“Great liars are also great magicians.”
- Adolf Hitler
JUDAS: Lord, if you were me, could you betray your Master?
JESUS: That’s why God gave me the easier job.
– The Last Temptation of Christ
Let me just repeat, for the record, that violence is never the answer, and it should never be a solution to political issues, and it was a real bad thing that almost happened to Donald Trump…
…I GUESS…
I actually liked that one post in the Progressive Libertarianism Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=progressive%20libertarianism asking “I wonder how many Republicans secretly wished that shooter hadn’t missed.” That’s a good reason why so many of them don’t believe the shooter was a Republican. Because every one of them are looking at that tape going, “I coulda MADE that shot! Why’d they send a fucking amateur??”
I ask again, Why? Goddamn WHY? Why does he always get away with it? How could whatsshisface kill one person in the bleachers by Trump but miss the guy right up on the stage by inches? Why can we NEVER be rid of this political cancer?
Because God is real, and he hates us all. That’s why.
Boy, when Trump celebrates his 112th birthday in the White House, you’re gonna have the last laugh on your granddaughter when she asks you how the world got so fucked up, and she has to work three jobs to support her eleven children (and one in the oven) while her husband is fighting in Korea (in support of the North).
“Because Joe Biden looked SOOO OOOLLD in that debate”
you will say, behind the barbed wire at the internment camp.
Jesus Fuck, people. Yes, Biden is real old. So who should be running this country, Olivia Rodrigo?!?
But apparently the guy who wallows in violence and popularized the phrase “stochastic terrorism” is suddenly a martyr AND he also gets the benefit of living. We don’t know if this event is actually going to tilt the election, but Biden’s kamikaze debate didn’t (completely) tilt the election, either. Nevertheless, the Trump Party now treats him more like Jesus than they already did. In their continuing quest for maximum tackiness, vendors at the Republican National Convention set up a raffle to win an AR-15, just like the one that shot Our Lord and Savior. I think I now see how Christianity came to be symbolized by the cross, when you would think that if Jesus came back, that would be the last thing he’d ever wanna see.
So maybe we should review the events. Maybe we should ask why the Secret Service and FBI couldn’t secure the roof where the shooter perched. Maybe we should ask how they got wind of the shooter on the roof 20 minutes before the attack and no one followed up.
And then you have the transcript of the event, which you can visually confirm if you look at the tape:
00:32-00:39 – Secret Service: “ … We’re good. Shooter’s down, are we good to move? We’re clear. Let’s move. We’re clear, let’s move. We’re clear ”
00:40-00:41 – Secret Service: “Hold that in your head [inaudible] bloody.”
00:41-00:44 – Secret Service: “Sir, we got to get moving to the [inaudible].”
00:44-00:45 – Donald Trump: “Let me get my shoes.”
00:45-00:48 – Secret Service: “OK, are the shoes down … [inaudible]? Get the shoe.”
00:48-00:48 – Secret Service: “Watch out.”
00:50-00:51 – Donald Trump: “Wait, wait, wait, wait.”
00:52-00:57 – Donald Trump: [inaudible] mouths “fight” three times while pumping fist in the air
00:58-00:59 – Secret Service: “Move now, we got to move. We gotta move.”
Raising the question, if you were in fear for your life, and you didn’t know if it was a lone gunman, why would you spend 13 seconds (after getting your shoes back) telling your security to wait so you could pose for the crowd? More to the point, if you’re the Secret Service, why would you go with that request if you still had reason to fear for the life of your charge?
Damn right, I’m saying this thing was staged. I’ve seen moon landings that were less fake than this assassination.
“But James”, you ask, “Didn’t the shooter die? Didn’t he kill an innocent bystander and wound other people?” Well, the fact that the shooter was himself a Trumpnik actually makes sense in that context. Who would be more likely to see Trump as a Messiah? Who would be more likely to sacrifice himself to bring about his Lord’s ascension? I mean jeez, apart from the exceptions you can count on one hand, you don’t see liberals taking AR-15s and shooting people.
And then, let’s make this even more suspicious. Why did Trump spend the next day Sunday golfing, as opposed to, say, calling the wife of the murder victim? (As I say, ‘Priorities.’) Just how bad was that shot to the ear?
Bad enough apparently that lots of people at the Trump National Convention had to wear their own Vincent Van Gogh ear pads once they saw Trump wear one on Monday, even though apparently he didn’t need one while he was carried off and didn’t need one to play golf.
Ah, yes, the Trump National Convention. Which led to the even more nauseating news from Trumpworld this week, as the inevitable nominee officially chose Senator J.D. Vance (B.R. – Ohio) as his running mate.
It’s not bad in that it proves my prediction wrong, it’s bad in that it’s still a bad move for Trump to make, specifically in that in politics a Vice President is supposed to appeal to the people who don’t already like you, and either Doug Burgum or Tim Scott would have had more appeal to Republicans and independents who still identify as Homo sapiens sapiens. Because of this announcement and the previous rumors leading up to it, we have gotten to see a lot of JD Vance’s previous appearances on TV, and the main thing I noticed is that he wears the same eyeliner Mark Hamill had in the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Vance is firmly of the belief that we ought not be supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russian genocide, and that Putin’s campaign against them was provoked by NATO expansion (as opposed to former Warsaw Pact nations asking to join NATO because of Putin’s transparent demands for expansionism). Vance has spoken out against divorce even while acknowledging spousal abuse exists: “This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term”. Needless to say, he’s also not only against abortion, he wants to re-enforce the Comstock Act to prevent abortifacients from being sold though the Post Office. And on the economy, Vance is himself a venture capitalist but in his Vice Presidential acceptance speech said “We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street.” He actually co-sponsored a bill with Senator Elizabeth Warren to cancel pay bonuses for the heads of failed banks. And he’s also completely on board with Trump’s broad-based tariff proposal, which would amount to an across-the-board tax on consumers without necessarily reducing our dependence on imports.
All of which is not necessarily popular with the public at large. So that, combined with the fact that Vance is a rising star with ambitions of his own contrasts with people like Scott or Marco Rubio who know they cannot be in a position to lead and only seek to serve. Trump would clearly prefer such an underling, but that’s not what he picked. The choice of Vance is dangerous not only in that Trump picked somebody who can credibly replace him – which he would prefer not to do – but that he, or his people, are thinking of Trumpism beyond Trump, which he would also prefer not to do.
Not only is the fix in for Trump, with John Roberts, Aileen Cannon and other judges crafting exceptions in the legal system to make Trump invincible, the fix is now in ON Trump, as he is obliged to take the running mate that the bigwigs like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel want, at risk of losing their financial support. This is the signal that Trump HAS to enact Project 2025, even though with his idiot-savant grasp of politics, he actually knows better than his patrons that a lot of it just isn’t going to fly. But, once you’ve destroyed the premise of a democratic republic, the fact that your agenda is massively unpopular won’t matter any more.
In the meantime, Trump and Vance have to go through the pretense of an election, in which even under Electoral College terms, you still have to be more broadly popular than the other side. And that is undermined not only by their own unpopularity, but by the fact that Vance in his earlier phase of conservatism had spoken out very clearly against Trump. Like the fact that Vance had called Trump an “idiot” and thought that he could be either another Nixon who was reactionary but competent, or “America’s Hitler.” (Which would make Vance America’s Goering.) But the nature of his former opposition compared to his current servitude illustrates the strongest example of how Republicans in general have not merely indulged in hypocrisy for Trump but destroyed their very souls.
Because Vance, prior to becoming a Republican politician, had critiqued both Democratic elites and Republican plutocrats, from the perspective of his “Hillbilly Elegy” autobiography where he talked about growing up poor with an addicted mother and only able to make something of himself through the support of his grandparents. He continued that critique well into 2016. In July 4, 2016, he wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled “Opioid of the Masses” in which he compared the heroin overdoses of people in his hometown to the overall cultural situation and Americans’ need to escape reality: “Of course, the pain itself has increased in recent years, and it comes from many places. Some of it is economic, as the factories that provided many U.S. towns and cities material security have downsized or altogether ceased to exist. Some of it is aesthetic, as the storefronts that once made American towns beautiful and vibrant gave way to cash-for-gold stores and payday lenders. Some of it is domestic, as rising divorce rates reveal home lives as dependable as steel-mill jobs. Some of it is political, as Americans watch from afar while a government machine that rarely tries to speak to them, and acts in their interests even less, sputters along. And some of it is cultural, from the legitimate humiliation of losing wars fought by the nation’s children to the illegitimate sense that some fall behind only because others jump ahead.
“…During this election season, it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever. It too, promises a quick escape from life’s cares, an easy solution to the mounting social problems of U.S. communities and culture. It demands nothing and requires little more than a modest presence and maybe a few enablers. It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.
“…The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
Of course they did not realize it, Trump won that election, and Vance himself ran for Senate in ruby-red Ohio just two years ago, and won – with 53 percent of the vote.
This essay was actually of a piece where at least one other arch-conservative made a similar observation, specifically when Kevin Williamson wrote for National Review in 2016 that the poor White communities of rural America where Trump derives his base (and from which Vance obtained his cultural moment) are a lost cause: “There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. … The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.”
The analogy goes perhaps even deeper than either man realizes. Because if you know anything about Al-Anon, it’s an Alcoholics Anonymous offshoot for families of people who are not users themselves but have a relative who is addicted. I am not a fan of their “Twelve Steps” psuedo-religion, but they at least acknowledge that addiction must be confronted and that an addiction undermines not only an individual but the family and loved ones of the person addicted.
Like, if you don’t make enough money for an apartment, and your Mom is retired, so you’re living together, and you’re also living with your older brother, who is a heroin addict, and even though he has the skills to work a good union job, he doesn’t, because he’s on heroin, and it is basically all a heroin addict can do to score the money to get heroin on those occasions that they are still awake. So he needs a support system of enablers. He needs you and your family. And the more he eats you out of house and home, the more he “borrows” the car you need to work, for days at a time, the more he undermines your household standard of living and the more you scream to your Mom to cut off this monstrous leech and, in the immortal words of Dan Savage, DUMP THE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY, the more she refuses to do so, because he can’t (or rather, won’t) clean up and take care of himself. And your only way out is to cut losses and move, except that this very family situation is a primary factor in your inability to achieve financial independence.
And no, maybe he doesn’t deserve death, but he does deserve to get his ass thrown in fucking jail, yesterday, so he can be properly punished and start making restitution for the harm he inflicted on everyone around him with his life of constant crime.
BUT NO, the people in your life want to keep this person around and want to keep enabling him to be a criminal, so that your family is sent further spiraling into poverty and you are trapped in a screaming, bloody, intolerable yet inescapable LIVING HELL.
See, some of us have experience with this sort of thing.
And so does JD Vance. Which is why he was able to make such a metaphor because he realized that the effects of Donald Trump on his community could be described in such terms. So you would think that if he was accurate then he would be able to continue speaking out. Instead, like the rest of his Party, for the sake of money and power he decided to tie one off and start mainlining Trump.
Which is why I think the sentiment of the week was actually pretty well summed up by Marjorie Taylor. Because on Day 1 of the Trump Convention, she gave a speech and said that Trump was “the leader America deserves.”
Indeed. Because if Americans could watch Trump kill over 100K Americans in one year with Trump Virus ™ then watch him send neo-Confederates to kill his own Vice President for refusing to sign on to a coup, withhold federal documents from the government, get convicted on sexual assault, get convicted on 34 felonies, and see his handpicked judges absolve him of accountability because they want a government with no laws, and hand over the greatest country in the world to him again because Biden is SOOOO OOLLLLD, then America deserves every Goddamn catastrophe that will happen to it as a direct result.