Every Bod Gone Cruzy^[1]

Well, not everybody’s gone cruzy. I’m as sane as David Attenborough, Walter Cronkite, Ward Cleaver, as sane as Thich Naht Hahn — or at least I’d like to think so. Certainly, I’m saner than the Lt. Governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, who has dubbed himself a “Black Nazi” on a transporn^[2] site where he confessed nostalgia for the institution of slavery and expressed the desire to purchase a couple of human beings himself.

Here’s a photo of him mugging with the 45th president of the United States. Obviously, he and Idi Amin share a common ancestor.

BTW, here’s the greatest sentence in the history of American literature that features “Idi Amin.”

“I was in the water for six hours. Shivering, praying, scared, full of adrenaline. I kept making deals with the Fates, with God, Neptune, whoever, thinking I’d trade places with anybody anywhere – lepers, untouchables, political prisoners, Idi Amin’s wives – anything, so long as I’d be alive.”

                                                                        T. Coraghessan Boyle, Budding Prospects

Idi Amin

Also, I’d like to think I’m saner than Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. For example, if I were ever unfortunate enough to run across a washed up dead whale, I’d like to think I wouldn’t saw its head off and take the head home with me. 

How did these [alliterative participle deleted] fools attain such high status you might wonder.

Well, Kennedy is a Kennedy after all. He was born into perhaps the most famous American family this side of Maybelle Carter’s clan. But Robinson? How did he rise from an abusive childhood bouncing back and forth from foster homes to his mama?  Here’s how. By giving a pro-gun speech at a Greensboro City Council meeting that went viral on Facebook. 

Robinson’s entry into politics reminds me of Lester Maddox’s who gained fame by chasing potential Black customers out of his restaurant with ax handles, became a sort of redneck folk hero, and was chosen as governor by the state legislature because of election confusion caused by a write-in candidate.

Lester and Mark strange bedfellows indeed.

And now both Georgia and North Carolina are swing states.

It’ll be interesting to see in forty something days, how many US citizens will vote for a candidate promising detention camps, mass deportations, tariffs, a candidate who portrays The US as a hellscape despite inflation under 3%, all three stock indices at record levels, and crime significantly decreasing.^[3]

Maybe, a majority of voters in swing states won’t have gone cruzy. Maybe Georgians and North Carolinians will dump Trump. 

I wouldn’t bet on it, though.

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^[1] The title is a direct quote from a paragraph I received when I was teaching Developmental English at Trident Technical College circa 1980. Here’s another direct quote from the same paragraph. “Vivid sex on my mind every day.”  

^[2] Can’t believe stodgy ol’ Microsoft Word doesn’t have “transporn” in their spelling dictionary. Tsk, tsk. 

^[3] In 2020, the United States experienced one of its most dangerous years in decades.

The number of murders across the country surged by nearly 30% between 2019 and 2020, according to FBI statistics. The overall violent crime rate, which includes murder, assault, robbery and rape, inched up around 5% in the same period.

But in 2023, crime in America looked very different.

“At some point in 2022 — at the end of 2022 or through 2023 — there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.

In cities big and small, from both coasts, violence has dropped.