FREAK OUT FRIDAY – October 30, 2020

We have neighbors down the street with whom we had developed a sort of tradition.  Every year we’d go over to their house on New Year’s Eve.  We’d celebrate the end of the old year, watch the ball drop in Times Square.  I’d sing “Edelweiss” for some reason because the wife loved the way I did that song.  It was a nice annual interaction.

We never discussed politics.  Never came up.  I had no idea where their allegiances were, and no particular interest either.  And that was fine.

Then Trump was elected.  And apparently they discovered my political leanings.  And as it turned out, they were Trump supporters.

And we were never invited back.

Not my doing.  We’d be perfectly happy to pick up the tradition.  But I suspect that’s not going to happen.  And if it did, not discussing politics would now become somewhat strained, because politics now informs every aspect of American lives.  

Part of that is because of social media.  Trump has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, between his incessant, unending string of twitter rants and his followers—both genuine American and Russian bots–permeating Facebook, Twitter and every other means of public discourse.  If you’re a Biden supporter and put signs up on your front lawn, you’ve drawn a target on your house and the signs will likely vanish when you’re not looking.  If you’re a Trump supporter you scornfully challenge the manliness of anyone who is wimpy enough to wear a facemask because you know that the Coronavirus is on the retreat even as death counts spike

How did we become this fractured, this divided?  Is it ALL because of Trump?  Was he able to single-handedly shred the country this badly?

No.  Any awareness of history indicates that he is simply the culmination of the slow disintegration of American discourse.  He is the head of the pimple that took decades to develop.  The rise of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh combined with a political climate that became increasingly divisive.  The notion of GOPers who valued adherence to American values over party loyalty that led to Nixon being told to leave office is long gone.  Over the past decades, what we believe in terms of the party has defined us, separated us into tribes.  It used to be believed that the things that united us were far more significant than that which divided us.  That those who held variant views were defined as the loyal opposition.  

That is no longer the case.  There’s us and there’s them.  There’s real facts and alternative facts.  Those who agree with us love the country.  Those who disagree with us hate the country.  They are not the opposition, they are the enemy.  They are fascists (and mysteriously antifacists at the same time, because both are bad somehow.). They are racists or socialists.  They are evil and we are good.  They are traitors to the American spirit and should just get the hëll out of the country and go live somewhere else, which is something of a challenge since most countries won’t allow us to cross their borders.  And whose fault is that?  If you’re on the left, it’s Trump’s.  If you’re on the right, it’s the Chinese and Dr. Fauci and the Democrats.

We literally cannot agree on truth anymore.  If Watergate were happening right now, forty percent of Nixon’s followers would not believe the coverage of the Washington Post.  Deep Throat would be considered a fictional creation of those liars, Woodward and Bernstein, and Fox News would be pounding away with opposing stories decrying the savage witch hunt from liberals trying to take down Nixon whom they’d been gunning for ever since JFK unfairly beat him in 1960.  That is how much the world has deteriorated.

It didn’t have to be like this.  On the other hand, maybe it did.  It may well be that social media has caused the American experience to deteriorate because the veil has been pierced and we know too much about each other.   Walt Simonson said years ago that the separation between fans and professionals was a good thing; that we should remain divided from the fans to help maintain the mystery.  That is long gone, and now pros must live in fear that one moment’s uncontrolled angry post on Twitter can literally end their careers as they become “cancelled,” driven into oblivion.  There is a constant search for a new enemy to be pilloried. 

No one is exempt from this.

Except, seemingly, Trump.  The living incarnation of Teflon Don.  We have become so overwhelmed, so numb to his violations of decency, that things which—had Obama said or done them—would have wound up on the front pages of every newspaper, don’t even register anymore.  Hëll, if Hillary Clinton had handled the Coronavirus as badly as Trump, the GOP would have impeached her and removed her from office.  Done deal.  But Trump has his hardcore defenders.  His supporters were left to freeze to death in Nebraska and you know the majority of them will still defend him.  

Four years ago, on my website, I put out a poll asking how long people thought he would survive his presidency.  How and when and why would he wind up leaving?  A handful thought that he might make it through all four years; most believed that he would resign or be thrown out of office.  I suppose he should get SOME credit for surviving much longer than most of us believed he would. 

I need to note that I was worried that his presidency would indeed be a disaster.  That Hillary would be right:  some emergency would surface that he would be unable to handle, which is exactly what happened.  

But I wanted to be wrong.  I wanted him to grow into the role.  I wanted him to surprise all of us.  I wanted him to be a strong leader who set us down a path to greatness, supported American ideals, protected all of us.  I cannot recall any time in my life where I wanted my gut instincts to be misplaced.

And now here we are.  Nearly a quarter of a million Americans dead.  The environment under siege.  The Supreme Court with a bulletproof conservative majority representing the views of the minority of the populace.  The very notion of truth now under siege as people cling to their own truths rather than deal with facts that fly in the face of them.  

It is interesting to note that George Orwell, who wrote “1984,” the novel through which we are now living, was a Democratic Socialist.  That would be enough to get him tagged by modern commentators as a Communist, even though he based the dystopian world of “1984” on Russia.  A world where everyone is always being watched.  A world where facts give way to Newspeak, which rewrites language into a new vocabulary that suits the wants and desires of Big Brother.   The Thought Police—or as they’re known now, Social Justice Warriors on the left or angry snowflakes on the right—come after you if you dare to say something that runs contrary to their popular beliefs (currently they’re targeting the Girl Scouts for congratulating Judge Barrett, which pìššëd øff the left, so they quickly took down the tweet, which pìššëd øff the right.  Either way, lower cookie sales this year.)

The fortunate thing is that, for the moment, we still have an option that Orwell’s world did not possess:  the opportunity to vote people out of office.  Granted, Trump is going to do everything he can to try and invalidate it, because that’s what dictators do.  They take away rights not immediately, not in one shot, but progressively, one small slice at a time, the death of a thousand cuts.  

This Tuesday is going to make or break this country.  That’s what it comes down to.

This is the last Freak Out Friday.  I admit that Trump has somewhat dominated this site the past two weeks, irrespective of my desire to limit him to one day a week, but with the advent of election day that is more or less understandable.  

If, God forbid, he wins…if every single poll in the country is wrong…I will not return to Freak Out Friday.

Why?

Because my attacks on Trump will be unabated.  I will no longer endeavor to constrain myself to one day.  Every day of the week, whenever I feel like it, I will lay into him and attack him, because that will be the only option left.  It will be a full-on assault.

The gloves will be off.

PAD

43 comments on “FREAK OUT FRIDAY – October 30, 2020

  1. There’s us and there’s them. There’s real facts and alternative facts.

    Dividing into “us vs them” is never good. It leads to both sides demonizing the other and dismissing out of hand their viewpoint. It typically leads people to become more extreme in their views and more entrenched in protecting their camp until an outsider would be hard pressed to tell the two camps apart. The distinctions between which side is more reasonable and/or correct disappears.

    But that. like so many other generally accepted “norms” have been shattered and now it’s essential. Because the two camps, even to the outsider, are distinctly different. And the reason is that second sentence up there. One side, and one side only, very clearly and unrepentant, has completely lost their minds.

    And that’s why us vs them is completely appropriate, drawing clear battle lines and declaring them unacceptable “other” is essential. Because they are. They’ve made that clear. They cannot be reasoned with. There is no common ground to find. Appeals to reason and attempts to “reach across the aisle” have consistently been met with even grosser lies and hypocrisies.

    They live in a world that is so utterly divorced from actual reality and/or so utterly without a shred of decency that the only viable response is to cut them out entirely. To take up arms until every last one is driven out so completely as to never be able to return.

    1. “They live in a world that is so utterly divorced from actual reality and/or so utterly without a shred of decency that the only viable response is to cut them out entirely. To take up arms until every last one is driven out so completely as to never be able to return.”

      As I’m sure you know, the problem is determining which side is actually willing to be reasonable and which has refused any hint of thinking things through. I’d like to think my side is the former but will continue to worry I’m just deluding myself.

      1. – Climate change is a Chinese Hoax.
        – An accomplishment of the Trump administration is that Covid has been beaten.
        – Voter fraud is rampant.

        There are literally hundreds of examples of the Republicans denying basic reality. And that’s not even getting to their hypocrisies (Merrick Garland vs Amy Barrett being just one of the most blatant) and blatant attempts to destroy the justice system.

        As I noted, one should be wary of “us vs them” distinctions. But in this case THERE IS **NO** PROBLEM DETERMINING WHICH SIDE IS REASONABLE AND WHICH HAS REFUSED ANY HINT OF THINKING. The distinction between the sides is obvious and there is *NO* question as to which is in the right. And if you have some concern about deluding yourself as to which side is which, then you have a problem.

      2. Sean Martin:

        Everything you state below is painfully accurate. I have no desire or ability to claim otherwise.

        I remain concerned that, in condemning those who seem, somehow, to believe that any of that absurdity is true, we will become them. If it were to happen it would be the ultimate Trump Supporters’ victory and our ruin.

        Assuming you haven’t already, make certain you get out and vote. I suggest taking something to read since the lines will probably be long wherever you vote.

  2. As I recall the early days of the pandemic, I recall Trump shutting down travel to and from China and being denounced as a racist for doing so, while Nancy Pelosi made a point of going to events in Chinatown and saying that it was people’s obligation to NOT isolate themselves. Oh, and pushing the completely futile impeachment that tied up all kinds of resources and attention at a critical time.

    I recall the lockdown being pushed as a temporary measure, just a couple of weeks (maybe a month or two) to “flatten the curve,” not an indefinite “until we have a vaccine.” I recall the projections being 2 million deaths, with 200,000 being a “best-case scenario. Seven months later, the lockdown continues and we’re still dámņëd close to the best-case scenario.

    Some of the highest death rates were in nursing homes where their governors ordered them to take in patients who had tested positive for Covid — mainly New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Yet those governors are not only not excoriated for the slaughter of some of our most vulnerable, they’re often hailed as having done wonderful jobs.

    Meanwhile, in woefully-underreported stats, deaths from Covid precautions have gone up. Medical procedures deferred, suicide rates, other similar circumstances. The long-term economic casualties are also high — so many businesses that will never re-open, with all those lost jobs. To make it a bit more relevant to this audience, how many Local Comic Shops have gone under? How many Comics and Sci-Fi and other conventions have been canceled? A lot of those will not be coming back.

    There’s also the double standard being practiced. Mass gatherings are bad, as they could be “super-spreader” events. But that apparently doesn’t apply to BLM or AntiFa rallies. Funerals, weddings, other such things are forbidden, but these mostly peaceful events? Apparently Covid is politically astute and respects certain ideologies more than others.

    1. You are shrouded. It is what I do with people who are no longer work speaking to. You’re sitting there and spouting worn out right wing talking points buried in the world of six months ago, uncaring about the world as it has developed and focused on one thing and one thing only: supporting a racist narcissistic áššhølë. I am done with you and advise everyone else here to ignore you. If you continue posting, I will disemvowel you.

      1. It’s a pity I don’t have a virtual sheet I can use as James Hart did to counter his own shrouding. Oh, well.

        Free to a good home: an extensive collection of PAD novels, non-fiction, and magazines, many autographed, several personally inscribed. Not all are in the best of condition, as many have been read and re-read several times. I will particularly miss my copy of “Q-Squared” in hardcover, signed both by Peter David and David Peters. But apparently dissent (no matter how politely presented) is not tolerated, so I would rather not continue to support someone who finds me so deplorable.

        Oh, and yeah, Trump’s a narcissist and an áššhølë. It’s inevitable with people at his level; I think it even might be a necessity. But objectively speaking, he’s no racist. He’s terrible at it. What he is is a Trump supremacist; everything else takes second base.

        Oh, and your polemics need work. Just unsupported assertions and naked threats of force (of a virtual type) to deal with disagreement. Absolute refusal to engage with anyone who does not parrot your own talking points, making sure to preserve your own bubble of a safe space.

        Disemvowel at will. You’ve been itching to indulge your inner censor the instant anyone didn’t bow and scrape to you; here’s your chance to show everyone that this is YOUR site, dammit, and NOBODY has any right to say anything you don’t approve of or question anything you assert. Protect your safe space.

      2. If you continue posting, I will disemvowel you.

        That’s what you said last time. What’re you waiting for?

      3. For some reason, WordPress isn’t allowing me to disemvowel anymore. So I’m just deleting his posts. Since he’s shrouded I’m asking others not to engage with him.

        I’m sorry, I’m just not giving Trumpies a venue anymore.

        PAD

      4. So I’m just deleting his posts.

        I’m sorry, I’m just not giving Trumpies a venue anymore.

        Thank you for for the first.

        And for the second, although I do wonder why so many liberals have this compulsion to apologize when they stand up to fascists and idiots.

  3. For what it’s worth, Pete, I voted early yesterday, and I most assuredly did not vote for Trump or any of his ilk. I do not agree with some of your political beliefs, but that does not stop me from enjoying your work. Regarding what you said about the line between fans and professionals, there are several people in both the comic and movie business whom I’d probably want to smack upside the head if I ever met them in person. I shan’t name names, but there is one actor whom I actively boycott by refusing to pay to see his movies.

    1. I said, years ago, that I wouldn’t conflate the artist with the art; that I wouldn’t let my personal disagreements with a creator interfere with my appreciation of their work. And I still think that’s a good moral principle, I am seriously questioning whether it is sustainable. It has gotten to the point where you have to disagree in order to invite retaliation, but simply not to express your agreement sufficiently.

      Recently several of the MCU actors decided they’d get together and have a fund-raiser for Biden in the name of their characters. One actor politely declined to participate. Chris Pratt didn’t offer a single word of criticism or dissent, didn’t express any opinion at all, simply that he was choosing to not participate. And that unleashed such a wave of hatred against him that his fellow actors had to forcefully speak up and tell the mob that they were not cool with trying to destroy him in the name of “silence equals violence.”

      Neutrality is rapidly ending as an option. “You will be MADE to care.” “You might not be interested in the gleichschaltung, but the gleichschaltung is interested in you.”

      Now creators are informing me, mostly generally and occasionally specifically, that they are not only uninterested in my appreciation, but openly do not want me to enjoy their work and financially support them by buying their books and magazines, watching their movies and TV shows, listening to their music, etc.

      So many creators are deciding that their first job is to make sure everyone knows that they are the right kind of person, that they believe in the right things and hate the right people, and their second job is to utilize their primary talents to make money to support themselves and their families. It’s getting harder and harder to make a living by telling people how awful they are and expecting them to keep paying you.

      “Get woke, go broke.” The NBA decided that playing basketball was not their top priority, and was probably not even in their top five. People who wanted to watch basketball found other things to spend their attention — and money — on, and NBA ratings and revenues totally tanked. The NFL learned a similar lesson. The Big Two comic companies are also seeing a total collapse of their business as they put out more and more books telling their fan base how awful people these fans are.

      When I look for ways to expend my entertainment resources, I want to be entertained. I don’t need my entertainment to tell me how wonderful I am, but I sure as hëll don’t feel like paying money to be told how awful I am. Entertain me, get my money. Insult me, I’ll spend it elsewhere.

      1. Art has always been political – whether it was Dante putting his personal enemies in Hëll in “Inferno”, or the gender politics of “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes. I’m sure there is some sick burn in the Ballad of Gilgamesh that we’re all just missing… So it’s foolish to expect politics and entertainment never to intertwine. Sport too! Don’t forget that the Olympics were designed as a way to promote internationalism over jingoism, and as a way to channel rivalries in a way that negated the need for war.
        (err… may not have worked out so well over the last 120 years…)

        But there are limits – when the politics overshadows the sport, or the entertainment, or is clumsy, lazy and unsubtle (but enough about SNL and late night talk shows) then you go from trying to convince the unconvinced (or unthoughtful), to just berating the unconvinced. It was one thing when Mark Gruenwald had Captain America fight Ronald Reagan the snake-man; we rolled our eyes and said “oh, puh-lease!”. But that seems to be the media 24-7 now, and you can’t escape it.

        Clausewitz famously said that “war is a continuation of politics by other means.” Which is of course completely ášš-backwards. It’s politics that was designed as the alternative to war. Like the Marquis of Queensbury rules of boxing, there are rules, norms and practices to keep things civil and prevent anarchy.

        So be civil, and prevent anarchy. Steel yourself for a likely Trump win, because it’s more probable than not (it would take far too long to explain – there are solid, observable differences in poll response rates and correlation with representative sampling requirements; it’s complicated). I won’t say ‘just trust me’, but ehh, take it as Murphy’s Law)

        A final thought, from here across the Pacific, from someone not American, and has no vote or say in your quaint little exercise; Delicate readers may which to consider a proper self-care plan; I’m serious! Consider that your candidate may not win, and rather than drinking yourself into oblivion, looting & rioting in a minority neighbourhood, or rage-tweeting into the abyss for the following four years, perhaps find a spot of kindness to bring in to the world. Donate time to a charity, work on a serious project of meaning or art, or practice mindfulness and care for your immediate family. All politics is personal (I’m up to my 5th or 6th cliché now, yes?), but not all of your personal needs to be politics.

      2. I am a solid Leftist (or, at least, I consider myself so), but I’m not part of a tribe, never was, never will be. I never saw eye to eye with “woke” and “call out culture” and “cancel culture”. If anything, the rise of woke made me even more entrenched in my belief that freedom of speech is essential. And I really do hate when people on the left over-analyse every piece of fiction ever written in search of “problematic” elements. To me, that is no different from Christian groups hunting down anti-Christian elements in fiction or those weird Libertarians who rate every movie they see on whether it’s compliant with Ayn Rand’s bûllšhìŧ.

        But here is the thing that most right-wing critics of “woke” never admit to: The woke moment we’re going through is the fever caused by the infection that is Trump. Of course, woke always existed, but it used to be mostly confined to universities, at least since the end of the 1970s. Despite stereotypes believed by the conservatives, woke used to be a fringe portion of the liberals, the weird folks that most moderate liberals used to mostly ignore, or even roll their eyes at.

        Then Trump got elected, and another fringe element on the right – the xenophobic nationalists – felt themselves vindicated, and suddenly moderate elements in the left became a demoralized voice. Woke became all the rage, in response to the xenophobic nationalists. And you know, that is perfectly fine by Trump and his ilk. They need woke people, in order to have someone to point at and say “that is the enemy, we’re at WAR!!!”

        The surest way to send woke back to university campus is to vote Joe Biden, actually. Then woke people will return to being that annoying fringe among Liberals always complaining that the Democrat Party isn’t radical enough, and never listened to (while the GOP unfortunately started to seriously give a seat on the table to THEIR weirdos).

      3. Rene,

        slight point of well, not disagreement, perhaps counterpoint of historical note. Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa… I’m old enough to remember when cancel culture was a thing of the right. Banning offensive rap lyrics, boosting the moral majority, bringing Twisted Sister before congress, and making sure Liberace and Rock Hudson always had a girl on their arms… it’s a long list.

        But it’s also a cautionary tale – life comes at you fast. The left has managed to use ‘cancel culture’ much more effectively of late, but there’s no guarantee that it won’t swing around again. Progress is not a ratchet it can move in both directions. Everyone likes to point out decadent Berlin in the 20’s and 30’s prior to those darn socialists taking over, but there are much more recent examples – just google for pictures of miniskirts in Iran or Afghanistan before the Shah fell or the Taliban came to power, then consider the culture there now. I’d like to think my side of the aisle has learned the lesson that the tools you wield now will be used against you later; but I’m not sure that has sunk in for the right, It definitely hasn’t been sunk in on the left.

      4. MordWa: “But here is the thing that most right-wing critics of “woke” never admit to: The woke moment we’re going through is the fever caused by the infection that is Trump. Of course, woke always existed, but it used to be mostly confined to universities, at least since the end of the 1970s.”

        Pretty good observation, but way overplays Trump’s role in it. Yeah, it started on campuses, but those people didn’t stay there. They rode those degrees into positions of power in corporate America (with a huge emphasis in Human Resources) and did their best to promulgate “wokeness” and its enforcement arm, “cancel culture.”

        Cancel culture exploded with the surge in social media, which enabled people to be stupid with megaphones at the speed of light. People would say stupid things that would fly around the world in an instant, and others would overreact in an instant. Very few people stopped to think about what they were doing.

        The first really clear example I can recall is Justine Sacco. In December 2013, the Communications Director of an online media group, got on a plane from London to Capetown to spend the holidays with family. Before she boarded the plane, she put out a rather stupid Tweet: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

        When the plane landed 11 hours later, she discovered 1) she was fired, and 2) she was one of the most hated people on the planet. Her stupid tweet had gone viral, BuzzFeed and other sites had spread it far and wide, she’d inspired her own hashtag (#HasJustineLandedYet), and she was toast. Her apologies fell on deaf ears, and her deletion of all her social media accounts was nowhere near enough to satisfy the mobs. She had to be Canceled, and she was.

        Trump is neither the cause nor the cure of the problem. He’s merely a symptom. It didn’t start with him, and it won’t end with him. He’s nowhere near that important.

        You raise a lot of good points, MordWa, and it shows you’ve done your homework and done a lot of good thinking on the subject. Maybe your distance fom the USA gives you a proper sense of perspective on things over here that a lot of us are too close to see. Thank you for sharing your observations.

      5. Jenos –

        Yes, Woke existed before Trump, but c’mon. As a Liberal, I used to post on a lot of websites and I saw it happen with my own eyes. The strength and prevalance of Wokeness skyrocket after Trump started to ride his wave to nomination and then election. Proof of that is that people in the Trump years are cancelled over stuff they said safely in social media in the 2000s and early 2010s. I mean, it used to be safe, since they made all those jokes in 2012 or whatever and no one cared. I do agree that there were cases before Trump, particularly for people who said the most egregious stuff but there wasn’t the whole climate of self-censorship that exists now.

        I’m also highly skeptical of claims that Woke folks had infiltrated corporate places in a big way before Trump, since one of the biggest complaints of MeToo and other movements is that liberal spaces used to be these very unWoke corrupt dens of rape and abuse and racism, complaints that have been parroted by conservative folks when it suits them to paint Hollywood as diabolical, as they often do, the more extreme of them being the wackos that subscribe to QAnon.

        Trump is the patron devil of MeToo. If Hillary had won, we’d had 4 years of “lean in” feminism, and MeToo would have been muted. If anything, people would have pointed at the President to say that claims of sexism were exaggerated.

        MordWa –

        This is more or less the same thing I’ve told fellow Liberals when they started talking about going after Orson Scott Card for his positions on LGBT issues. While I do find Card’s opinions abhorrent and disgusting, I do also find abhorrent the idea that we all had a moral obligation to never again read anything of his fiction and we had to make sure that none of our friends and associates read him either. I’ve said that such boycotts over matters of opinion were dirty weapons that used to be employed by the American Legion and the several Evangelical and Catholic groups, and that using those tactics helps to legimitize them, and there is no guarantee that right-wing groups wouldn’t employ them in the future. Hëll, right-wingers cancelled James Gunn for a while.

        And I can’t help myself and I have to rise to the bait. Socialists never took over in Berlim. The real socialist parties that existed in the 1930s were sidelined and then destroyed by the Nazis. Hitler was a political chameleon that liked to borrow elements of different sides of the political spectrum, and liked to present himself in different ways according to his audience, but he was never a socialist. The social darwinism that is part of ruthless capitalism was a central tenet for him, and that is the reason he loathed the idea of transfering wealthy from the capitalist rich to the proletarian poor. On the other hand, he DID like to present himself as a man of the people and the expression of their voice, but then you’d have to consider Trump a socialist too…

        There was a current inside Nazism called Strasserism that actually was a marriage of socialism and nazism, but it was marginalized by Hitler in 1930 and then exterminated when he purged Gregor Strasser in the Night of the Long Knives

      6. Rene –

        I worked for several Fortune 100 companies, and I can assure you that their HR departments were totally all-in on the Woke/PC movement. We were instructed on the criticality of knowing persons’ preferred pronouns and the consequences of such offenses as “deadnaming.” Pride Month was a very big deal, which I always thought was odd, because the other 11 months of the year involving our genitalia and what we liked to do with them with work was a fireable offense. There was practically a reverse witch hunt to find an LGBTQWXYZ employee so they could be totally un-repressed.

        Also, look at political contributions by big companies, both as a corporate entity and as employees. They’ve swung hugely to the left over the past 20 years or so. I know it’s a danger to conflate correlation and causation, but it tracks quite accurately with the rise of what I call “credentialism,” or the constant increase of employment requirements for a college degree, whether or not it actually makes sense or is related to the job in question. So you have the massive increase of the hard left on college campuses, followed by the increase in demand for college degrees for employment and advancement in corporate America, and then the increased support of the hard left by corporate America. It’s not the sort of thing that lends itself to empirical proof, but it does hang together with a remarkable consistency.

        I also think it’s a mistake to think of Trump as the movement, or even the chief architect or key leader of the movement. He’s the face of it, but he’s hardly irreplaceable. I’ve said in some heated discussions that yeah, I’m a Trump backer, but if he gets taken out, I won’t give up my fight. I’ll go looking for Worse Than Trump and start pushing him or her. And I’ll be remembering all the unethical and unconscionable tactics used against Trump and start dusting them off.

        For example, were I in the US House, I’d already have two plans ready. First, if the GOP keeps the White House and the Senate, I’d file a bill to add four more seats to the Supreme Court — two of which would be appointed in 2021, two in 2022. Second, if Biden wins, I’d start planning on his impeachment.

        The push to expand the Court has been pushed by Democrats for a couple of years now, with absolutely zero forethought about “what if we don’t get the Senate and the White House?” Likewise, the move to impeach Trump started the instant the election was declared in his favor — never mind that presidents can only be impeached for offenses committed while in office, and 2.5 months would pass between his election and inauguration. For Biden’s impeachment, I’d work on all the pro forma stuff, with “to be filled in later” for the particulars of the offenses.

        One final thing: I know it’s a cliche’ to offer advice to the opposing side in political discussions, as it often comes across as insincere and/or condescending, but let me point this out: everyone agrees that Trump is an egomaniac who seems almost teflon-coated when it comes to attacks. Have you ever considered the efficacy of just ignoring and sidelining him? When he does something that outrages his opponents (which he’s REALLY REALLY good at), just ignore it and go on with business as usual. Instead of attacking him, just give a detached nod to him and approach his subordinates with proposals. When he looks for a confrontation, just have your people call his people. When asked for a reaction, say you’re too busy on matters of real substance and don’t have time to waste on frivolity. Treat his subordinates as if they were the real decision-makers and do everything you can to separate Trump’s name from policies. Talk about Pompeo’s foreign policy, Barr’s Justice Department, DeVos’ educational proposals, and whatnot.

        I’m not sure what that would achieve, but I am sure of two things: 1) Trump has never had to deal with that sort of thing before, and 2) it would be entertaining as hëll to watch. And considering how well the current “TRUMP IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL” has worked out, why not try a change?

  4. Dammit! “may wish to consider’, not ‘may witch’. It’s October! There are no May Witches around at the moment. Although it is Halloween, I suppose…

    Trick or Treat!

  5. Sorry about the dropped tradition with your neighbors. Though your generalizations about those on opposite sides of the political spectrum seem kind of broad and extreme. The binary, tribe-like fanatics are still in the minority. Most people still treat others with courtesy and respect regardless of their personal politics (at least in person; online is obviously a different matter). Other aspects of your analysis about the cause of division and deterioration of the political climate are insightful, but is missing the most important element: a solution to the problem. Assigning blame is easy; fixing things is hard (as many politicians and armchair politicos amply demonstrate).
    .
    Another consideration about the increasingly likely case the National Disgrace loses the election is the number of pardons he will attempt to issue to his family, friends, cronies, enablers and himself. If you thought his pardon of Roger Stone was bad, just think about him pardoning Manafort, Flynn, Gates, violators of the Hatch Act and other members of the current administration.
    .
    It a way, it is fortunate the National Disgrace is so incompetent and ignorant at attempting to be a dictator. Had he actually possessed the ability and intelligence to truly transform American Democracy into a totalitarian, cult-like fiefdom, things would be much, much worse.
    .
    Hope to see more non-politics related posts. Hope you and your family have a Happy Halloween!

  6. Oh, Peter. Even if Biden wins (as many of us hope) we may still have need of your Freak Out Fridays for a while. The Dumpster Prez will still be in power up to Biden’s inauguration and I’m sure he’ll do a few things that will piss you (and me) off.

      1. Let the man have hope it’s only a few. I just want to get through the next week or three as the votes are actually tabulated and Covfefe does one last international ‘good will’ tour, arrives in Russia and seeks politcal asylum, leaving his family to deal with the legal mess he’s fleeing.

  7. Welcome to my world, Peter. I began recording each lie of his I could glean from coverage on January 20, 2017. The document (documents, really) have transmogrified into 3,400 pages of each major act and statement of mendacity, bigotry, misogyny, hypocrisy, treason, pseudoscience, and pettiness. I wanted to turn it into a website, but I didn’t know how to go about doing this, and it remains a past time that takes up way too much time, but which I’ve read countless articles on him, and which has informed my frequent Facebook posts on his shenanigans. I hope I don’t have to continue it past January 20.

  8. Anyone who votes for Trump by this point is voluntarily supporting the most terrifyingly incompetent President in American history. His fans are genuinely brilliant, i.e. they’re brilliant in the way they make THEMSELVES look like persecuted victims, and everyone else the scary, authoritarian monster. It’s even scarier if you think of the kind of gaslighting the Nazis would have gotten up to if the internet had existed during the 1930’s/40’s.

    1. Ben, I’ve been kicking around a theory that I’m still working on, but so far seems to hold together. (Of course, I always welcome meaningful critiques of my notions.) Part of what fuels the irrational hatred of Trump is because, under his administration, so many things that Obama and his officials pronounced as impossible have come to pass.

      1) Obama pronounced “we can’t drill our way into energy independence” — well, we have done just that.

      2) Under Obama, the average GDP growth per year was 1.88%, and that was pronounced as “the new normal.” Under Trump’s first three years, the average was 2.6%. (Obviously it took a massive tank in 2020 with the Covid shutdowns, but it’s showing signs of not just coming back, but roaring back — but time will tell.)

      3) Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, pronounced that there would be no separate peace between Israel and the Muslim world without resolution of the Palestinian situation. In the past few months, Israel has made separate deals with three Muslim nations (Bahrain, the UAE, and Kosovo), and there are hints that the long-unacknowledged relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel might finally become open. Trump also oversaw the settlement of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, who’ve been hostile to each other to various degrees since the 1990s.

      4) Obama pronounced that large-scale manufacturing jobs were gone for good — “they aren’t coming back.” Well, they have, as many companies that had shifted production to China have chosen to bring the jobs back.

      5) I don’t have a specific quote to back this up, but pay rates for Blacks and Hispanics rose significantly under Trump, as well as income generally across the board.

      6) Trump is also the first president since Jimmy Carter who has not initiated any new military conflicts, and has actually made significant strides towards winding down several.

      7) On foreign policy, Trump has gotten our NATO allies in Western Europe to get a lot closer to living up to their Treaty obligations for defense spending, and improved greatly our relations with the newer NATO members in Eastern Europe. He’s gotten North Korea to ratchet down their temper tantrums and actively seek acceptance among the civilized world. About the only nations who are more hostile to the US are Iran, Turkey, China, and Russia, and quite frankly they’re pretty committed to being our rivals/adversaries anyway, so I’m OK with them being irritated with us. The improved relations with our Asian-Pacific allies, along with their stepping up to take on more of their own defense responsibilities, is one of the great under-reported stories of the day. A slightly-more-than-casual glance of the naval construction, capabilities and operations of India, Japan, South Korea, Viet Nam, Taiwan, and the Philippines, just to name a few, shows a very interesting and interlocking pattern that has to be causing ulcers in Beijing.

      The biggest criticism I’ve seen of Trump so far boils down to “the people who hate him and swore to forever hate him hate him even more now,” and I’m not really seeing what he reasonably could have done to resolve that.

      1. Amazing. You actually used that much eloquence, “research,” and decent grammatical skills to present pure, unfiltered bûllšhìŧ.

        You can’t pin any of this crap on Obama, you scheming toad. But I’ll definitely say this: You would have been a brilliant propaganda minister for the Third Reich.

      2. Calm down, Ben. Have a Snickers; you’re not yourself when you’re hungry.

        At no point did I “pin” anything on Obama. I got issues with him and his administration, but I was careful to not blame him for anything. I simply used him as a point of comparison in several areas I consider very relevant.

        If you want to get a little below the surface, I might have been influenced by the attitude many have that the Obama/Biden administration was scandal-free and flawless and the epitome of wonderfulness, and subtly pointed out several of the ways it fell short of ideal, but if you’d like to show where I either misstated facts or pulled things out of context or otherwise am incorrect, feel free. Like I said, it’s something I am kicking around and welcome MEANINGFUL critiques.

        Oh, and the Nazi crap? Please. I’ve done serious study of Nazism, and am fully prepared to go into its intellectual, moral, ethical, and practical shortcomings and explain not only why it failed, but why it will always fail. There’s a pretty good correlation in irrationality between actual Nazis, neo-Nazis, and those who insist that pretty much anyone they don’t like are Nazis — they’re all really stupid and easy to tie up in rhetorical knots.

        Also, my father was a World War II vet, so I have a personal reason (as well as intellectual ones) for despising Nazis. And like Trump, I’m also a proud (non-Jewish) Zionist, so that makes the “Nazi” thing even more absurd.

        Put a little effort into things, will you? Throwing around the Nazi thing is just lazy. I’m embarrassed for you, dude.

  9. Have you considered that maybe the reason your neighbors no longer speak to you is because they’d rather have a peaceful holiday without being subject to a harangue about their voting choices?

    1. No, because politics never came up. Nor would I have brought it up. But thanks for proving you are reading-challenged enough to have missed where I made that clear.

      PAD

      1. Well, you have made clear-too many times to count-over the past three years that you consider Trump voters to be the scum of the earth. You don’t have a great deal of credibility when you say you would never bring it up with them. If you had found out that they were Trump followers before they found about your preferences, can you genuinely say you wouldn’t have tried to lecture them about what horrible people they must be? After all, you have a pronounced tendency to expect everybody around you to behave like worshipful fans.

        As for how they found out about your politics, how do you know they didn’t stumble upon your blog or Twitter posts? There isn’t exactly a firewall preventing people from reading them. Maybe they read a bit and decided it was in their best interests not to have you around?

      2. I knew them for fifteen years. It never came up. I never would have brought it up. We never discussed politics, ever. I never expect anyone around me to act like fans; just people. I bowled in my bowling league for years and no one knew who I was or what I did. Never brought it up.

        I’m assuming they actually DID stumble over my blog or Twitter posts. At which point they decided not to speak to me anymore. Not to continue our perfectly non-hostile get togethers. Not to act like neighbors. Not to say, “Agree to disagree,” which I would happily have accepted. They obviously did decide to not have me around; that’s actually exactly what I said, so thanks for coming to a conclusion that I already spelled out. I’m simply saying it’s sad they decided to shut me out of their lives because I disagreed with their politics. It used to be we all understood that politics is best to be avoided as a subject because it was particularly incendiary. We could get along if we just left politics aside. That is apparently no longer possible.

        PAD

      1. Peter, you’ve done more than disagree with their politics. For the majority of the past three years, you have described Trump voters as utterly vile, reprehensible trash. When you condemn people that way for making a choice you don’t like, the people around you who have made that choice will no longer want to associate with you. That is the way the real world works, even with neighbors of 15 years standing.

        You felt sad when they shut you out? What do you think THEY felt when they saw your repeatedly stated views of Trump voters? You don’t seem to have thought of that at all.

        Ben? if that comment was directed to me; I voted for Hilary last time and Biden this time. I’m not defending anything Trump has ever done. I”m explaining to Peter an unpleasant truth about himself that he seems determined to avoid.

    1. It’s been deployed. Your Safe Space, your Precious Bubble From Polite Dissent, has been properly sealed off from icky people who believe in diversity of thought and opinion. All is good now.

    2. I am going on a tangent here but I read your question to the tune of the song “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield.

      “Hey, PAD, where’s that shroud? Everybody look what’s going down.”

      My sister used to listen to the Forrest Gump soundtrack a lot and that song, specially the beginning, are permanently stuck in my head. 🙂

  10. Today on Youtube I came across a segment from CBS News discussing the present situation with Covid19, the spike in cases, and increasing deaths (a thousand a day again instead of 700), etc. Most of the comments were from people calling the CBS report fake news. It is no wonder Canada and other nations have closed their borders to Americans since many cities and states refused to do lockdowns then or now. America has 5% of the world’s population and 20% of the coronavirus cases and it isn’t getting any better. I personally know two people who died from covid19, one of them was in the hospital for 52 days before he passed.

  11. For those unfamiliar with the Electoral College and how it works, see Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution (passed 1789) and the 12th Amendment (passed 1804). The composition of the College has changed considerably as states were added and populations developed, but the basic rules have not changed in 216 years. And changing the rules are remarkably simple — but not easy, by design.

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