“I swear not everybody is like this”...
I used to write a lot about politics on these pages. You may have noticed.
Not so much anymore. It was becoming increasingly difficult to find new ways to call Trump an asshole. His entire existence is an affront to basic human decency, and his braying supporters a constant reminder that our education system should be taken out back and buried in a hole. In other words, it’s just too depressing to keep mining this vein.
Not that I was ever very good at it. Frothy rage does not often inspire good writing. Trump has managed to dumb down a nation that wasn’t very smart to begin with, and every time I think we’ve hit rock bottom some MAGA chud shows up with a backhoe. We’ve all been adversely affected here. It’s like being attacked by gnats.
See what happens? Here we go again.
I’ll be brief. I promise.
Last night’s Trump-less Republican debate condensed all of these feelings down into a splitable atom. Dear leader was off being fellated by Tucker Carlson on whatever twitter is called now. In a pre-taped interview posted 5 minutes before the debate started, he called democrats “savage animals” and suggested Joe Biden was trying to kill him. In other words, business as usual.
The debate stage was filled with cardboard fascists, each more cartoonishly brutish and more defiantly ignorant than the next. If they dared to criticize Trump (all of the men wore red ties in his honor), they were roundly booed by a leering, nearly all white crowd, who looked like they were auditioning for the “2 minutes of hate” scene from the film version of Orwell’s 1984. The very first question of the night did not deal with Trump’s many indictments, or his soon to be released mug shot, but rather solicited the candidates opinion on another shit country song (my eyes rolled when the first verse rhymed “away” with ……well…..“away”) from a guy who looks like one of those pickup-driving “Let’s Go Brandon” flag-flying dudes who chug Bud Light in secret. Poor Jason Aldean tried that in a small town and is already old news. He’ll will be doing a 3 way with Kid Rock and Ted Nugent at county fairs next year. It’s a fickle world, bubba. Oliver Anthony is the new Lee Greenwood. Yee Haw.
Don’t laugh. Oliver Anthony could be the next commerce secretary.
My personal favorite moment in the debate was when all but one of the debaters denied that climate change is real, despite being surrounded by a landscape that’s either on fire, under water, or filled with folks busy hammering plywood over their windows. To the rest of the world we once again look like a collection of noxious buffoons. I’m getting tired of reaching out to my foreign friends and saying “I swear not everybody is like this”, because I’m starting to doubt myself. We are the dumbest nation in the world. Mathematically there has to be a second place but if we stop now to wait for whoever that is to catch up we might be stuck in place for a long time.
And just in case all this isn’t bad enough, there’s a new Covid variant out there, along with a few doctors almost politely suggesting that boosters and masks may once again be in our future, and my timeline immediately lit up with with the usual suspects declaring war on anybody who tries to take their GRRRRR FREEDOM!!!!! GRRRRRR away. The same crew that kept getting caught a few years ago bullying 16 year old cashiers and spitting on the lettuce in the produce section are back and willing to die and take as many of you libtards as possible with them. My God they are fucking exhausting, and I hope they all eventually end up lining the first fairway of Trump’s golf course.
And so much for all that. I promise I’m not going to write about this stuff anymore because it’s so stultifying.
Right now I sit here, with only Rudy Giuliani’s mug shot to cheer me up. It’ll do until something better comes along. Somebody said he looks like somebody who just spent the night being repeatedly outsmarted by Macaulay Culkin, and that seems fair. If ever there’s a living, breathing, dye-running cautionary tale of what happens when you attach yourself to Trump’s balls, it’s the former Mayor of NYC. Once one of the most admired men in the world, yesterday he was forced to visit a place called 2nd Chance Bail Bonds in Atlanta to stay out of jail. Only in America.
Of course we all await the mug shot of the man responsible for it all……in all its orange glory. It will be, as he will be sure to point out, the PERFECT mug shot. Fundraising letters have already been written, and await only the cut/paste of the photo. Expect T-shirts and coffee mugs too. And flags. MAGAs love them some flags.
Currently Las Vegas is offering odds on how much Trump weighs (part of the booking process is getting on the scale). The current over / under is 278.5 pounds.
What say you?
In a bit…
—tf