The Vulcan Mind Meld
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Yesterday was around the 100th time I said to myself "ok this has GOT to be it" since 2016 in regards to Donald Trump. You can add witness tampering to his dizzying roll call of crimes and outlandish statements and actions that should have gotten him yanked him off the national stage as quickly as with the old vaudeville hook. Yet Trump has so normalized this shit that even something that fucking Al Capone did barely elicits a shrug. His latest federal crime didn't even last a 24 hour news cycle before it was eclipsed by yet another resurgence of Covid that everybody is desperately trying to ignore, along with new video of Uvalde cops in the hallway outside that classroom fist bumping, texting, and using hand sanitizer while rounds were going off inside. It ain’t easy being in America circa-2022.
I suppose it would have been more newsworthy if Trump HADN'T tampered with the witnesses lining up to testify how unhinged getting pummeled by Biden made him. Part of me feels bad for the media, who seem so dazed and confused by these last 6 years that they're no longer able to recognize their own complicity in any of it. These are the same people who ran Mike Dukakis out of town for wearing a tank helmet in an ad, and destroyed Howard Dean's political career because he screeched onstage at a rally. And somehow they've been beaten down like dogs by a guy who could not spell his favorite food correctly and lied, according to the Washington Post, 30,573 times as President. Where have you gone Walter Cronkite? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Something like that anyway.
Trump was good for business. Political reporters have a low threshold for boredom. They jerked off each other.
Attorney General Merrick Garland remains as missing as Jimmy Hoffa. It might have been a good thing that Republicans never gave him a chance to become a member of the Supreme Court because he would have been expected to show up for work every day.
These January 6th hearings are showing a man so outlandishly, outrageously criminal, and being aided and abetted by such a cesspool of shameless bootlickers, that it would be nearly impossible to parody. To watch the hearings in real time is like being sprayed by a skunk after stepping in a heaping pile of fresh dog shit. The fact that none of this behavior has thus far disqualified Trump from yet again seeking the same office he so defiled is a testament to one of the most dedicated cults of personality seen since Stalin had a stroke and pissed himself and his courtiers let him die because none of them wanted him to survive knowing they had seen him piss himself.....which Stalin would surely never forget. Read that again if you need to because there’s a lot to process.
Current republicans have lots in common with Stalin's politburo, actually. Although they don't fear death or the gulag as much as getting assigned childish nicknames on Truth Social or being doxxed by the MAGA faithful. So it's a little less intense but still...
To defy Trump in a land of “Let’s Go Brandon” flags is to be unemployed, which is either MAGA karma or one of the strongest arguments for public education that I can muster. You decide. Take all the time you need.
But then the chosen few got their book deals. His most stalwart defenders remain the ones dabbling too close to illiteracy to receive book deals in the first place, which is to say large swaths of the Republican House and Senate.
Those speaking out and talking shit now in their self-serving memoirs were strangely silent when they were actually in a position to do something about the circus they found themselves in. The same goes for journalists and their insider-books, holding back stunning details until the release date. For instance, the country might have been better served by Bob Woodward knowing that while Trump was playing down the Covid-19 virus ("I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down...") and comparing it to the flu, he was well aware how deadly it was. ("This is deadly stuff….it’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”)
Whatever. The politburo aren't swayed by buckets of poisoned kool-aid OR sworn testimony, even if their favorite "news" source was shamed into broadcasting it. Trump is Mister Spock, laying the Vulcan mind meld on them like The Rock used to lay down the WWE smack-down. Trump is Captain America, and they will forever equate themselves scaling the walls of the Capitol on January 6 the same way George Pickett saw himself scaling the walls of Chapultepec some 16 years before leading his division to slaughter across the field at Gettysburg.
How's that for some historical bookends, eh?
Of course witness tampering is not “it”. There will be more. And probably worse. But after a while it starts to sound like the sound machine in my bedroom that I can’t sleep without.
I just finished a book called “Thank You For Your Servitude” by Mark Leibovich that describes Trump this way..
“He invades your habitat, like the opossum that gets into the attic, dies, stinks, and attracts derivative nuisances.”
The author asks a former republican congressman what the party’s plan was to deal with Trump in 2024…
“We’re just waiting for him to die” was the answer.
Leibovich added…”he was 100% serious..”
In a bit…
—tf