donald-trump – Page 4 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Things We Know

Some things we know, yet somehow pretend we discover anew now and then. It’s not rocket science.

Rocket science.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

Donald Trump is a racist.

Donald Trump is a child rapist.

Donald Trump is a dangerous psychopathic narcissist.

Donald Trump’s agenda is in writing. It’s called Project 2025 sometimes masked as Agenda 47. It’s evil.

J.D. Vance is a self-serving opportunist and a useful idiot.

Both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are bought and paid for looking to cash in further on you.

The party that used to be the GOP embraces and coddles criminals of all stripes instead of wanting to see them in stripes.

Those that support Trump/Vance/GOP will not be content until they can turn back the clock on the things that they irrationally fear.

If you think there’s a choice in this November’s election, or if you feel like debating what the choices are, you support all of the above. If you wonder why someone may vote for Trump, stop wondering. They support all of the above and either don’t care or think this is who we are or should be.

It’s that simple.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Birthday Wishes In This Insane Year

Wishin’ and hopin’ as another year passes.

Pick your metaphor. Pick your favorite song lyric from Hamilton. Pick your poison. The U.S. political and media world is nothing short of a mess as the GOP ~~Coronation~~, excuse me, Convention, continues in Milwaukee.

I’m not watching the event, but have seen enough highlights (lowlights?) to know that bending the knee has leapt beyond typical humiliating political expediency into something that absurdist playwrights, much less contemporary fiction authors, couldn’t possibly imagine. Public ass kissing may not be an Olympic sport, but if it was, America could field one helluva team based on the competition in Milwaukee.

It’s really not fair to blame the media for coverage of the event. They seem to know no better than a child sticking their hand in a fire and there’s nothing normal or predictable about this election cycle. There used to be journalists who would call things as they saw them. There also used to be dinosaurs.

Watching the watchers cover what looks like the closest thing we’ve seen to a Nazi rally in this country for several generations and not calling it what it is pisses me off. The media’s problem is that this is a playbook that’s been plagiarized from the 1930’s in ways that large language models must envy. But the media capitulated then and so here we are. Again. It may not be new, but it’s damn dangerous and they are trying to shoehorn that into an old world model that failed then and will fail again. Things may not be normal but they are too damn predictable. Guess what? That’s the damn story.

Set aside the clichés about not presenting both sides when one side says it’s raining and the other doesn’t. We’re witnessing a complete capitulation to something that’s beyond my understanding. If the red hat brigade takes power, most of those currently sucking up will be in line for internment camps once they’ve reported on how many migrant families have been separated. At least they will be credentialed.

Granted the media isn’t getting much help from the Democrats. That helpless bunch wants to play fair. Again. Thinking the high road will get them there, while the other side is tunneling out the ground underneath them is simply shrinking from the real challenge while grasping at straw men. The only fight they can seem to muster is one against themselves. Hell, they don’t even have the guts to really have that fight, much less finish it. But go ahead. Play nice.

So. Today is my birthday. Given family history I never thought I’d make it this far. But I have. I have two birthday wishes. Here’s the first: I’d love to see some Democratic politician when confronted with some MAGAt gish galloping their well rehearsed rhetoric say directly “take your white supremacist, fascist, misogynistic bullshit and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.” Hell. Don’t even wait to do it to their face, just do it in front of a camera. Often. Call them on their bullshit hourly. Make them defend against the comment.

For the uninitiated, that’s called politics.

The second wish is that I’d love to see a headline somewhere that says, “The GOP has nominated a convicted felon to run for president.” The lede should read: “The party once proud to wrap itself in the mantle of law and order has now disrobed and re-draped itself as the party that welcomes and supports criminality.” Tell me, what’s not factual about that?

I won’t get either of those wishes. I’m pissed about that. And I’m pissed that it looks like I’m going to be around to watch what this country stood for during the six plus decades of my life rapidly decline and disintegrate during what’s left of it.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

New York Times Calls Trump Unfit But Misses the Larger Story

Making a point while missing the larger one.

The New York Times is out with a highly produced (perhaps over produced) editorial denouncing Donald Trump a week before he’s coronated as the Republican nominee at the GOP Convention in Milwaukee. Titled Donald Trump Is Unfit To Lead, the editorial is unequivocal and unforgiving in its damning the candidate, pointing out most of the flaws most could recite as a catechism these days. CleanShot 2024-07-11 at 08.29.30@2x.

There’s one large exception to that list of flaws. Not once in the editorial does the editorial board mention that Trump is a convicted felon running for the office of the presidency while out on bail. Call me crazy, but that does seem somewhat important.

With the focus on the candidate, the Times also completely looks away from the only reason we’re even faced with Trump still dominating our lives: that the Republican Party has either completely and cowardly surrendered to the decaying orange child rapist’s wishes hoping he’s the sign of some rapture to come, or they’ve just decided to out themselves as what they’ve always been.

There is a discussion about what the party used to stand for, but the editorial choice focuses on the candidate’s character rather than party and platform issues such as Project 2025.

Character is indeed the root of the discussion, as it always has been in most places except the pages of the New York Times. If any publication had insight into Trump’s character it would be the Times, but that’s a story constantly and consistently on their doorstep they’ve largely ignored until now. So, it’s good to see it finally have focus here. Even so, granting a free pass to the character-less characters who’ve allowed us to reach this point after having multiple chances of preventing it the week before they convene in Milwaukee ignores the larger questions and dangers we face.

The omission is as damning as the belated slams against the candidate.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

The Alito Supreme Court Is Setting Up For A Dobbsian Replay

The Alito Court may be about to repeat the mistakes of 2022.

History may be about to repeat itself. Hopefully it rhymes. Donald Trump is a convicted felon and he and his fluffers are doubling down on their attempts to manufacture a fantasy world that bears no resemblance to the one most people live in. Yet we’re still waiting a decision from the Supreme Court on whether or not U.S. presidents have immunity and thus are kings who can round up and possibly kill political rivals, deport anyone they desire, and generally turn the U.S into a autocracy staffed by criminals.

U s supreme court 88698.

While that immunity case has no bearing on the New York case that added 34 convictions to the decaying orange turd’s résumé, it is all tied together because there’s this thing called an election in a few months wherein we’ll decide if America still exists as a democracy.

The Supreme Court hasn’t issued an opinion yet, which in and of itself is an opinion. In delaying action they’ve effectively sided with Trump, allowing any real chance of a trial to be pushed off until after the election. But unfortunately they have to make a decision before they can head off to their yachts for the summer.

What’s intriguing to me is I think the Alito Court is about to make the same political mistake they made in 2022 with their decision removing women’s rights to an abortion in Dobbs vs. Jackson. It was a victory for abortion foes, but energized the electorate enough to wash away any Red Wave in the 2022 elections and others that have followed since. My suspicion is if the Alito Court grants anything resembling immunity to Trump, we’ll see the same sort of rage-fueled energy at the polls in November. There’s enough of that energy already bubbling, but this might (should) blow the lid off the pot.

It’s June, SCOTUS is heading to the end of this term, and an announcement could come any day as the court traditionally rolls out decisions from the current term. The hen-pecked Alito is under fire for flying insurrectionist adjacent flags while blaming his wife, further degrading any sense of integrity the Supreme Court had remaining. I’m thinking (and hints suggest) the decision will be in Trump’s favor thus completely erasing what few bits of integrity still remain on the white board. If they do, it will hopefully ignite the electorate again to finally cancel this unreality show we’ve all been living through.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Trump Guilty: Everything Changes Everything Remains The Same

A stench that will never fade.

Yesterday’s unanimous jury verdicts convicting former President, rapist, and con artist Donald Trump changed everything and changed nothing. Beyond the damage to the decaying orange turd’s branding (he should now always be introduced and referred to as “Convicted Felon”) the MAGA political world is still living in their own warped reality. It’s historic and full of histrionics.

We shouldn’t really be surprised. Some say it’s a fear of Trump’s wrath. For the compromised I’m sure that’s true. What’s more dangerous is the larger group who want to use Trump as a bludgeon to beat back and down what they definitiely fear more. They don’t like him, they just want to take advantage of his blustering bumbling to hang on to their plantation mindset. They fear their idea of an America is under threat by too many anyones who don’t look, act and think like them. Make no mistake. That fear is tangible.

It’s led to abandonment on some sort of cosmic political level and defies the laws of political gravity. They’ve abandoned any sense of the virtue that this country’s founders believed was the key ingredient to the idea of America. They’ve abandoned any sense of shame. They’ve abandoned any sense of good sense, common or calculating. They’ve twisted and turned themselves into enough knots that there’s no way to untangle the mess they’ve put us in without cutting off some piece of anatomy they might need later. I’d argue they need thoughts and prayers, but they’ve abandoned and defiled thinking and praying.

The verdict wasn’t predictable. They never are. The MAGA reaction to it was. It’s a script written for bad characters that that have crossed beyond the borders of caricature and cliché into some other definition that the human experience and literature hasn’t been able to label yet.

The bottom line in all of this is that on May 30, 2024 in a courtroom in New York City an asshole got his ass handed to him in a court of law and the reaction to that proves his ass wipers obviously enjoy the smell so much they will still stand in line and fall over themselves to be the first to wade deeper into his offal. It’s a stench that will never fade.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Stocks, Shoes, and Bible Bunkum

A fool and his money are soon parted the saying goes. That’s obviously an understatement that didn’t come close to anticipating the gullibility of large swathes of the American public. There are obviously flocks of fools out there begging to be fleeced by this conman-in-chief Donald Trump. In the last few weeks, supposedly facing financial peril due to the increasingly large legal fees and judgments against him, he’s managed to roll out sales pitches for trashy shoes, launch an IPO for his solipsistic social media network, and now bibles. I just don’t get the fascination with throwing good money after such bad bunkum.

It makes you wonder if all of these folks somehow drank Trump branded water or ate Trump steaks at some point in their lives that contained some sort of additive that bound them to him in some weird way. That makes it sound like bad fiction, but I just find it hard to believe that there are enough minutes in any given day for this many suckers to be born.

Sure, some folks are going to make some money from the Truth Social stock deal. Many more will lose their shirts. I imagine those Trump bibles will one day get passed down through a few familes here and there. Everyone needs a door stop or two. I can’t comment on the shoes, because there’s no rational excuse for anyone who thinks that’s a remotely attractive way to spend money or adorn their feet. But the conman who owns the courts, bilks his creditors, and gives lie to the concept of shame, just keeps on conning and his flock keeps lining up to be sheered.

If we saw any or all of this in a movie or TV show most would change the channel. But then Reality TV is how this whole thing kicked off in the first place.

We are not serious people. But this guy is a serious serial shyster.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

A Moment Appears in Colorado

We’ve hit a moment. A moment where the fissures, already yawning open quite wide, could widen further, into a destable maw beyond anything most could possibly imagine. And it’s all due to a 4-3 decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that will quickly head to the U.S Supreme Court.

The Colorado Supremes saying “Stop” to Trump’s Republican party ballot presence have in essence called the question on and for all of us. Not just on whether he can be on the ballot and thus potentially elected. That’s certainly the immediate stakes. But there are larger stakes that are about to be exposed.

This was always headed to SCOTUS. Depending on which team you root for you probably feel frightened by that or encouraged, given the makeup of that collection of corrupt pseudo-gods in black robes that the constitution enshrines and entrusts as the last line of its own defense.

These nine, for better or worse, are about to make a decision that may just put everything that follows to rest. Or they may just punt and let it linger until the election. Either way there’s going to be chaos.

From what I can tell, (admittedly I’m a bit swamped between work, the holidays and such so I haven’t see everything,) the legal underpinnings of the Colorado court’s decsion are sound. Some even say it’s a decision engineered to make those who use “strict constructionism” as a shield and a weapon to have second thoughts about taking up those well polished and well worn arms. But others say that’s bunkum. Either way, we’re in the slight sliver of the moment when you can say whatever the hell you want because only nine voices matter.

Though the law should be the deciding factor, the stakes I’m talking cut deeper.

Assuming that those who think the decision is legally sound are correct, there is an opportunity to rid us all of this meddlesome miscreant for both his allies as well as his opponents. Set him aside and move on. Us the law to do it. It may be late term, but this is an abortion most would welcome. Although too many will pretend they don’t. Some have had the chance to do this before and let the opportunity pass (U.S. Senate) thinking he’d fade away. We all seem to know that’s not going to happen again.

This is a country that has allowed itself to be bullied and terrorized, while trying to wrap its head around the destruction of cherished concepts (free speech, democracy, etc…) searching for some way out of the mess, hoping for some sort of deus-ex-machina. There’s no way but to go through it. And there’s no savior in the wings. Regardless of what SCOTUS decides, much of what held us together has been taken from us and tossed in the ash can of history. And here we are at another of those moments.

Should the conservative majority of the Supreme Court steer the decision to keep Trump off the ballot, I think we’ll have the answer we’ve all suspected for too long now. Vast swaths of our country, terrified of the demographic changes inexorably coming are willing to do just about anything to propel us backwards. Something about burning down a village to save it, I guess. And if things get lit up, why not just get on with it and get it over with. That’s the fear. And it’s a real one. I hope we don’t see that. I think we will, regardless of a SCOTUS decision now or after next November’s election results.

Intriguingly, I think Trumpty Dumpty’s allies would benefit more than his opponents from a decision that keeps him off a ballot or two. What continues to masquerade as the Republican party would probably find some new life after first stumbling over the reactions to such a momentus descion. Whatever they stumbled into would probably have a better chance of beating Biden, assuming they can actually sideline the orange buffoon, which is indeed questionable. But that’s an argument for a rational world. And we don’t have one of those any longer.

My hunch is that SCOTUS will punt rather than puncture the big orange balloon.