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Sunday, December 22, 2019
A 2019 Christmas Carol
It was Christmas Eve. Scrooge McTrump was arriving back at the White House. He had been at a Holiday fete given to him by the RNC at his own DC hotel. It would pay for the month's lease, so he was content. As his limo slowly pulled up to the security checkpoints, Scrooge thought on the evening's event. So many obsequious and fawning sycophants! So many previous opponents now turned into groveling acolytes! He had succeeded in conducting his hostile takeover of an entire political party and now most of the nation's government. It felt good to be king.
"Thank you, sir, for making it safe to say 'Merry Christmas' out loud," said a burly security guard at the gate, tears streaming down his face. "Yeah, yeah. Merry Christmas. Now get the fuck outta my way!" If he was lucky, he could still catch the last minutes of Hannity on Fox.
Once inside, he walked up to the Residence floor. He knew Melania and Barron weren't there. They rarely were, and he didn't care. All he wanted was to relax and watch some Fox. He reached for the doorknob and recoiled -- "WTF!" The elaborate doorknob had somehow taken on an eerie and uncanny visage of his old pal, Jeffrey Epstein! Scrooge dismissed it as the result of having eaten some bad shrimp at the party. Maybe he would need to rush off to Walter Reed Medical Center again?
Feeling his pulse rate race a bit, he got into this golden night robe and turned on the TV. And there on the big screen was Jeffrey Epstein's mournful face appearing momentarily before giving way to Tucker Carlson's perpetually perplexed persona. "Fuckin' frozen fish trust fund loser," Scrooge grumped. He set his phone on the night table next to his Adderall and closed his eyes.
A booming knock at the bedroom door awoke Scrooge. He drew the covers up to his nose. There was the ghost of his old booty call partner - Jeffrey Epstein! The ghost walked in, burdened with heavy chains linked with sex toys, money boxes and hotel room safes. A knotted prison bedsheet was wrapped tightly around his neck. He gazed at Scrooge and began to moan and shake.
"Jeffrey! What the hell do you want? You're dead! I made sure of it!"
"McTrump, hear me well. Tonight at midnight, you will be visited by three spirits, showing your past, present and future. Heed their visions. This is your last chance to amend your ways. Don't be a total shreklekh mensch like I was." And then he vanished!
"Jeffrey, wait! Can I tweet about this?" Scrooge thought better of it. Shaken, he pulled the covers over his head. What the hell was Epstein on about? Scrooge liked him back in the day when they were on the poontang patrol. Ep had even introduced Melania to him. Jeffrey said he'd imported her like so many other "models" from Eastern Europe. But he had crossed Scrooge by poaching girls from Mar-a-Lago without his permission. That was the last he'd seen him... until tonight. He tried to go to sleep.
The phone alarm rang. It was midnight. Scrooge sat up and was startled to see the shade of Roy Cohn standing by his bed.
"Hello, Scrooge. Long time, you old counter-puncher!"
"Roy!! My old mentor! You died of AIDS in 1986. Where the hell did you come from?"
"Hell. A lot of your dead family and associates there say 'Hi'. Now let's get going. I've got a job to do here. I'm your Christmas Past."
And off they went lifting into a swirl of clouds and stars and the night sky!
When Scrooge could focus, he saw himself with family and friends at his Trump Tower penthouse. He felt an urge to visit his gold toilet there. But Cohn held up a cautioning hand. "You cannot pee. And they cannot see you." But he could see them, and himself. He squinted at one of his three wives. Everyone was laughing.
McTrump was regaling the group about having recently stiffed the Association to Benefit Children. "Yeah, it was for that nursery school opener for AIDS kids..." Scrooge remembered. He hadn't been a donor and never intended to be. But he knew where the NY press would be that day. So he showed up, got backstage and talked his way onto the Big Donor spotlight area. There was an empty chair there, so he sat down as the event began (he didn't care that the seat was reserved for an actual donor who now couldn't get into the chair before the event began and had to sit back in the audience).
"Yeah, what a bunch of schmucks," he recalled. The NY press took oodles of pics and video of him smiling and clapping. Then he left, and never gave a donation. But he got a lot of press coverage for nothing that day. "Yeah, that was a good day. That was fun, that I can tell you." Everyone laughed again.
The party was now raising a toast to McTrump. "To the man who always stiffs his workers. To the chief who bought two huge portraits of himself for $80,000 using his own foundation's money. To being able to stay above water despite writing off ONE BILLION dollars in losses over ten years. To Russians and their dirty money. To real estate and money laundering! Yay!"
Everyone clinked their glasses. Scrooge looked at the shade of Roy Cohn, who smirked and shook his head. "To all the stupid failed sucker businesses that we've foisted on the rubes! Trump University! Trump Airlines! Trump Steaks! GoTrump search engine! Trump Vodka! Trump Mortgage! Trump Magazine! Trump Ice! The New Jersey Generals! The Trump Network! Trump New Media!" Everyone laughed again and slurped their champagne as they began to fade into the chintzy decor - this vision was swirling about and then Scrooge found himself back in his White House bedroom.
"Roy, those were such good times, the likes of which have never been seen. And, quite frankly, I don't have as much fun now." But Cohn simply said, "Wait for the next Spirit." So Scrooge got back into bed.
He awoke again at midnight when his phone alarm sounded. Scrooge looked wildly around and saw the shade of the recently departed Elijah Cummings standing there. "I'm here, Scrooge, to take you for a spin through your Christmas Present. So hang on, it's going to be quite a ride." The room spun. Soon he witnessed a whirlwind of voices and images.
Scrooge saw the 1% enjoying their stock market and tax cut gains. There were glaciers melting, withering droughts, wildfires and floods. Sexual assault victims sought the comfort of their friends and families. Hundreds of immigrant/refugee children were in cages at the southern border. Puerto Ricans and Virgin Islanders were still struggling.
He saw old flames like Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and felt his mushroom stir. In a flash, the 24+ women who have accused him of sexual assault flew past. Then he saw courtrooms and prison cells with associates like Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates. And then he saw others he knew who would be there soon.
He saw his adult children being told they were required to attend training classes on the duties of running charities (this, and a $2 million dollar fine, was the civil case punishment for operating a fraudulent Trump Charities scam). He looked past the 1000+ former Federal prosecutors who agreed that the Mueller Report would have resulted in multiple felony charges against him if he weren't President.
He saw China's Xi sipping a drink, chuckling, saying to himself "an immense fortune". There was his love letter pal, Kim Jong-un, riding a horse and thinking "What a dumb fuck!" And there was his boss, Vladimir Putin, sitting by a fire in his dacha, quietly laughing and shaking his head, saying "Who could have imagined?"
Finally, Cummings brought Scrooge to an Arizona desert home where he found Cindy McCain lighting a Christmas candle for her late husband.
"I can't take it anymore, Elijah!! Take me away! Get me outta here!"
Scrooge found himself in bed again when the phone alarm rang once more at midnight. He opened one eye and saw the Spirit of the Future waiting for him. It was Richard Nixon. With a glower and a shake of his jowls, Nixon raised his arms high, flashing his famous Victory hand signs. Then the now-familiar swirling of senses began and they were gone.
He began to focus on familiar settings. It was a wing of his residence at Mar-a-Lago. The room had been set up like a hospital room. There was a hospital bed, a crash cart, and vitals monitors. Two nurses were unplugging cables and removing IVs as the long "beeeeep" was heard, registering a flatline. A silent bored orderly waited in the background.
"He was such a crazy man! Still grabbed at my cooch with his dying breath!"
"Oh, honey. I was so tired of his constant yelling! It was such a load of mush! 'I'm the real victim!' and 'I've had the worst treatment anyone in the world has ever had!'. And that's the stuff I could even make out..."
"Well, at least it will be quiet around here now. His wife won't come and most of his kids and friends are in jail. It's sad."
"Yes, it is."
Nixon turned to Scrooge and pointed to the shrouded body. Scrooge peered closer and saw a marmot-like mop of disheveled dyed-blond hair spilling out from the top of the sheet. It looked familiar. He looked back at Nixon, who shook his jowls and lifted his arms aloft again.
And then it was over! McTrump opened his eyes. It was Christmas morning! He leapt out of bed, feeling like a completely recharged man. He grabbed his phone and shot out a quick tweet. "Merry Christmas, even to the hateful losers who are trying to destroy me and America! This means you, Democrats!!"
Scrooge felt fine! He didn't need any redemption. When you're the greatest person in the world, the one who is the smartest genius, the handsomest man, The Chosen One by God who requires undying support and obedience, well, who needs flippin' redemption? He got on his phone.
"Hey! Kitchen! Where the hell is my Diet Coke and Egg McMuffin?!! Let's go, chop-chop!!"
It felt good to be king.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
53%??
In a recent poll, it was revealed that 53% of Republicans preferred Trump to Lincoln. Yes they did:
You.Gov poll shows 53% of Republicans think Trump is greater than Lincoln
It's not all bonkers. Reagan beats him 59% to 41%. The same Reagan who, in his farewell speech as President, urged the nation to accept more immigrants. This poll really is indicative of the swirling toxic mess that the GOP has become over the last few decades.
How popular is he? Pretty much since taking residence in the White House, Trump has claimed a 95% GOP approval, according to the usual unnamed poll. The Sharpie Poll? It must be this one:
Actually, this consistently hyped figure is likely when considering former Republicans have left the party because of The Freak Show, leaving it in a more purified state for the grifters and the rubes.
So, looking past the Soviet-style near-100% approval mark, it's clear that T enjoys rampant approval from his progressively regressive GOP base. As an example let's listen in to Exhibit A, a caller to a recent CSPAN show:
Hilarious/Horrifying Trumper call to CSPAN
Oh, how did we ever fall to this lowly state?
Back in the day (pre-Lee Atwater and Karl Rove), the GOP was comprised of three basic groups: Partisans, Ideologues, and Others.
Partisans - Every party has its share of partisans. They will carry the water and do whatever is necessary to advance the party. They don't have much philosophical attachment to anything except advance the party. It is more Tribalism than anything else. It's Us vs. Them. Some might step past the legal line if they could get away with it.
Ideologues - The GOP was renowned for their share of high profile principled ideologues. Think Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater and St. Reagan. Belief in such values as Fiscal Conservatism, Free Trade, Pro-Business, Maintenance of Law & Order/Rule of Law, Pragmatic Management of Government, Pursuit of Balanced Budgets, Strongly Hawkish Foreign Policy towards Autocratic States, and such were always loudly ballyhooed.
Others - This category used to be an ambiguous amalgam of subgroups that flitted back and forth between Republican and Democratic parties. "Reagan Democrats". "White Working Class". "Disaffected Union Workers". "Non-College Educated". "Conservative Christians". "Independents". Before the Internet Age, this diverse group was hard to identify, much less motivate for action.
OK, that was then. Let's take a moment to consider why so many Americans continue to defy reality and support Trump. Over the last decade, a small stream of Republicans began leaving the GOP. For the last three years, the stream has widened as former members have become acutely uncomfortable with their old party. Now that the party has purged its people who think independently and morally, GOP is a depot for three basic groups.
1) Nihilists who find laws and rules to be useful only when advancing their own political purposes. This group used to be the Partisans. These are the fine folk who believe that Power and Control are more important than Right over Wrong. Those who follow norms are Losers. This may seem like a horrible conclusion. However, it is a very popular theme amongst DC observers.
2) Reflexive Regressives have taken the place of Ideologues. When Trump conducted his hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2016, members had a choice. Some became Never Trumpers and joined the stream out of the GOP. Most abandoned whatever principles they may have had and lashed themselves securely to the guy. It's safe to say the guiding philosophical lights of the party have been snuffed out. Milton Friedman? Goldwater? No sir. Russian hawk Reagan? Nope. That school of conservatism is dead. The premier thought leaders in the GOP are found foaming on Fox State News and Hate Radio. And these people have no principles except to their own bottom line. Truth for them is extremely relative.
3) Deplorables are the new Others. As Trump loudly spoke in racist and misogynist terms, he galvanized racists and bigots. He said what they thought. He celebrated the resentful "poorly educated." He called for a Muslim registry and a complete Muslim ban from entering the country. When he made an alliance with top evangelists, their followers were told Trump was a vessel of the Lord. "God works through this imperfect man." Of course He does. When one is convinced that God is on your side, there is no bottom to what is accepted and promoted. The Lord works in mysterious ways, all right.
The GOP has become so bad that it celebrates when WAR CRIMINALS are pardoned. Why? Because these are tough men who were put in bad places to protect our country -- like sniper shooting unarmed and defenseless Muslim girls and old men. And killing/desecrating an enemy combatant and posting pictures. When Trump pardoned three Navy Seals for having conducted this egregious and murderous conduct, charges brought against them by their own team members, he was cheered. He even suggested he'd bring them along to appear at his campaign rallies!! It's a degradation of U.S. military values, but nothing matters when you've got the Lord's vessel working for you, so who cares?
It really is a political party that has pursued Power Politics for so long that it has completely lost its way. And the leader it has is so obsessed with himself that he cannot lead, beyond saving his own skin. There is no moral compass. There is no moral imperative at play. What is left are the Left Behinds who have "raptured" themselves into their Members Only club. It's a party that has much power at this moment. The Electoral College gives them a huge advantage. Maybe they can extend it somewhat over the next few years. But within ten years, this carnival will have left town and few will admit to having been a part of it. The main question is, then, how can the GOP positively evolve from this point on? Magic Eight-Ball, what say you?
Wow, what a rant this has been. Let's end again with the useful quote from former Bush communications staffer and speechwriter David Frum. In writing about the possibilities of Trump's win and the rise of an authoritarian state, he stated this chilling thought:
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
When people abandon Rules, it's easy to figure what happens next. William Goldman certainly knew this. So did George Orwell. Democracy is fragile and needs constant tending. The alternative is having the Boot on your neck for the rest of your life.
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