22 Nov Fool Me Once…

 

Welcome back, Gentle Reader(s). Let us start off today’s post with a fun Pop Quiz.

Which of the following two options do you think a plurality of the American populace might prefer to lead the country?

A)  A delusional narcissistic racist misogynist pathological liar insurrectionist sexual predator grifter and convicted felon? Or,

B)  A highly qualified, highly intelligent career public servant with four years on-the-job experience as Vice President who just happens to be an Indian/Black woman?

If you picked option A then, congratulations—you are correct!

Okay, not much of a pop quiz, I admit, and not much fun either, but the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’ of the question are worthy of some in-depth ponderation.

America has spoken, Gentle Reader(s), and America has clearly and unequivocally stated its preference (albeit, by a relatively slim margin overall) for a huckster/wannabe mob boss to lead the (allegedly) Free World for the next four years. Yes, we have been here before, but this time around we will be treated to the upgraded DrumpfReich 2.0—new and improved for whiter whites and redder reds! The DrumpfReich operating system reboot will feature numerous bug fixes, updated dictatorial software design and built-in oaths of fealty to the Orange Goblin. New Artificial Intelligence capabilities will augment the original AI (Authentic Ignorance) features that made Original DrumpfReich so much damn fun.

Of particular note, the 2024 presidential election was decided courtesy of not only the Electoral College, but also with the imprimatur of the Popular Vote. No hand recounts, prosecution of hanging chads or scrutiny of bamboo-contaminated ballots will be required this time around. We will not have to witness Rudy Guiliani melting and babbling incoherently in landscaping business parking lots and Kari Lake can get back to screeching at her cats or her servants or whatever for the next four years. Let us not disregard the small blessings.

It is now abundantly clear that Drumpfism is here to stay. It cannot be written off as an aberration, a bizarre and unfortunate fluke of history. Drumpfism is now a political movement with an (ostensible) mandate and the MAGA hordes are ascendant—for four more years at least. But what beyond that? Now that the brand has gravitated fully to the mainstream of American political life the process of legacy building is doubtlessly already underway. First off, we should not be at all surprised (and I’m serious about this) if a move to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution to allow for the elevation of Drumpf to Goblin-in-Chief For Life is not already being whispered about in certain corridors of Congress. Term limits are for pussies! The Constitutional Amendment angle would be a long shot, admittedly, but less than a decade ago the notion of Don J. Drumpf as a publicly sanctioned resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seemed laughably unimaginable. Who’s laughing now, eh?

Barring the Octo-Goblin being permanently enthroned come 2028, then Vice-Goblin J.D. Vance would likely be next up to carry forth the orange flame. Or, alternatively, the next generation of Goblins: Eric or Don-Goblin Jr.? Or perhaps Barron, if a career in the NBA doesn’t pan out for the kid? What if the OG goes one Big Mac too far and flatlines right there behind the Resolute Desk while still in office? What if that Cheeto-tone self-tanning lotion he’s apparently addicted to turns out to be highly carcinogenic? President Vance? It could very easily happen, people.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Wind back to sunrise on the morning of November 6 and the rending of garments, gnashing of teeth, finger-pointing and pearl-clutching was already well underway. What went wrong and who gets the blame?

Well… where to start?

Let us cast a rueful eye over some of the options:

• The downward drag of a deeply unpopular sitting president, too long in denial of his own obviously diminishing faculties.

• A drafted-in candidate, late out of the gates, shackled by aforementioned downward drag, desperately trying to define her candidacy as something other than Biden Pt. II while not throwing kindly, self-sacrificing Uncle Joe under the campaign bus.

• An economy that, through inflation, high interest rates (as in, higher than Zero), and lingering post-pandemic effects, kept Middle America on the ropes.

• A broken immigration system and a southern border situation that MAGA-land was more than ready to accept as the Root of All Evil, not to mention those imaginary undocumented dusky maniacs munching down on Rex and Fluffy in the backyards of God-fearing Ohioans. (Never mind that a bipartisan immigration reform bill was summarily scuttled in Congress back in February by royal fiat originating from—yes, you guessed it—Mar-a-Lago. And, while we’re on the topic, what about that Beautiful Wall that the Mexicans were supposed be paying for? Haven’t heard much about that lately, have you?)

• War, unimaginable slaughter and humanitarian disasters in the Middle East that social media-addicted whippersnappers around the country decided was a good opportunity for a break from the tedium of study hall. (Wasn’t Jared Kushner supposed to have sorted all that stuff?)

• War, unimaginable slaughter and humanitarian disasters in Ukraine that Joe and Josephine Sixpack weren’t all that amped to be footing part of the bill for. (And that lil’ Putin fella doesn’t really seem all that bad, does he?)

• The battle over reproductive rights, and the strange MAGA disconnect between being AGAINST government overreach and the encroachment of the Deep State while simultaneously being AGAINST a woman’s right to have control over her OWN BODY. (A real head-scratcher, that one…)

• The chaotic, deadly and unseemly August, 2021, withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (which Uncle Joe/Kamala got saddled with the blame for, despite the withdrawal being an Original DrumpfReich initiative, penned in February, 2020).

• The intractable tribalism of America, with the clueless Liberal Elites (I have absolutely NO idea WHO those people might be, believe you me!!) looking down their long noses at the Middle and Working classes, as they tool about their coastal redoubts clutching their fancy college degrees in their job-killing electric cars! (Electric cars?? Now waitaminit—doesn’t that funny-looking Goblin-Whisperer dude from South Africa build those things?)

• The addiction of… well, just about everybody it seems (present company excepted, of course), to social media and the 2+2=5 logic of the Post-Truth Drumpfverse in which we now uneasily reside.

And lastly, but certainly not leastly…

• Good old-fashioned American racism and misogyny.

Pick one, pick em’ all. Whatever.

So, yeah. There’s a surfeit of blame to go around, but it’s not enough just to consider why Harris/Walz lost—we also need to confront the dismal calculus of why Drumpf won.

First and foremost, we now know that despite the four-year shitshow of Original DrumpfReich, the unprecedented horror and insanity of 1/6/21, the two impeachments, the 34 felony convictions, the endless racial slurs, the Nazi baiting, the rape conviction, the impressive roster of Republican notables (including numerous former Drumpf administration officials) denouncing candidate Drumpf as being unfit to serve as a dogcatcher, the Orange Goblin didn’t lose ANY appreciable number of voters. In fact, he gained them. That includes making inroads into minority communities and with female voters. Go figure.

While in residence at Ink South I saw a Harris/Walz campaign commercial featuring an Everyman Republican voter expressing his distaste for Drumpf and all of the chaos that inevitably comes with him. This fellow might have voted for every other Republican all the way down the ticket but he was voting for Kamala for president. I don’t know where they found that dude, but he might have been the only one—the unicorn crossover Republican voter, bless him. Whoever he is, I hope he still has a job.

So, now we’ve moved along to the gruesome Frankensteinian assembling-the-monster portion of the program, watching the rogue’s gallery of DrumpfReich 2.0 appointees take form before our goggling eyeballs, not unlike Alex in A Clockwork Orange. It’s not dissimilar to a slow motion train wreck or watching bacon grease congeal: Fascinating, somehow, but with an element of nauseating inevitability to it, if you feel me.

In the early running it seems that the primary qualification for being a Drumpf cabinet nominee is experience as a television personality—on Fox News, preferably. And, just for yuks, how about a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive for Secretary of Education? Sure, why not. And good ol’ Doc Oz to head up Medicare? Uhhh, yeah, makes sense, I guess? Just to keep things spicy, why not toss in a libertarian wingnut whose brain has been gnawed by worms to head up Health and Human Services? Ehhh, what the heck! And while we’re at it, how about that Crazy Eddie dude for Secretary of Commerce? Al Scramuzza for chief of the Food & Drug Administration? Every man a king, a crawfish in every pot! Sign me up!

I’m not kidding when I say that I’m genuinely surprised that Hulk Hogan hasn’t gotten the nod for Secretary of Defense. But there’s still time…

Even within the bizarro context of the Drumpf casting call the nomination of the unspeakably horrid Matt Gaetz for Attorney General stood out. The nomination was simultaneously a provocation, a MAGA loyalty test, and an exit strategy for the Beavis/Butthead hybrid Florida congressman. As of this very hour, Gaetz has apparently managed to muster sufficient awareness to read the room (he was roundly despised by his fellow Republican lawmakers) and, in a show of enforced magnanimity, has withdrawn himself from consideration. Leaked congressional reports, further revelations of abuse and financial wrongdoing, and potential prosecutions are likely to follow. One can hope, at least.

As for my own self, I’d have to say that it seems like the Democratic Party has become massively disconnected from the reality of Middle America, playing ever further into the Balkanization of a country of which one half doesn’t seem to recognize or know how to communicate with the other. Things seem kinda broken, in Washington D.C. at least, and insisting that it’s all the other guy’s fault isn’t going to be very helpful or productive. If we’re going to bother looking for upsides in this highly regrettable situation one of them might be that the Democratic party might finally get around to dealing with some hard truths about itself and where America is going in the 21st century. Where is it going? Don’t ask me—I sure as fuck don’t know. But something is rotten in Denmark, so to speak, and it’s not just last week’s herring.

If I had one little suggestion—just one teensy tiny little notion to impart—it would be to unplug from ALL social media. Now. Shit be evil.

I don’t know who said it or when they said it, whether it was George Santayana or Bugs Bunny, but It Has Been Said that we get the leaders we deserve. If there’s any truth to that, then we have some serious soul-searching to do.

Fool me once: Shame on you. Fool me twice… well, you know the rest.