE NEXT ONE IS THE LAST ONE!). STAND DOWN NOW OR CALIFORNIA WILL COUNTER‑STRIKE (LEGALLY!) TO DESTROY YOUR ILLEGAL CROOKED MAPS IN RED STATES.” As the curtains closed, the clown pointed to the smoke rolling along the rafters, and thanked the satisfied audience for their “ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
They looked up at the blackening smoke. Most got the punchline, doubled over, and rolled in their seats.
Outside the hall, not all found the act so funny.
In fact, many conservative commentators and connoisseurs of high-brow comedy accused the clown of merely echoing Trump’s polished shtick — with reviews delivered in clipped, derisive tones: they called it fake, a rip-off, inauthentic, even cringe, warning that “he’ll never get elected if he can’t take himself seriously.”
But as the critics debated the merits and demerits of the show the flames grew only hotter. California’s hot August nights pressed closer, tighter, and more suffocating; summer’s stage neared its close — even as The Donald dumped more gas and ICE agents on Los Angeles, and rolled tanks into D.C.
The clown knew the flames would not be doused by the trick flower pinned to his chest. So he pulled back the curtains again, this time with his face painted orange.
The spotlight focuses its beam through the smoke, onto a lone figure on the stage: a sad and mighty man polishing giant shoes — the best shoes — with his dangling red tie. “I’m only weakness parading as strength,” he laments, and the crowd winces, catching the brave, subtle irony.
He peers into the void, where shadows flicker like strange, sad-angry orange shapes — nostalgic hell-flames dancing in time:
Young man, there’s no need to feel down…
I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground…
He lowers his arms from the final “A” — slowly, so very slowly — then drops to sit, stuffing first one tree-thick ankle into a clown shoe, then the other.
The crowd grows still. A crackling sound echoes through the theatre’s wooden walls. Alone in the spotlight, he pulls out his phone, hesitates, and then his little thumbs begin a trip of three steps: tap, tap, tap — a distraction from the little Lo file.
The audience waits. The flames hiss. He posts.
On the lighted screen above, we read that many now call him “GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ‘COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM.”
Again, his little thumb sends, and the projection flickers: the great man on Time Magazine, wearing a kingly crown. The thumb swipes, hovers, thrice hesitates.
(Et tu, JD?)
Then, suddenly resolute, it wiggles, jerks, presses — and the screen fills with another vision: the clown buffed-out and gleaming, planted before a giant American flag.
The smoke curls upward, transubstantiated into shabby heavenly clouds, the smoke of incense gone stale.
An image of Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, and Hulk Hogan softly fades in — the wrestler with his heavenly halo and newly feathered Hulk-a-maniac wings, foreshadowing an imminent inevitability.
The three men of faith have gathered around the clown, have laid hands on him, and have bowed their reverent heads for the benediction.
The crowd roars.
And now we are arrived at the closing act of August. The crowd has gathered at Politico’s California Agenda: Sacramento Summit. Newsom tells them that Trump’s team sent him two dozen Trump 2028 hats.
Again the clown warns that the theatre is burning.
Again the crowd bursts out in laughter.
Newsom sits forward, insists that this is about more than merchandise, that this is no joke:
“This is serious, guys. This guy doesn’t believe in free, fair elections; he tried to wreck this country. Were you there Jan. 6?”
He then poses the rhetorical question, referring to the ballroom the mad clown of the gilded Oval Office intends to build:
“Who spends $200 million on a ballroom at their home and then leaves the house?”
He urges us to not project too much on the president, and think that he is just clowning around:
“He’s telling you what he intends to do. Believe him.”
I do believe him. And I do believe Newsom: we have got to wake up. These are smoke alarms blaring, not Saturday morning alarm clocks.
Of course, we could be wrong. We have no special peek into the future — not Macbeth’s equivocating witches, not Trump’s translucent “many people… saying you’ve got to run again.”
We cannot lean on prophecy or conspiracy. We have only history and inference when we measure the depth of Trump’s “vaulting ambition” — and the lengths he’ll go to cheat death, beat the law, rig the system, and make himself immortal.
Kierkegaard saw it clearly:
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
We’ve heard the Big Lie. We’ve witnessed January 6. We’ve witnessed election subversion schemes, stochastic terrorism, the abuse of federal power, and corrupt self-dealing.
We now witness masked men on our streets — ICE agents, terrifying those who would vote against him.
We now witness overt moves to ban mail-in ballots.
We now see tanks rolling into blue cities that dared to resist.
We cannot pretend this will end well.
This is our blasted heath: vaulting ambition has scorched itself into policy, ash already drifting across our streets.
The sky blackens. Hot cinders pelt our neighbors’ homes.
Again the clown warns that the theatre is burning. Again the crowd laughs.
The theatre is on fire. And we have lit it.
[Curtain falls. Smoke rises. Nervous chuckles. Applause — slow at first, then enthusiastic.]
🤡 Mad laughter fills the hall; coffee fills the page. 🤡
🔥 If the smoke alarms are ringing for you, tap ❤️ — it helps others notice the blaze.
🌈 If you missed Field Note 3¾ — The Rainbow Connection: Don’t Believe Everything You Think, click here.
🎧 Prefer to listen? Click here.
Photo : ALoan, Punch & Judy booth at Swanage, Dorset (Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
Painting: The Burning of the Theatre Royal, Exeter (3 September 1887), artist unknown (Public Domain, via Art UK).
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