November 11, 2024

I agree. If it's true that the election was stolen somehow and evidence of it is found,

I still see no way to undo it. If it wasn't stolen, that means more people voted for Trump than for Harris which sucks just as much. Why that happened will be analyzed and fought over forever, but it still doesn't change the fact that he and his Nazi-adjacent minions will control the federal government for some yet-unknown duration and we're stuck with it. No matter how it happened we're stuck with it. Discovering why we're stuck with it may be useful in trying to prevent recurrences, but for now we have to deal with life under a great big pile of shit. There is no possible analysis or explanation that makes me feel better about living under a great big pile of shit.

November 10, 2024

Trump requires only one thing of his appointees: Blind loyalty.

Competence and experience are irrelevant, maybe even a hindrance, because people who actually know what they're doing will probably clash with him when he inevitably wants to do something stupid. So this cabinet will be even more North Korean than the last one; at first there were at least a few appointees who could feed themselves and zip their own flies. But we all remember that totally cringe episode where they went around the big conference table extolling the virtues of Dear Leader, and we can anticipate a rerun of that, only worse. Expect more 20-something former golf caddies and shoe salesmen and internet trolls along with the triumphant return of Steve Bannon and Roger Stone and Stephen Miller and Kash Patel. And before long they'll start fucking things up because they don't know how to do anything but carry golf bags or sell shoes or post Nazi slogans on Xitter, and Miller and Bannon and Patel will fight with each other while JD Vance holds their beer, and Trump will encourage them to fight with each other because he loves the chaos. If his first term was a shit show this will be a shit festival, a shit extravagaza, the apotheosis of shit. It will be the World Cup of shit. The shit Superbowl. The World Series of shit. Die Scheißedämmerung.

I can hardly fucking wait.

November 10, 2024

Ya know what bugs me about the claim that it was all about the economy?

It's the fact that Black women - the most economically disadvantaged group of all - voted overwhelmingly for Harris, while White men, the people who have most of the money, went for Trump. Black women were hurt at least as much as anyone else by the cost of groceries and gas, probably more. Why didn't they swing over to Trump like those White men who were so outraged at having to pay an extra buck for a carton of eggs? Sure, there are poor White people who struggle on account of inflation, but at least the Black women understood that voting for Trump meant selling out our rights and our democracy for the empty promise of cheaper groceries. So don't tell me it was all just the economy and not the racism and the misogyny.

November 8, 2024

We were bamboozled by the incessant claims of American exceptionalism.

When we older folks were kids in the '50s and '60s we were taught about Manifest Destiny, the notion that we were entitled to take the Natives' land for our own as white European settlers moved westward. We heard about the "savages" who tried to fight off the nice white settlers who just wanted the land they were entitled to. We still hear both Dem and GOP politicians constantly talk about how this is the best, strongest, most free, etc. country in the world (except for Trump, who says it's a terrible place but for all the wrong reasons). But it isn't. We are just people, not special, no better than the people of any other country - and, as it turns out, just as susceptible to the lies of a demagogue as were the citizens of Germany in the 1930s. And we conveniently forget that we became a great and prosperous nation because white Europeans stole the labor of captured and enslaved people from Africa and stole the land of the people who already lived here.

And so, believing as an article of faith that we are an exceptional nation full of good, honorable and noble people, it was a terrible shock when half of our fellow citizens were suckered into believing Trump's lies and being persuaded that he would "fix" everything for them. And by fixing he meant, among other things, getting rid of the immigrants who were stealing and raping and murdering and getting government welfare. He meant making sure women didn't have agency over their own reproductive choices. He meant keeping trans people from playing on sports teams or using the "wrong" bathroom. He identified enough groups of Untermenschen, to use the Nazis' term, to give the disgruntled and bigoted and angry folks among us plenty of other people to feel superior to.

And this election, in which about half of the voters told us that they approve of how Trump others people, shows us once and for all that we are not a special nation. We, as a nation, are no less hateful and degraded and stupid than the people of any other nation. I don't want to hear any more bullshit about American exceptionalism. I don't want to hear one more politician announce that "This is not what we are." Because it's exactly what we are.

October 22, 2024

I'm with you.

As a general rule I think grave dancing is tacky, because even awful people have at least a few friends and relatives who love them and would be sad that they are dead, and in light of that it would be kind of cruel to celebrate. But when Satan finally calls him home, I don't think anyone will be very sad, not even his immediate family. Oh, Melanoma will spend a few grand on a black designer dress and veil, and she'll do the grieving widow routine, and Gums and Junior and the rest of that nest of vipers will lie about what a great man he was and how they'll miss him and they'll insist on the flashiest possible state funeral, but as soon as they're off camera and before his stinking corpse is cold they'll be looking for the will and start fighting over the estate, or what's left of it. So I won't feel the slightest twinge of guilt over my celebratory Macarena and my grand jetés and gavottes and gigues and drunken break dancing which will continue until I'm out of liquor and have collapsed from exhaustion. So I'll sleep and then I'll dance some more.

October 20, 2024

They didn't mention the fact that he's the Antichrist.

No, I don't believe in a literal Antichrist, but if there was ever someone who fit the description of the mythical one, it's Trump. He embodies every aspect of human sin and evil. For his entire life he has committed the seven deadly sins - pride, anger, gluttony, sloth, lust, envy and greed - flagrantly, defiantly and unapologetically. He's all the badness humanity is capable of stuffed into a bulging, lumpy orange sausage skin. And he holds up a mirror to our society so some people can see themselves in it - and tragically, they like what they see. What does that make them, I wonder?

October 20, 2024

I'm beginning to wonder whether some percentage of his rally attendees

aren't there just for the spectacle and have no intention of voting for him. It's something I might have done in my crazed youth: "Hey, let's do a few bong hits and go to that Trump rally! I hear he's a real trip!" It would be like going to an infamously bad movie just for the laughs (I've done that) or watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. I recall a time in the early '70s when about six of us got colossally stoned, crammed into my boyfriend's ancient Volvo and went to the seediest porno theater in town to see "Deep Throat." We were hysterical through the whole thing. Maybe it's like that.

October 2, 2024

I am more convinced than ever that the billionaire techbros' plans all along

were to essentially bribe Trump to take on Vance as his running mate, assuming - probably correctly - that Trump was losing his shit so badly that he probably wouldn't survive more than a few months into a new term; if he didn't actually croak he'd become so deranged that they could do the 25th Amendment on him and bundle him off to a nice quiet, secure home in the country. I doubt very much that Trump himself has figured this out, but Vance knows that all he has to do until the election is toe the party line and avoid doing anything to piss off Agent Orange (like admit he lost the 2020 election, which made things awkward last night). If Trump wins Vance will become president, probably within the next year, and the techbros like Thiel and Musk and the Christian nationalists can jam Project 2025 up our collective asses. Trump is now their useful idiot as well as Putin's.

September 21, 2024

He's actually more similar to Vidkun Quisling than he is to Arnold.

Arnold's motivation seems to been partly financial (profiteering) and partly due to his resentment of several rival and younger generals who had been promoted ahead of him and given honors which he thought he deserved. He was more like the spy Robert Hanssen, the arrogant prick of an FBI agent who sold classified information to the Soviet Union for more than $1 million over 20 years.

Trump is more like Quisling, whose name has also become synonymous with traitor. Quisling was a Norwegian government official who led his country's Nazi party, and was appointed by Hitler as Norway's puppet prime minister and leader of a collaborationist regime for the duration of the occupation. The use of his name as a term for collaborators or traitors probably started with Quisling's unsuccessful 1940 coup d'état, when he first attempted to seize power and make Norway stop resisting the invading Germans.

Likewise, Trump, who is a tool of Putin just as Quisling was a tool of Hitler, attempted a coup d'etat on 1/6 but was unsuccessful. Had he been re-elected in 2020 or if his coup had succeeded, he would have been the leader of a collaborationist regime with Putin calling the shots. The only difference is that Putin wouldn't have to invade or occupy the US with Trump in charge.

August 24, 2024

"A weirdo singularity"!!

A conversation between TFG and JDV:

TFG: "The Harris campaign keeps saying we're weird. I don't get it. We are the least weird people ever, that I can tell you. Nobody has ever been less weird than us."

JDV: "That's true, sir, but we need to get out and do something that's clearly not weird so they'll stop saying that. I plan to visit a doughnut shop and speak normally with the hirelings. Everyone will see that I am not at all weird."

TFG: "That's fine for you; anyhow, people think you're weird. Nobody thinks I'm weird. And I'm going to prove it once and for all by accepting the offer of RFK Jr. to endorse me."

JDV: "Excellent. He's a Kennedy so the peasants will vote for us."

TFG: "Not only that, he had a brain worm and he left a dead bear in Central Park. Also, he ate a dog. That proves he's not weird. Maybe you should get a brain worm instead of fucking couches. Some people say fucking couches is weird."

JDV: "I don't fuck couches."

TFG: "Then why were those people at my enormous rally that was the biggest rally ever carrying your jizz around in specimen cups?"

JDV: "That wasn't my jizz. I save it all for my very fertile and normal wife whom I have impregnated like a normal manly man."

TFG: "Whatever. Just don't do that weird couch thing any more."

JDV: "I do not fuck couches."

TFG: "The specimen cups should have the campaign logo. The lid should be a little MAGA cap."

JDV: "[sigh] I have to get to the doughnut shop now to speak normally with the minions at a very normal campaign stop."