I hesitate to admit it, but searching for telltale signs of Donald Trump’s imminent demise, I squandered way too much time last weekend following threads on X as I obsessively pored over grainy telephoto shots and videos of that shambling wreck of a human being.
Oh, yay, his mouth is drooping, look his foot’s dragging, that’s hand’s bruised, his eyes unfocused, his speech slurred––unmistakable signs of life’s impending cessation! C’mon, Grim Reaper, get it on! Deport the bastard to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns!
But alas and alack, on Tuesday Trump reappeared in his cartoon character’s red, white, and blue outfit flanked by toadies to announce that he’s transferring his sci-fi-ish Space Command from Colorado to Alabama because Colorado allows mail-in voting.
Why, you may wonder, would a lapsed Buddhist like I-and-I misdirect his karmic energy in wishing that a fellow human would cast off his mortal coil?
My answer is “duh.” Wouldn’t it have been peachy keen if Hitler had croaked before he implemented the Holocaust?[1]
Trump is evil. Yesterday, for example, wasting tax payer money and Defense Department jet fuel, he ordered a flyover to drown out the voices of ten of Epstein’s victims as they pleaded for Congress to expose the names of pedophiles to help appease the horrible wrongs they have suffered.
Trump’s flyover demonstrated peak bully behavior. Here’s an adjudicated rapist who has bragged that his celebrity status allows him to “grab pussies” and to enter beauty pageant dressing rooms to ogle teenaged contestants, etc., etc., etc. to lord his testosteronic power over the powerless.
Then immediately, after the press conference, he called the Epstein affair “a Democratic hoax.”
Oh, and the cowardice of the Republican Congress who have jilted the Founding Fathers for this putrid attention whore so they can cling to their power and its accompanying perks.
Perhaps these self-proclaimed Christians, these hollow men, like Mike Johnson, should pause for a moment from thumping their Bibles and open them to Mark 8:36:
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Again, alas and alack.
[1] By the way, the Smithsonian has now closed an exhibit that showed how the US turned away Jewish refugees during WW2.
This year’s Spoleto Festival features a potentially budget-busting array of popular musical choices. To wit, Mavis Staples, Patti Smith, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, MJ Lenderman, Band of Horses, and Yo La Tengo.
For the sake of solvency, I’ve limited myself to two performances, Patti Smith and Lucinda Williams.
First up was Patti Smith, who appeared Wednesday at the Cistern, a splendid outdoor venue located on the College of Charleston’s campus.
I love Patti Smith. Her injecting high art references into three chord rock inspired me back when I was a wastrel grad student in 1975, a mere half century ago. The album was Horses, its cover photo shot by Robert Mapplethorpe, her housemate. What I love about that record is its expansive allusiveness, its juxtaposing via a sonic collage high and low art, Rimbaud and Boney Maroney, bats with baby faces doing the Watusi like Bela Lugosi. But, most of all, what I love is that it rocks.[1]
In my old age, I purchase expensive concert tickets that put us way up front. For Patti, my wife Caroline and I sat on the third row. I was under the false impression that Patti might perform the songs of Horses in order, but she only sang one song from the album, “Redondo Beach,” a lilting reggae number whose light-hearted melody belies the lyrics’ first person account of a gay lover’s suicide.
Why try to explain when you can listen to a snippet yourself.
Anyway, the concert was laidback, with Patti filling up deadtime with friendly anecdotes while her band tuned and retuned their instruments in Kingston-Jamaica-grade humidity.
Caroline was blown away, and so was I, though I really would have loved it if she had included “Gloria,” a mash-up of the Van Morrison/Them classic and some badass self-assertion:
I walk in a room, you know I look so proud I move in this here atmosphere where anything’s allowed Then I go to this here party and I just get bored Until I look out the window, see a sweet young thing Humping on a parking meter, leaning on the parking meter
Oh, she looks so good, oh, she looks so fine And I’ve got this crazy feeling that I’m going to, ah-ah, make her mine.
G-L-O-R-I-A!!!
photo credit I-and-I
So tonight, we’re headed back to the Cistern to see Lucinda, which for me will be the third time. She’s had a stroke, which she says affects her guitar playing, but I bet it hasn’t diminished that beautiful distinctive Southern vowel-rich hoarse voice of hers.
I certainly hope not.
[1] You can read a tribute to Patti by clicking HERE.
It seems to me, an admittedly jaundiced observer, that many of our current representatives are attention-starved narcissists who would rather don costumes and bring attention to themselves than plopping down behind a desk and performing the unglamorous work of governance.
Take our director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem dressing up like a border patrol agent, a cowgirl, and an ICE agent.
Of course, her trendsetting boss is no stranger to dressing up and engaging in make believe.
Unfortunately, this compulsion to commandeer the spotlight isn’t just confined to the cabinet. House Representatives, particularly Nancy Mace, enjoy incorporating Halloween into their everyday comings and goings as well.
Here’s Mace channeling Hester Prynne in a subliterate misunderstanding of Hawthorne’s classic novel, not seeming to get that the scarlet letter stood for “adultery.”
She claimed she was wearing the A because she was a woman being demonized for her “voice” and “vote.” Hester Prynne, on the other hand, stoically bore her persecution silently. Stoicism and silence are certainly not attributes we identify with Mace, who seems to be in the throes of some kind of nervous breakdown, reminiscent of the first scene in Night of the Iguana where clergyman T. Lawrence Shannon goes apeshit in the pulpit and mocks the parishioners, resulting in a mass exit during the course of his rantings.
Here’s a LINK to my post on nervous breakdowns featuring a clip from John Huston’s film Night of the Iguana.
Representative Mace’s venue for her recent Reverend Shannon-like ranting was the House floor of the US Capitol where she flappingly displayed the dirty laundry of her sordid relationship with her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant for all the world to see, the same fiancé she mentioned at the National Prayer Breakfast a year earlier when she shared with the august worshippers assembled there that she had told Mr. Bryant, “No, baby, we ain’t got time for that,” that being premarital morning sex, because she didn’t want to be late for the Jesus fest.
I’m not going to catalogue the accusations of her screed the other night, which may or may not be true, the hidden cameras, the sexual assaults, etc. but merely suggest we the people would be better served with representatives who focus on our collective good rather than their own personal vendettas, to channel Jimmy Carter as opposed to Caligula, who also had a penchant for cosplaying, who liked to dress up like soldiers, mythological figures, and women.
Oh, Joe Cunningham, our lonely First Congressional District turns its lonely eyes to you.
Oscar Wilde’s counterintuitive observation that “life imitates art” certainly seems a valid observation when you consider that Elon Musk obviously modeled his persona on the Bond Villains he identified with as a child watching 007 movies in his South African enclave.
I asked ChatGPT to create a Venn diagram comparing characteristics of Dr. No, Auric Goldfinger, Ernst Blofeld, and Elon Musk, but rather than creating the visual representation I asked for he/she/it/they came up with this:
“Creating a Venn diagram comparing characteristics of Dr. No, Goldfinger, Blofeld, and Elon Musk could be interesting! Here’s how we might categorize some of their traits”:
Dr. No
Monologuing: Dr. No is known for his villainous speeches and arrogance.
Desire for Global Power: His main goal is to dominate the world.
Tech Savvy: Uses technology for his villainous deeds, such as a secret base and advanced machinery.
Goldfinger
Love of Wealth: Obsessed with gold and wealth accumulation.
Manipulative: Skilled in manipulating people and situations for personal gain.
Planning for Destruction: Plans to increase his wealth by threatening global economics.
Blofeld
Mastermind: A schemer and manipulator who plans complex, worldwide operations.
Philanthropic Facade: Often hides his true intentions behind a charitable or business façade.
Desire for Control: Wants to control global events to advance his personal agenda.
Elon Musk (Common Traits)
Innovative: Known for pushing technological advancements (SpaceX, Tesla).
Wealth: A billionaire who accumulates wealth through various ventures.
Ambitious: Has ambitious goals such as colonizing Mars and transforming energy production.
Public Persona: Often in the media spotlight and makes bold statements.[2]
Note how ChatGPT avoided portraying any of Musk’s traits as negative, much less as villainous.
Allow me to rectify that failure:
Elon Musk (Common Traits)
Monologuing: an assholeknown for his villainous speeches and arrogance.
Desire for Global Power: a megalomaniac who desires to dominate the world.
Tech Savvy: an innovator who buildsrocket ships, electric cars, etc.
Wealth: a billionaire obsessed with wealth accumulation
Mastermind: a schemer and manipulator who plans complex, worldwide operations.
Desire for Control: a self-obsessed piece of shit who wants to control global events to advance his personal agenda.
Oh, yeah, what about the autism, the lack of social grace and human empathy, not to mention operating outside the bounds of law? The stilted speech patterns all four share?
On this assignment, I’d give ChatGPT a big fat D if he/she/it/they were my student and myself a C- on this blog post, which has forsaken hard work for expediency.
That said, it’s kind of scary that a Bond villain now has access to my social security number.
[1] The name Elon Musk sounds like Ian Fleming himself came up with it.
[2] Not how ChatGPT doesn’t bother with parallel construction. The catalogue he/she/it/they came up with is about as elegant as a Tesla truck.
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.
You Do Hoodoo 