A Sliver of Hope
I hate to bring up old news. However, in this case it was unavoidable. My family and I were on vacation last week and we were on a strict no politics policy. Even with that policy a little slips in here and there and even the most magical place on Earth can’t keep everything out. We watched with glee as hundreds of people left the latest Trump rally early.
As one can imagine, there are hundreds of things that run through your head in moments like these. Most of these things are of the fantasy variety. All of us has that fantasy where a friend, colleague, or family member abandons their delusions and admits that we were right all along. Who knows, maybe this was the case for some of these folks. Sadly, I don’t think that’s the case for most.
As a kid, I remember watching a rerun of a “Wild West” episode. A deformed man inserted himself as the power behind the throne. He propped up another man to be the governor of Arizona, so he could wreak his havoc on an unsuspecting public. When his front man faltered he tried to pick up the mantle. No one was buying. The message was the same, but they just couldn’t accept the messenger.
The secret behind Trump was always that he was an empty vessel. He simply said the things that everyone was thinking and said it out loud so they didn’t have to. Those that walked away said all the right things. They were bored. They had bad seats and couldn’t hear or see well. They had heard it all before. The reality is that they suddenly saw a deformed man. He had become the loser that he had accused John McCain and Mitt Romney of being. If you search the interwebs for videos you can actually hear Trump’s voice as they were walking away. It was very reminiscent of that Wild West episode.
This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that no one is really afraid of Trump. They are afraid of Trump’s base. If his base is leaving then everyone will eventually abandon him as well. The bad news is that they are bored of the messenger and not the message itself. They see him as a loser. They don’t see the message as a loser. So, they lay waiting for the next charismatic jackass to make his or her way to the stage. Who knows who it could be this time.
Moments like these come with windows of opportunity. The window is often very slim and short. It involves finding a way to convince those that walked away that it is the message that is stale and not the messenger. The silver lining is that we don’t need most of them. A simple five percent shift in politics is huge in a national or statewide election. That’s really all we need. Many of these people are in a vulnerable place and if we alienate them now they will just search for the next shining star. Many of them will anyway. Some just need an excuse to champion the next buffoon so they don’t have to say these things themselves.
Are you thinking of “The Wild, Wild West”? If so, the “deformed” man was Dr. Loveless, who was played by Michael Dunn–a dwarf with a beautiful singing voice.
I just waiting for the indictments to come down and his taxes to be revealed. Those should be the last nails in his coffin.
1At Christian/Atheist debates, the postulate is slung about that everybody has a “god-shaped hole in their heart.”
In this case, it’s really a Father-shaped hole in people who are confused and depressed by the mounting evidence that this world is a scary place: Nuclear war, inescapable Plagues, global warming floods and heat and hurricanes, financial crashes, extreme price rises on housing, crappy job prospects, etc etc.
These catastrophes affect young and old, and there’s little hope of change in governmental failure to handle them. All that’s left is hope to restore some Golden Age, with some Hitler.
Glad I’m old. There was hope, once. I remember Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Steveson. Too good to elect.
2BarbinDC @1 -Ship of Fools ~ clip with Michael Dunn and Lee Marvin clip: 4:35 and Wild Wild West
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lk_8mNLPYY
3I like to think of the recent Trump rally as a football game. It’s the 4th quarter, the home team is playing so piss poor the fans stream to the exits. Avoiding the traffic is the best outcome that can be hoped for now.
4It’s good to see some recognition that the broken record is repetitive and not worth listening to. But those early leavers will still vote for Trump any chance they get, and for any of his rabid acolytes like MGT or Gaetz. The best we can hope for is they will be too bored to go vote in 2022 and 2024, not that they have come to the realization that he was an empty sock puppet for your crazy uncle’s ravings.
5BREAKING: Grand Jury Files Charges Against Trump Organization
CFO Weisselberg to surrender tomorrow:Reports WaPo Jun 30, 2021
Edit: The Washington Post reports that a Manhattan grand jury has filed criminal indictments against Trump’s company and its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjsXchs96yI
6Welp, the Valley had a another craptastic border visit Wednesday from Guv Abbutt, the Rufous Ratbastard hisself, and a shitload of b-stringers like Patrick and Paxton, plus a few rabid Rethug congresscritters.
They had a presser at the Weslaco DPS station, then went a few miles south for a border fence photo-op.
They all excreted the usual Rethuglikan bullshit, Ratbastard veered into his usual ‘Big Lies’ swamp [among others, it’s all Biden and Obama’s fault].
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/30/texas-donald-trump-greg-abbott-border-wall/
7Just keep his hair combed and his diapers changed; trump will gradually get to be too unruly to be allowed in public.
8Ormand Otvos, I disagree- I’d love to be 30 years younger (and not just so “those jeans” still fit). When I was 18 and leaving for college (just 90 miles away!) I’d never been farther than a medical facility 300 miles south, a quick trip for a sibling with a special medical issue. Only one really wealthy friend had ever traveled abroad, as an exchange student. All the kids I knew were white Protestants (or Catholics) except for a handful of Jewish kids- no Asians, no Blacks, no Native Americans just monotonous white. In fact, as Italians we were the outlier in the neighborhood.
Now fast forward 40 years- my kids (now in their 30s and 40s) have been all over the globe and have friends in every corner. Their own kids and nieces and nephews are every color and religion (or none). They eagerly try others’ cuisines and explore their traditions. They are well educated, accepting and live in a global society. I would have loved to have experience that growing up.
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