The grand hooded phantom

[Hardeman]

“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.”

                 WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
                 BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."

Perhaps you like Ishmael you can examine the “part' you play in the events of our time.

Melville was speaking for all of us when he gave Ishmael these words.

“Now that I recall all the circumstances,

I think I can see a little into the springs and

motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises,

induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me
into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own
unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.”

Ishmael is telling us he is being conned by the part he plays as he reacts to Fates motivations 

presented “under various disguises.” This includes the delusion that our freewill and discriminating judgment is unbiased .”
For your  own judgment Ishmael's following soliloquy has been tailored for our current contested Election.  

“Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
President. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all
my curiosity. Then the wild and distant halls where he rolled his
island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the Presidency; these,
with all the attending marvels of a thousand Washington sights and
sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such
things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to experience
forbidden thoughts, and spout  barbarous ideas. Not ignoring what is
good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social
with it--would they let me--since it is but well to be on friendly
terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

  By reason of these things, then, this Presidential election was welcome; the
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated
into my inmost soul, endless processions of the candidates, and, mid most
of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.”