Bigger Than Yours

Yesterday and today the twitter world, as well as major media like The New York Times, is all abuzz with the words of a really stupid, sexually inadequate bully.  The fact that those words have the power of the presidency of the United States behind it is shameful.

Despite the media's vows after the 2016 election to be more responsible in their reporting, it is impossible to tune into any media outlet, social or otherwise, without be overwhelmed with the obsession with Donald Trump.  And it's not that they are uncovering anything new.  It is the same crap with different names, the same strutting with different symbols for the same miniscule body part.

Yesterday he was demanding an investigation of Huma Abedin.  He continues to insist on investigating James Comey and Hillary Clinton, just as shortly after being sworn in he insisted that Barack Obama be investigated for wiretapping White House phones.  These insane accusations are not just the rants of an insane world leader -- which they are.  They are also the kind of attacks a bully makes when he is most afraid of being caught.

Sadly, this bullshit has had the effect of capturing headlines and focusing editorials and panels on the absurd tweets and ruminations on what this all means.  We have spent hours going over whether Donald Trump has deep motives and intentions, whether there is something going on in the big head that houses that tiny reptilian brain other than diverting attention away from his own crimes and the fear of being caught.

Donald Trump did not start attacking innocent people with ridiculous accusations when he took that escalator on June 16, 2015.  He has spent his entire life deflecting questions about his own adequacy by attacking others, at times seemingly at random.  This year we have seen it in all its absurdity as he has flattered, then attacked allies like Michael Flynn and Jefferson Sessions, and attacked, then flattered opponents like Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney.  People like James Comey and Robert Mueller have been in and out the swinging door of Donald Trump's good graces so many times they must have to check the headlines on a daily basis to see where they stand.

Anyone who has the power to come close to exposing him gets the full force of his abuse of presidential power, beginning with Sally Yates and currently with Robert Mueller.  He has used the legal system in this country to threaten lawsuits to keep at bay prosecution of his own illegal activity, from dirty business dealings to sexual harassment. 

I am feeling like I have already fed into his narcissism by going on about what we have been witnessing for far too long.  The fact is that people like Steve Bannon and Paul Ryan have been steering this presidency and the course of our country while we have been watching Trump have tantrums.  We have a judiciary that is being taken over by radical right-wing extremists.  We have environmental safeguards and worker rights being dismantled by deregulation.  And we have the rich getting richer on the backs of the rest of us, who were already struggling as health care and education deteriorated.

The man who is incapable of telling the truth has led us to a state of exhaustion.  The kind of exhaustion that leads us to want to escape or to attack.  Where the leader lies non-stop by indiscriminately calling others liars, we may wonder why we should be so concerned with facts.  In 2018, election season may see us attacking each other rather than those who are truly the enemies of our democracy.  Where emails and Facebook posts may come from white nationalists or Russian trolls, where republicans determined to push through their long dreamed of right wing agenda send sincerely deceptive messages, we may end up slugging each other and spreading misinformation.

My hope for 2018 is that those of us who hunger for a return to democratic government stay true to our values.  That we think before we tweet.  That we debate our opponents with passion, but also with facts and that we argue issues rather than fire off attacks on personality or innuendo.  That we don't hide behind safe positions that in the end will hurt the weaker among us.

Let us not pit those of us with democratic values one against the other with cruel and meaningless argument.  Let us support candidates who will fight for us all.  The fascism of the Trump administration has brought us together in ways we did not think possible a year ago.  We have seen it happen with elections in Alabama and Virginia.  If we can continue to fight together against greed and tyranny, we can win back our democracy.

The Final Insult

When it comes to presidential debates, I tend to lose patience with the word games and turn them off after a few minutes.  This year I watched all three debates, and realized around the time of the third, that I was there because I needed to believe I was giving Hillary moral support.  She didn't need it, but I needed to give it.

Watching Donald Trump vomit on everything and everyone we hold dear for the past year and a half has made me feel as though I am caught in an abusive relationship.  I must listen, every time I turn on the t.v. or internet, to more lies and assaults by a man who has used his inherited wealth to bully American into giving this idiot the voice of authority.

I have heard commenters lately ruminate about whether it was inevitable that it would be the biggest pig on the planet who would run against the first possible woman president -- I am paraphrasing in the interest of accuracy.  The road that led to Donald Trump running for the presidency is a long one, even longer than Hillary's path.  Unlike Hillary, though, Trump's quest has been fueled by bigotry and greed.  Misinformation and outright lie.  Right wing eyes on the prize, the prize being ever more power and wealth.

Some trace it to the Reagan machine, those capitalists and warmongers who craved power and who were smart enough to take advantage of Reagan's fuzzy-headed good nature and evangelical Christians' need to prove their righteousness by making their beliefs the law of the land.  This is certainly when the right-wing took over the American language and turned it on its head, with Orwellian flights of fancy like "trickle-down economics" and "death tax."  And it worked.

The other thing that worked was taking advantage of the insecurity and desires of the average American, i.e. me and you.  When Reagan handed out millions in tax breaks for the wealthy, he made sure he doled out a few dollars to the rest of us.  When he talked about that welfare queen who drove up to pick up her check in her limo, he was talking to those of us who worried about making ends meet now, and in the future; he didn't need to say that people like her were taking our hard-earned money away from us.  Unlike Trump, Reagan actually had a political philosophy, and he really, really, believed it.  He had a smooth style and winning smile, much like... the evil Mike Pence.  But we'll worry about that in four years.

With people like Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2, that "conservative" philosophy -- nothing conservative, really, about giving money away to big corporations and allowing the wealthy and powerful to rape the planet -- had been ground through think-tanks and forced into logical-sounding sausages of policy.  It is that very same policy that Paul Ryan is trying to force down our throats today.

Which leads to the end of this dreadful road.  That would be where everybody from Putin to Ryan believe that, once in office, Trump will be happy to do their bidding.  Even though each time he has been pressured to read a coherent sentence from a teleprompter, he ends up combusting into rants at rallies and in 3 a.m. tweets.

If you guys, Paul Ryan and Rubio and all those others who slice and dice reality by saying they don't support Trump but they will vote for him, if you guys paid attention, it would be obvious to you that Trump is merely playing the game so that he can win all the marbles.  And once he's got them, he won't need to pretend to listen to you.

Donald and his sleazy sons, Uday and Qusay, can't wait to get into the Oval Office.  If Trump has been able to make money from bankruptcies, suck dollars out of the Trump Foundation and pinch pennies by denying his workers wages due, you can bet that his main goal as president will be to expand his power and his profit.  Just as with the high powered financial and legal experts he has at his disposal, he will use the republican lackeys that have been afraid to stand up to him to further his megalomaniacal agenda.  And, as he has in his life so far, he will unceremoniously rid himself of anyone who attempts to block his desires, or who no longer serves his purpose -- "You're fired."

As I was sitting in MacDonald's this morning over my senior coffee and egg mcmuffin, I was actually -- I swear -- wondering just how drunk I was going to need to get next Tuesday night while waiting for the election to be determined.  It was then, this morning, after a year and a half of insults and abuse, I was mistaken for a Trump supporter.

This is what happened.

An average looking older white man, on his way out the door, stopped and said to me, "Have you voted yet?  You HAVE to vote!"  I quickly used those powers of perception that I have honed in these years living in this red state to ascertain that this was not a passionate Hillary fan.  And so I slowly and calmly said, "You are voting for Hillary?"  And he proceeded to begin the Trump rant, the one about how he is going to fix everything that is wrong with the country.  I said, "Have you listened to the words he is saying?"  And he said he sure has, and he would "never in a million years" vote for Hillary.  Because she's a liar."  As he walked out the door I added that that wasn't true, that it was thirty years of people accusing her of lying.  But it didn't matter, because he and his ignorance were out the door.

"Damned right I'm voting," I muttered.

But that experience left me about as unsettled as I get these days.  How on earth could I be mistaken for a Trump supporter?  Of course, he hadn't seen my car regaled with lefty bumper stickers, and I wasn't wearing a tee-shirt advertising my political beliefs.  Was he making that ugly assumption because I was an overweight badly dressed white woman eating by myself at MacDonald's?  Or was he just suffering from that mania fueled by the FBI and seesawing polls in this last stretch?

To be honest, there is my own mania with which I am trying to cope.  Suffering the awareness of the sane, I wonder if I am being paranoid in thinking that there is a mole in the FBI, getting under Comey's skin with implied threats.  After all, why would a smart person like Huma Abedin leave emails on a computer being investigated by the FBI?  She has said she had no idea they were there.  How hard would it be for someone in the pocket of Putin to copy a whole grunch of those Hillary emails and put them on Weiner's computer?  And maybe throw in a few of his own invention?  And for some partisan agents to pressure Comey to notify Congress about them -- or else???

With all the internet malfeasance coming out of Russia, I'm wondering why that isn't being considered.

Anyway, as insulted as I am feeling about being mistaken for a Trump wacko, I am sure that there is still time for more bizarre events.  If Hillary wins, and she should, she will have beaten the dirtiest, most corrupt, anti-American, foulest human being to have ever run for the presidency.  Along with the basketful of deplorables that are cheering him on.

Wish us all luck.  My MacDonald's encounter is unlikely to be the final insult.