It’s way past time for true-believing, well-educated evangelists to hit the missionary road and scare the unholy shit out of these deluded MAGA worshipers who have rejected the love-thy- enemy theology of their would-be savior and instead have embraced the hate and revenge ideology of the false prophets Elon Trump and Donald Musk.
For what is a MAGA profited, if he shall gain the owning of the libs, but lose his own soul?
Here, let me have a go at it:
Oh my children, you know not the jeopardy into which you’ve placed your immortal souls. Why have you turned your back on the teachings of the Prince of Peace who bade you “love thy neighbor as thyself” but instead you worship a “man of lawlessness ” a “son of perdition?” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).
Pasteth the following descriptions into a search engine:
“male global leader”
“a deceiver who uses signs and wonders to mislead people”
“seeks to establish a global power structure”
“speaks arrogant words and blasphemies”
“an earthly tyrant and trickster”
Oh, I have saved you the trouble. These descriptions will leadeth you to the 13th Chapter of the Book of Revelation, which describes the Antichrist.
O, my brothers and sisters, repent before it’s too late. Oh, how you will lament upon the Judgement Day when your undying soul will be cast into the flaming cauldron of everlasting perdition, an eternity of suffering because you chose hate instead of love.
But, hold on, it’s not too late. Reread the Gospels, casteth away your Maga merch for God’s sake and your own!
Look, if you’ve ever been sucked into one of those social media video medical advertisements where some physician or chemist claims to have discovered a ridiculously easy way to detox the superfund-grade contamination of your liver without dieting or exercising or giving up your Jim Beam, you know you’re going to have to endure twenty plus minutes of tease before the secret is revealed that for $59.99 for can purchase a magical elixir, the great great great grandchild of 19th Century snake oil, and presto, no more liver problems.
But I’m not going to put you through that. I’m going to explain right away why Kamala Harris is going to win the presidency, maybe by a comfortable margin, and I wouldn’t be risking my stellar reputation as internet sage the weekend before the election if I were not positive.[1]
Let’s start unscientifically by plumbing the rich grotto of my intuition, a storehouse of data and sensations forming what the vulgar call “a gut feeling,” or what I’d prefer to call “an intestinal foreshadowing.”[2]
Okay, let’s get this show on the road.
Although I don’t believe that yard signs and crowd sizes are accurate predictors of election outcomes, this cycle seems somewhat different. At her rallies, Kamala’s audiences hang on her every word as she catalogues a future marked by communal problem solving whereas the less populous crowds at the Trump rallies tend to leave early during Trump’s interminable dystopian descriptions of mongrel hordes laying waste to municipalities or children exiting their school buses an entirely different gender than when they boarded in the morning. Any sane person who doesn’t reside inside the un-fun house of QAnon conspiracy theories knows that Trump is lying and/or delusional. Not a good look for someone entrusted with nuclear codes.
He offers no specific plans, but all the world’s and the nation’s ills will be solved, like the magic liver elixir, by his magical presence.
Slathered with orange make-up and topped with clownish platinum hair, like a cartoon character in the same clothes, he shambles around the nation in a haze that very well could be drug-induced. I mean who falls asleep during his own felony trial? At any rate, his campaign has devolved into a Roman circus where he cosplays fast food minimum wage earners or sanitary workers. Yesterday, the garbage truck driving in circles with Trump staring out the window seems an apt metaphor for the campaign’s final stages. It’s almost as if his staff wants him to lose.
He’s just out on the tarmac having someone drive him around in circles. Why do I feel like this will become the defining meme for his entire campaign? pic.twitter.com/WrESaWJ6cN
Segueing into a more data-driven arguments, early voting seems very promising for Kamala. Although Republicans have been voting early, unlike in 2020, the voters have tended to be elderly high propensity voters, and Jen O’Malley Dillion, Kalama’s campaign chair, says, “We feel really good about what we’re seeing out there.” Even in Nevada where early voting rural Republicans have established a red fire wall, Dillion says in the last two days in Clark County, a Democratic stronghold, “we’ve had higher turnout from young voters than we have at any other point in this cycle.” She adds, “We are seeing Republicans voting early, but these are Republicans that are going to vote no matter what. So what they’re doing is that they’re changing their mode of voting. They were going to vote on Election Day, now they’re voting early.” She also claims that in other states low propensity voters are voting Democratic early. Polls also show that undecided voters are more open to voting for Kamala, not to mention than more women than men are voting with reproductive rights being one of the major issues.
Then there’s the discrepancy in the ground games. The Democratics boast a well-trained, well-staffed group of dedicated, enthusiastic doorknockers, postcard writers, phone-callers and texters whereas the Republicans are relying on paid workers, mercenaries you might say, to attempt to get the undecided to vote.
In short, the Republicans are, like their Dear Leader, disorganized (cf. Trump’s stashing classified documents in his bathroom). In the last days of the campaign you have Mike Johnson promising to end Obamacare if Trump wins, you have Elon Musk predicting Trump’s slashing spending will create temporary economic hardship, and Nikki Haley trashing the campaign. I suspect that Kamala will win at least 10% of Republican voters and a majority of independents. After all, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are voting for Kamala.
Lastly, the Democrats have several pathways to 270 electoral college votes, even if they were to lose Pennsylvania, which seems unlikely with a half-a-million pissed off Puerto Ricans living there.
Last, but certainly not least, the last three heart-breaking presidential loses in 2000, 2004, and 2016 featured wooden candidates incapable of warming the hearts of non-partisans. Obviously, Kamala is charismatic, out-Obama-ing Obama in my opinion.
Now that’s it. Excuse me while I check out some new promising dietary supplements. Cheers!
[1] Caveat: I’m not as positive that fawning Republican state legislatures and/or Speaker Mike Johnson will allow the certification of a Harris victory.
[2] Please note, I have now removed my tongue from my cheek.
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.
[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.
Observations from the Other Other Wes Moore on the Trump Harris Debate[1]
Back in the hypersensitive days of yore, Gary Hart’s extra marital shenanigans or Howard Dean’s oddly too exuberant “woo-hoo” could suddenly disqualify candidates from seeking their party’s presidential nomination.
To coin a phrase, “Them days is over.” Nowadays, paying hush money to porn stars and being convicted on thirty-four felony counts are no longer disqualifying.
Also, nowadays, online misinformation is taken as the gospel truth by simpleminded people.
For example, here are two direct quotes from Donald Trump from Tuesday’s debate, which, in a sane society, would in and of themselves end his campaign for the presidency..
Quote number one: “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”
This statement is so off-the-charts-creepy-Thanksgiving-dinner-bachelor-great-uncle-ish, that I can’t summon the energy to cough up from my dyspeptic spleen an HL Menckenesque screed of mockery because Trump’s claim is so batshit crazy that anything I’d come up with wouldn’t do justice to its absurdity.[2]
So here’s another quote: “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” [i.e., Springfield, Ohio]
They, being Haitians, i.e., goggle-eyed zombies that at night wander from homestead to homestead abducting unfenced pets to feed on their brains.
An aside: Do white people hate people of color so much they don’t mind that this idiot is in charge of the nuclear codes?
When the debate started, I disapproved of Kamala’s first answer, an evasion of the question, a rehearsed opening salvo, a laundry list of proposals, and I thought Trump looked calm and uncharacteristically presidential at first. I was worried for a minute or two.
However, in no time. he was careening into nonsense while she was getting her groove, smiling incredulously in high-snark amusement while Trump bragged about how much Hungarian strongman Vicktor Orbán admired him.
His performance throughout the debate was the opposite of grace under pressure.
In other words, it was ugly – like his rallies, like his hair, like his suits, like his ties.
[1]For the record, I’m not the Governor of Maryland.
[2] I’d love some grammar maven to diagram that sentence.
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”
Karl Marx
Let me begin this scholarly screed by introducing you to some of the lovelies who frequent the Felliniesque get-togethers at Mar-a-Lago.
I mean, we’re in John Waters territory here, in the land of farce, grotesque exaggeration, caricature.
From John Water’s “Female Trouble”
Speaking of which, Thursday a week ago (18 July 2024) on the stage of the Republican National Convention, Hulk Hogan endorsed Donald Trump, “the quadrice-indicted twice-impeached once-convicted popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing insurrection-leading ear-diapering testimony-ducking judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring witness-tampering day-one-dictatoring disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering rube-fleecing clown-makeup-smearing language-mangling serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-scamming bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating weather-map-defacing horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging race-baiting tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 88-count 78-year-old fluorescent tangerine felony factory.”[1]
At the end of his speech, Hogan ripped off his shirt to reveal a tee emblazoned with
TRUMP
VANCE
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Not surprisingly, the literature of Nero’s Rome provides us with an ancient parallel to our current farcical state of affairs. Check out in your ample spare time The Satyricon by Petronius the Arbiter.[2] Here’s a still from Fellini’s cinematic treatment of Petronius’s classic, from the chapter known as “Trimalchio’s Dinner.”[3]
In his famous statement, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” Marx was riffing on the Hegelian idea that history repeats patterns but in different ways, e.g., the French Revolution leading to Napoleon I (tragedy) and then to rise and fall of Napoleon III (farce).
Or, to draw a North American Parallel, the American Revolution is followed by the Civil War (tragedy) and then by the MAGA revolution (farce).
However, the thing is that when melodrama is exaggerated it becomes comic a la Reefer Madness, but when farce is overly exaggerated, it can become terrifying in a creepy clown sort of way.
I mean, imagine being trapped in an elevator with Don, Jr.’s fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle! Imagine the future White House wedding.
Of course, I’m not amazed that Donald Trump is thoroughly corrupt (from the split ends of that plasticine confection he considers hair, to the soulless soles of his feet), nor am I amazed that millions of lost souls worship him as a Jim-Jones-like demigod, consumed as they are with envy and anger, the two least enjoyable of the deadly sins. What does amaze me is how the leaders of the Republican party, people who should know better – like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, for example – kill off their better angels to keep in the not-so-good graces of this totally despicable Mammon-worshiping, porn-star bonking, delusional, self-pitying piece of shit.
Yesterday, seemingly seconds after Trump’s conviction, Speaker Johnson was assailing the verdict, Mitch McConnell claiming that the charges should never have been brought against him, and Elise Stefanik prevaricating that Biden’s corrupt Justice Department (who, by the way, is prosecuting Biden’s son) is to blame for the unjust prosecution of a presidential candidate for falsifying business records to conceal a payoff to a porn star he had sex with during the first month of his third son’s life.
I’ll concede that the so-called hush money trial is the least nefarious of Trump’s several indictments, not nearly as bad as illegally hoarding nuclear secrets in his bathroom, nor as bad as attempting to cajole Georgia’s secretary of state into stealing enough votes to overturn a legal election, and certainly not as bad as encouraging an insurrection in an attempt to disrupt the transition of power.
However, a jury of Trump’s peers, fellow New Yorkers – one of whom gets her news from Fox – convicted him after carefully weighing the evidence.
Yet, there’s no guarantee, given the inequities of the Electoral College, that Trump won’t be reelected, that he will once again raise his right hand and swear to uphold the Constitution so he can begin organizing his mass deportations, constructing detention camps, and putting into action his campaign of Putin-like retribution.
After Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, Tucker Carlson remarked, “It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: ‘No.’ Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.”
Well, no, come to think of it, Putin has never called me a racist or threatened to get me fired, but then again, neither did Pol Pot, Idi Amin, or Osama Bin Laden.
I wonder, did Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky ever call Tucker a racist or try to get him fired? What in the hell is Carlson’s point? He doesn’t hate Putin because Putin has never personally wronged him, never had any of his personal friends or family members flung from a five-story hotel window?
If that’s the case, slap his photo next to “Solipsistic” in dictionaries.
If you’re just emerging from a coma and haven’t heard, Tucker travelled to Russia last week to interview Putin and was treated rather rudely, forced to wait for two hours in an uncomfortable chair, and once the beady-eyed ex-KGB head finally arrived, he mocked Tucker’s failed attempt to join the CIA, but what is probably worse, subjected him to a rambling arcane lecture on, “the concept of God, the Russian soul, and what Putin thought of U.S. President Joe Biden.”[1]
[cue Mr. Kurtz: “the horror! the horror!”]
Yeah, but Tucker did get attention, not something he’s been getting much of lately on his streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network. However, Putin remarked after the event that he had found the interview disappointing. “To be honest,” Putin said, “I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions. I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way.”
[whomp whomp]
After the interview, Carlson bopped around Moscow marveling over how it was superior to cities in the US. After purchasing $100 of groceries that would cost $400 at Harris Teeter, he ate at a fast food restaurant that had been a Macdonald’s before the invasion. He lauded both the quality of the cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate cake he consumed and their low cost, “647 rubles [or] $7.05,” which is quite a bargain, unless you consider that the average annual salary in Russia is 14,771 in US dollars and factor in the strength of the dollar versus the weakness of the ruble.
Now, I’m not into conspiracy theories, not going to claim that Tucker’s visit and Trump’s invitation for Russia to invade NATO are linked to dissident Aleksei Navalny’s murder; however, the timing in a PR sense is not great for either Trump or Carlson.
Anyway, Carlson had already addressed the question of Putin’s ruthlessness before the murder when asked why he hadn’t broached the subject of Navalny’s imprisonment during the interview:
“I didn’t talk about the things that every media outlet talks about because those are covered, and I have spent my life talking to people who run countries, in various countries, and have concluded the following: That every leader kills people, including my leader. Leadership requires killing people. That is why I wouldn’t want to be a leader.”
Given today’s GDP numbers for 2023 (2.5% growth) and for the 4th quarter (3.3% growth), not to mention all-time stock market highs, it’s no wonder Donald Trump is musing out loud how he wishes the economy would implode. After all, on October 22, 2020, he predicted the stock market would crash under Biden.
Nostradamus he ain’t.
In other news, Trump has instructed the Buddy Rich of Bible-thumping, i.e., House Speaker Mike Johnson, to torpedo the bi-partisan agreement on the border forged in the Senate because solving the problem would cost Republicans their number one talking screaming point.
Anyway, why should Republicans bother with governing when Hunter Biden’s laptop exists in the form of three-dimensional matter, when instead of passing legislation, they can bask in the klieg lights of Fox News studios?[1]
Yes, despite his having been convicted of rape by a jury of his peers, of having admitted to stealing top secret classified materials, of his sitting on his Depends-padded ass doing nothing during the Capitol insurrection, despite his bizarre, slurred word salads, his trouble distinguishing Nikki Haley from Nancy Pelosi, you have the fallen competitors lining up like so many ventriloquist dummies to endorse him despite his 90-odd criminal indictments.
Speaking of ventriloquist dummies, Tim Scott, please disappear. Your moon-faced head-bobbing grinning behind Trump during his bitter post New Hampshire victory speech in which he threatened to sic the Feds on the woman who appointed you senator was even more demeaning than your artless staged engagement photo op.
Psst, hey, y’all, Trump’s going to lose the general election. He needs to expand his base from his devoted non-college degreed MAGA cultists and the hundred or so avaricious billionaires who support him, or he’s going down yet again. Along with him abortion-banning Congressional Republicans. Among the sane and educated, Joe Biden is the lesser of decreptitudes.
A little anecdotal evidence: Yesterday afternoon, I chatted with two tourists from Beech Mountain, North Carolina, she a social worker, he a firefighter, she a liberal, he a conservative, and neither is voting for Donald Trump.
Pass the popcorn.
Here’s Trump”barring” potential Republican voters from “the MAGA camp.”
[1]C.f. South Carolina’s own Hester Prynne wannabe, Nancy Mace.
Shakespeare wrote that misery makes for strange bedfellows, and you could say the same about a shared antipathy for Donald Trump. Certainly, ten years ago I wouldn’t have imagined myself sharing a bunk with Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin or former Republican strategist Rick Wilson, but that was then, and this is now.
Now, as it turns out, these never Trumpers and I share something in common: the wish to see the US remain a representative democracy rather than devolving into a Putin-like kleptocracy run by a former WWE promoter and reality TV snake oil salesman whose mendacity makes Pinocchio look like Marcus Aurelias in comparison.
The much-heralded midterm tsunami has ended up looking like, in the words of Twitter wit Serenity Now, “some mid-cycle spotting,” so Rick Wilson is “staring down into the Valley of Schadenfreude, overlooking the beautiful Lake of MAGA Tears and inhaling the sweet smoke of incinerated personal and corporate billions of dollars that went to dead-enders better suited for an asylum than office.”
Now that’s what I call some postgame trash talking.
Of course, we’re not out of the Disenchanted Forest yet. Trump will probably announce his candidacy Tuesday, Joe Biden is about as popular as a DMV, and voter suppression is a real danger.
Nevertheless, things could have been a whole hell of a lot worse, so fa la la la live for today.
Be thankful (if you’re not reading this from Russia)[1] that the cosmic crap throw of innumerable permutations of space/time has landed you in a nation that doesn’t ambush males lounging in neighborhood saloons, drag their startled selves to recruitment centers, and in less than a week, transport their untrained asses to the killing fields of the front lines as cannon fodder in an idiotic war instigated by a short-of-stature Napoleon wanna-be.[2]
Russian conscripts saying goodbye
It would be nice if my fellow Americans (especially elected Republican representatives and senators) would take the long view and recognize so-called strong men (i.e., authoritarian rulers) short circuit collaboration, gum up the machine of government with ego, and therefore create dysfunctional nations, because, just saying, not only are two heads better than one, but a few hundred heads are even better than two.[3]
It’s not as if the Trump administration functioned as a well-oiled drama free machine, as if the Donald possesses a vision that extends beyond his next iPhone notification. Oh sure, if Trump were president, he would have magically insulated the U.S. from the universal phenomenon of global inflation. [Cue the Lovin’ Spoonful]: Do you believe in magic? Do you believe in the heresy of evangelicals; do you believe the rantings of a damaged girdle-sporting narcissist who wears more make-up than Mae West in her Myra Breckinridge days?
Trump without make-up
Alas, power trumps decency. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott and the rest of them will keep their cowardly lips sealed. Look what happened to Liz Cheney. There is – no offense Jesus – short term profit in the forfeiture of one’s soul.
Double alas, propaganda can be effective, especially when targeting the under-educated,[4] so I’m expecting that even despite the January 6 Committee’s powerful case that Donald Trump and his minions attempted to sabotage via coup the peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America, that Donald Trump (aided and abetted by state legislatures) will be elected as POTUS in 2024.
We, to quote one of my TTC students from 1978, “done gone cruzy.”
George Bellows: Dancing at the Insane Asylum
[1] So far this year, the blog has 24 hits from Russia, so it’s possible.
[2] Diagram that goddamn sentence grammar technicians.
You Do Hoodoo 