Ain’t No Civil War

Civil War? Don’t believe it.

I know. The press has to have their stories, with their storylines, ones they can see coming in advance, ones that fit past narratives and are easily pitched at the morning meetings. It’s very comforting, like a Simpson’s writing saying “Oh, we did something like that in season 12, but we can just give it a twist here. It’ll work!” A Republican civil war is an easy narrative, heck, you can just pull out and blow the dust off the ones from 2006, or ’12, or the summer of 2015. And the ones from 2015 have the advantage of not having to change most of the names, as many of the players are the same.

But that is just lazy, by-the-numbers sort of thing, above anyone but hacks on a deadline. Now, I can’t say anything about the ‘hack’ part, heaven forfend, but the lazy bit… well…

People love to see what they want to see, what they are expecting to see, and everyone loves a good fight. So, some Republicans are fighting some other Republicans and we’re all pulling up our lawn chairs (six feet apart, of course) and popping up the popcorn (salt, light butter) getting ready to watch the fight.

But there really isn’t one.

The fight is over. It ended with the nomination and election of Donald Trump. The professional sycophants (Cruz, Rubio, Graham) went from highly critical to embarrassingly praiseful overnight. It was like a photo-finish. I can see the 8X10, all three (there were more, but let’s go with the big three) in a leaning-forward run, lips outstretched, all aiming for Trump’s large ass.

The ‘civil war has been over for years. Trump swallowed the party whole. Oh, he burped out a few, Jeff Flake, Justin Amash, Republicans who couldn’t take Trump (but still voted for many of his policies) and left before the humiliation of their Trumpified voters kicking them out.

So, this isn’t a ‘civil war’, this is a purge. The last of the previous generation of Republicans, themselves heirs of a previous right-wing coup and purge (the ‘Reagan Revolution’), are now getting flushed out by the very radicals they nurtured, the vipers they thought they could control while they passed on to ‘elder statesman’ status. They were wrong. Vipers do what vipers do, they strike.

See, they have been striking for years, but with Trump giving the order that the ‘stolen election’ bullshit is now the Golden Rule by which all must be judged, the strikes, the Purge ™, has been increased in speed and scope; everyone who dared to question, dared to stop Trump’s steal must be cast out into the wilderness. They must be burned to the ground, and their cubicles and office mugs salted so no one who might question The Donald can grow there.

Liz Cheney? She’s just the most public face. The local GOPer’s, the ones who certified the votes, who oversaw the Republicans elections in reddish/purple states and followed the rules, all those Republicans who put in place all the rules designed to elect Republicans (that failed to elect Republicans this time), they’re either gone, or have had their power so curtailed they might as well be gone.

So, put away the popcorn, there’s no fight here. Everyone knows what’s up, everyone knows how this is going to go. Except those in the media who just don’t get it, or like the narrative too much to tell their editors what is really going on. The War is over, the War has been won, they’re dragging the bodies off the field.

The GOP is Trump’s party, has been for years, they’re just cleaning house. 100% Trump, or 100% gone.

Dancing at the Grifter’s Ball

Pam Bondi’s anti-Biden nepotism speech is nestled into a night of Trump grifters living off their father’s/husband’s name. And The Trump Party sees no irony, can see no irony, in this.

He dirties everything he touches.

Everything. Trump spares no reputation, no tradition left clean, no ‘norm’ left unsoiled, any laws in his way are trampled into the dirt. His every touch is like a child with mud on their hands; filth is strewn over all. And like a child, he grins at the destruction in his wake. Last night Trump smeared his hands over the White House, the naturalization ceremony, the pardon, and used them all as petty, political tools to boost an election campaign that is already dirty with corruption and brimming with lies. He sullies them all not for any noble purpose or sense of justice, but to squeeze out just one more vote from those white, ‘suburban housewives’ that he keeps throwing hypothetical Black people at. 

Our government is reduced from a constitutional republic/democracy to no more than a political prop, the People’s White House as a stage for reelection, the employees using their office and power as campaign tools, and the taxpayer’s money blatantly being used to elect the most undemocratic leader the United States of America has ever seen. Nothing is sacred, nothing cannot be used to wrench what is supposed to be a government of the people, for all the people, to a thing to serve the power not of a small political base, but just one man, Donald J. Trump.

Last night RNC was a self-servering parade of corruption and lies, a weaponizing the American government for the benefit an amoral man at the head of a party ready and eager to serve that amorality. And, as usual with the entire Trump administration, the law breaking is right out in the open, proudly displayed, (“Russia, if you’re listening”) bragged about, passed around like a good joint at a frat party. This isn’t bending rules, this is snapping and breaking laws, flagrantly.

I said in a previous post that this convention was going to be a sort of ‘Woodstock’ for the Trump Party, ‘Four Days of Fear & Hate”. I feel I underplayed it. Speaker after speaker got up, lied and smiled about it. Pam Bondi of Florida spewed forth a much-debunked conspiracy theory of Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine, railing against ‘nepotism’ on a night where an array of Trumps (all benefiting off their father/husband’s office) overwhelmed the so-called ‘real’ people. And all the grifters danced in joy.

Through the looking glass, while denying you are actually in wonderland.

It was an evening of breaking laws, nepotism, lying, making bizarre claims (My father will put people on Mars!) and celebrating it all. All in an America, damaged, grieving, wondering how they will make rent and feed themselves, or as Trump calls 'it, '“Biden’s America.”

And an estimated 200,000 Americans are dead, with another 1,200 Americans died of the coronavirus on the Tuesday of this shitshow. One mention of the dead, in passing, from the First Lady, while everyone else acted like the virus was over, past tense, like it isn’t still burning, threatening, killing. A complete unreality show, with Trump and the Trump family the most unreal part of it.

Good lord, these fucking people. I can’t do anything more but shake my head at Trump’s American Carnage and wonder where it will end. Or if it ever will.

Trump says he alone can fix it; turns out only he alone could have brought it on.

What the Hell did I Just Watch?

Evita of the Trump Party.

Distorted history, outright lies, a lady angrily screaming into an empty hall, and a speech from Donny Jr, so disjointed and incoherent, that as he spoke, #Cocaine was trending on Twitter. It was supposed to be ‘uplifting, positive, very positive’, Donny Sr. promised! Instead, we got anger, bile, lies, lies and more lies. And yelling, lots of yelling. It was pretty… amazing.

The theme of the night was ‘The Land of Promise’, and they promised light, positivity, optimism, you know, all the good stuff. Right off the bat we had Trump storming in like your drunk uncle who wants to settle who took his favorite skateboard (you now, that one he put the ‘Hanging Ten’ sticker on) back in 1977. He started in attacking Biden, Democrats, China and claimed Democrats were promoting and using ‘voter fraud’, trying to steal the election by saying that votes should, you know, be counted. It was his usual disjointed rambling, a bitter grievance masterpiece. The Qanon cultists were taking notes so they could decipher the ‘breadcrumbs’ for the “real” message later. (When it comes to Qanon, “quote marks” are mandatory.)

Oh, and all the horrible stuff happening under Trump? Be totally worse under Biden. Totally. Fear Biden! Everything that Trump did is actually Biden’s fault!!

So there.

And he’s going to do this stream-of-consciousness ranting EVERY night! That means he’s going to work four whole night in a row. That’s dedication. That’s how desperate he is, he’s coming close to doing his job.

Nikki Haley was there, completely forgetting her trashing of Trump four years ago, trying to present herself as a sort of ‘sane version’ of Trumpism, Trump scrubbed of the overt racism and outright hate; Diet Coke Trumpism. It was a good speech, even if it had to, like most speeches of the night, ignore Trump’s actual record and rhetoric to make its points. Talking of ‘cancel culture’ and political correctness’ Haley claimed the president “knows that political correctness and 'cancel culture' are dangerous and just plain wrong.” This ignores the many times, like just last week with his attack on Goodyear Tires, Trump has put out a ’cancel’ fatwa of his own on journalists, Hollywood celebrities and entire organizations for not praising him enough. Ignore reality and blame whatever is going on in America on anyone but Trump.

As a possible 2024 prospect, she was the one of the calmest people in a night of yelling and arm waving.

There was a lot of that, of ignoring actual reality in favor of what they would like things to be, you know, like praising Trump on the now ruined economy (by time traveling back to December), rewriting his coronavirus response, dismissing his actual racial rhetoric and record. Some circus strongman level bending and twisting of the truth.

The most cringe-worthy moment of the night in the many on display, was when former hostage Andrew Brunson thanked Trump for getting him out of the Turkish prison where he’d been sentenced for 28 years. And Trump replied: “I have to say, that to me, President Erdogan was very good.”

That would be the brutal dictator that threw Brunson in prison in the first place. Brunson just sat there, looking at him while he went on to praise Erdogan some more. It was a version of “Well, sorry he killed people, but he’s never killed me.” Insane.

The ‘real people’ stars of the night were the two personal injury lawyers from St. Louis, Mark and Patty McCloskey, who thought it a good idea to wave guns at people who dared to walk past their house. They were there, again, to tell you the things happening in Trump’s America were actually happening in the mythical ‘Biden’s America’, where every day would be a mix of Soylent Green, Mad Max, and Planet of the Apes. You could boil the whole thing down to: The Black people are coming to riot and move in next to you. These are the ‘ordinary Americans’ the GOP wants to praise, protecting their gilded McMansion against… passersby.

That was a bigger theme than any openly announced; Be Afraid of ‘Those People’. There were several Black speakers on this first night: Senator Tim Scott, State Senator Vernon Jones, Kim Klacik, Herschel Walker, there to say how terrible Democrats are to Black America and how un-racist Trump is. Now, the Democrats do need to do better on race (we all do), but that’s not why these Black speakers were there. They were not there to appeal to Black and POC, (Trump support in the Black community is so small as to be a blip) they were there to reassure the white voters that they’re not racist. It’s okay to vote for someone with Trump’s abysmal record on race, it won’t make you racist. I’m sure that was not the intent of the sincere speakers, but it is the intent of the Trump Party.

The Promised Land indeed.

One of the most batshit things of the evening was Kimberly Guilfoyle, ex-Fox News host, ex-wife of CA Governor Gavin Newsom, girlfriend of Don Jr, and an important and effective fundraiser for the GOP. She gave the standard ‘Dems comin’ for your money, guns, and babies, gonna make you all socialists’ speech, but delivered it in a such a shouting, shrill, angry fashion I cringed at home. I thought something was wrong with her. I’m an actor, I wanted to tell her that they have microphones, you don’t need to yell. It was as if she had practiced it to be shouted at a noisy, crowded, and rambunctious room and couldn’t adjust to the fact the hall was empty. She even still had all the applause lines. To the echo of no applause.

Should I mention Guilfoyle got her own heritage wrong, claiming her mother wasn’t a citizen (she was born in Puerto Rico, which makes her an American citizen), and calling herself a ‘1st generation American Citizen;’ (getting the nomenclature wrong) when she’s not?

Nah, that’s petty. And I don’t want to be petty about pettiness.

We end here with probably the more anticipated speech of the night: Donald Trump Jr. Don Jr. started with his dad’s campaign, figuratively (sometime literally) fetching the coffee. It was Jr. who brought the Russian spy to Trump Tower to pitch her anti-Hillary, Pro-The Donald portfolio, which everybody knows was a great move. In the past few years though, his position has become point man for his father, and he and Guilfoyle have become a power couple in the Trump Party and a ‘credible’ prospect of running for president in 2024. Of course, that was before this speech.

Really, maybe he was just stunned by Guilfoyle’s speech, or deafened, but he delivered his usual ‘Imagine how the world would be if my father was not president’ speech with red, weeping eyes, and stuffed nose. It lite up Twitter for all the wrong reasons. This is the future of the Republican Trump Party.

What all these speeches have in common (besides Trump good, Biden evil) is trying to blame everything that has gone wrong under Trump’s presidency on the Democrats and Joe Biden. The coronavirus, the cratered economy, the double-digit unemployment, the protests, the est. 200,000 dead Americans and the rest of us not knowing how we’re going to pay rent or even eat. None of this is Trump’s fault. It’s all a plot against him, it’s all the Deep State ™, it’s really what will happen under Joe Biden. This night is like all other night’s in the Trump Party; they shout, they point, they exaggerate, they twist, they lie to avoid any sort of responsibility, and then say they deserve four more years to save you from… them.

Tuesday night; more of the same.