Ordered.

Still recommend reading American Hero, the book David Mamet (The Spanish Prisoner) based the screenplay (nothing like the book, and if you read it you will get it) for the movie Wag The Dog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog_(novel)

It actually makes Wag The Dog, the movie, make sense and not just a political satire black comedy film...

Wag the dog... another term of art with an interesting "history..."

OUR AMERICAN COUSIN
.....A Drama, in 3 Acts.

Lord Dundreary = Dun
Florence Trenchard= Flo

Dun Well, I'll tell you—a draught. Now I've got a better one that that: When is a dog's tail not a dog's tail? [Florence repeats. During this Florence, Mrs. M. and Dundreary are down stage.]

Flo Yes, and willingly.

Dun When it's a cart. [They look at him enquiringly.]

Flo Why, what in earth has a dog's tail to do with a cart?

Dun When it moves about, you know. A horse makes a cart move, so does a dog make his tail move.

Flo Oh, I see what you mean—when it's a wagon. [Wags the letter in her hand.]

Dun Well, a wagon and a cart are the same thing, ain't they! That's the idea—it's the same thing.

Flo They are not the same. In the case of your conundrum there's a very great difference.

Dun Now I've got another. Why does a dog waggle his tail?

Flo Upon my word, I never inquired.

Dun Because the tail can't waggle the dog. Ha! Ha!

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3158/3158-h/3158-h.htm

"The earliest usage of the phrase in politics found in print is in an article originating in 1871, discussing one Democratic convention. In the article, the author references the popular play Our American Cousin, which Abraham Lincoln was watching six years earlier when he was assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth. In the play, the character Lord Dundreary is a sympathetic character who constantly utters confused catch phrases a-la Yogi Berra, which were known at that time as Dundrearyisms:

"Calling to mind Lord Dundreary's conundrum, the Baltimore American thinks that for the Cincinnati Convention to control the Democratic party would be the tail wagging the dog."

The generic phrase, then and now, indicates a backwards situation in which a small and seemingly unimportant entity (the tail) controls a bigger, more important one (the dog). It was again used in the 1960s, as in the economic advice "don't let the tax tail wag the investment dog"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_dog

"Dundrearyisms" were expanded malapropisms in the form of twisted and nonsensical aphorisms in the style of Lord Dundreary (e.g., "birds of a feather gather no moss"). These enjoyed a brief vogue.[citation needed]

Charles Kingsley wrote an essay entitled, "Speech of Lord Dundreary in Section D, on Friday Last, On the Great Hippocampus Question", a parody of debates about human and ape anatomical features (and their implications for evolutionary theory) in the form of a nonsensical speech supposed to have been written by Dundreary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Dundreary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_American_Cousin

Read the book, it will change the way you perceive a Trump Rally.

Keep that 5 Oct 2020 salute to the helicopter from the Blue Room balcony in mind...

Real time stage managing events to maximize production (and propaganda) value for the movie to come.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog (movie)

Trump keeps referring in his "We are a nation in decline..." soliloquy, once the Wwg1wga theme starts, to the inflation of 1872... next dig.