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.

Four Days of Fear and Hate

Of course, Donny opens for himself. This is 2016, but ya gets the idea. Photo: Meg Vogel

In 1969, the small upstate New York town of Woodstock saw a music festival that had branded itself as ‘Three Days of Peace and Love’. Well, it turned into three days of mud and failed organization, but at least there was some of that peace and love going around. And some good dope.

Now, we have another hastily thrown together festival starting this week. Instead of a grassy field upstate, it’ll be held in rooms and cyberspace. It also has people (acts) who dropped out (where are Bush and Cheney? Mitt Romney?), and instead of hitting the stage during a rainstorm, it’s playing during a global pandemic. It’s four days instead of three, and it’s not about ‘peace and love’, but focuses, like the people throwing it, on ‘fear and hate’.

The Republican National Convention has begun.

The Democrats focused on inclusion, diversity, and a vision for what to do after Trump was gone. The Trump Party (as that is what it is) is focused on blaming someone (China, Democrats, Biden) for the wreck their own polices, and the lack of them, have made of America. If you look at the speakers, for every one of them slightly this side of sane, they have a pile of bomb throwers, cranks, grifters and grievance peddlers. And Trumps. Every night at least a couple of the Trump Crime family (and extended Crime Family) will be speaking. And Trump himself.

Every night.

That can’t go wrong, can it?

The RNC has become the Trump Show, that final season of the Apprentice he never got; all Trump all the time. In fact, producers of the Apprentice are helping to slap together this soggy bag of anger and hate into something ‘watchable’, like car wrecks are watchable, in the hopes that Americans will slow down and gawk.

Who’s speaking? All the Trump kids, their spouses, and Trump himself (every night, did I say that already?) Jim Jordan (still dogged by accusations he ignored the sexual assault of athletes when he was a coach) Matt Gaetz, liar in the service of Trump, who mocked the virus by wearing a gas mask in congress during a vote, as his constituents were dying of it back home, the idiot ‘gun couple’, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who demonstrated incorrect gun handling by waving guns at protesters walking past their house, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was part of gassing peaceful protesters and has used his offices to protect Trump, Sen. Rand Paul, who has proven himself to be an idiot several times over, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, whose covid policies have been killing thousands in her state, along with her refusal to seek help after the derecho devastated counties and towns, Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, representing a state whose policies have allowed the virus to rampage through nursing homes, beaches and bars, infecting and killing thousands. She should be home, working to make things right.

So, why double down on the hate and grievance?  

What else they got?

Trump can’t run on his record because, well, look around. Est 200,000 Americans dead, virus burning uncontrolled across the country, double digit unemployment, protesters in the streets… none of this is good. So, he tried tweeting ‘LAW & ORDER’ in all caps, because Trump, but seeing how he’s the shadiest President since Nixon (Nixon resigned before being impeached, btw) that hasn’t worked so well. Even his secret police only made things worse by being even more violent that the regular police. He’s got the lying thing down (Joe Biden is a radical leftist!) but he just lost his most effective liar as Kellyanne left, about to lose her family over her ugly job. He’s still showing pictures of burning cars and calling it ‘Biden’s America’, fooling nobody. Donny, it’s Your America.

Fear, hate, finger-pointing and grievance are what he’s got left. Point to immigrants, to Black Life Matters, to China, to Democrats to explain what can only be called a failed presidency. They are to blame! If only there was one of those forgotten caravans around to help! If you can’t inspire hope (and let’s face it, he can’t) then inspire fear.

We’ll see a lot of that the next four days.

It’s all brought to us by a party who has literally thrown out their GOP party platform (principles, hope, mercy…) to say the only thing they stand for is Trump. Where Goes Trump, There Go All. A cult-party of over 200,000 acceptable deaths (57% of Republicans think that, according to polling), ready to reward his performance with four more years.

And four more after that, as a spying/virus/economy crashing do-over.

And they’d give it to him.

Let the Four days of Fear and Hate… begin.

Trump is Going Nowhere.

Trump smirks and then pouts his way though the grievance fest that is his ‘press conference’. BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS

Trump is going nowhere.

I don’t mean he’s going to win the election, I mean he’s going nowhere, not him, and not the party he embodies. This is what many people (including Joe Biden, I believe) are missing, The GOP is Trump, Trump is the GOP. You can cut off the head, but the body will just go doing what it was doing before. And Trump himself, bar going to jail, will still be around, still be telling it what to do, think, say, and taking his network of grievance and hate and just installing it elsewhere, maybe in a new subscription TV channel that he can spew nonsense on 24/7, without any ‘enemies of the people’ to question him.

Trump is going nowhere. The GOP has not been so much transformed as it has come of age, reached the goal it (and others) set for itself back in 1964 with the defeat of Goldwater. It absorbed the John Birchers, it invited in the religious far right, it purged itself of anyone and everyone to their left (if there was such a place), embraced the crazy and conspiracy, and folded its supposed ‘big tent’. Gone is/was any talk of ‘compassionate conservatism’, hell, most of them never really knew what Bush was talking about… sounded weak, sounded left.

Trump is not the aberration, Trump is destiny, he is the messiah, riding his donkey into the White House, arriving to lead his people into the promised land of power. He is the ‘Chosen One’, the One they have been waiting for since Goldwater. He is the one who will no longer smile, no longer couch his words with niceties, or hide his meaning behind ‘dog whistles’. Trump is the human ‘fuck this shit’. They delight in his crudeness, his racism, his bigotry, because he’s finally saying what many of them have been thinking or whispering to each other for decades.

Trump is going nowhere. If he’s voted out, (and is dragged from the White House by his ankles, his hands clawing at the carpet), he becomes the Messiah-in-Exile, Napoleon at Elba, waiting for his chance at power again. Be serious with yourself; do you really think his minions won’t be working some angle to get him back in power? They’ve already proved, over and over, that they will lie, they will seek out enemies of America for help, they will go to any length to give him more, and more, power. And if not Trump himself, there are many Trump children and hangers-on to assume power while Trump whispers in their ear.

You might shake your head and think this is all crazy. Well, four years ago, did you think we’d have an American President who worked with the Russians to get elected, asked two foreign countries to help collect dirt on a political opponent, worked hard to undermine allies while showing sycophantic affection for murderous dictators, and who has stood by while an est 200,000 of his own countrymen died?  

This is where we are.

So, don’t fool yourself.

Trump is going nowhere.