It’s impossible to overstate the distaste I have for the American electorate right now. All of our guardrails have utterly failed in preventing this felonious, self-dealing, deranged, soul-rotted, maggot-brained sexual abuser from re-entering the White House. There are so many moral cowards and enablers who share this blame that I haven’t the time nor space to name them all: the heavily partisan and plainly unethical SCOTUS majority providing cover and delaying legitimate legal cases against him — along with other Trump-appointed bench lackeys like Aileen Cannon ; Mitch “Machiavelli” McConnell and his gang of political brigands including Lindsey Graham, Mike Johnson, and Marco Rubio, just to name a few (it’s power at any cost for these mediocre supplicating weasels); the mendacious/alarmist right-wing press of FOX and Murdock and Elon Musk (via X) and fellow-traveler douchebags like Joe Rogan who whitewash the blood and bile from Trump’s faux orange skin. The list goes on and on…
But finally it was the goalkeeping electorate who fell down. They watched the original screen version of Trump 1.0 in full Technicolor, Sensurround, and Smell-O-Vision and have now said, “Sequel, please!” They heard all the lies, the smears, the taunts, the threats, the illogic, the misinformation, the lack of historical knowledge, the absence of decorum and civility, the lack of empathy, the selective outrage, the corrosion of our vital institutions, etc., etc.,… and still pressed the Trump button. Yes, there were some prominent voices on the Right who spoke against the dangers, but they were all too few, said way too little, and came well too late. The best chance to finish off his sordid political career, surely, was at the second impeachment trial over the Jan 6 insurrection. But the spineless Republicans in the Senate collapsed under the weight of their moral and political responsibility, most likely out of fear of Trump’s base. And now we the voters, having been collectively riveted by the unhinged Trump attempt to subvert an election (while he himself cheered on the violence perpetrated on our Capitol by his own followers) based on a pure fabrication of voter fraud, have decided to give him a full 4-year do-over (no doubt the notorious golf cheat, with a supposed single-digit handicap, takes unlimited mulligans). And maybe that gets to the heart of the matter: what too many Americans crave is an entertaining political conflict, one with the frisson of violence, that rolls from town to town like professional wrestling/UFC. They want blood sport, not nuanced policy debate. Trump gives them that version of escapism on steroids and HGH, even if he’s cynically undermining their own interests in the process. And they also find Trump somehow “funny” with his malicious slurs and belittling nicknames (that, in the manner of all bullies, are far more accurate when pointed straight back at him). They literally and figuratively want their own “Gladiator” (Trump in this analogy, of course, runs much closer to the evil character of Commodus). Well perhaps his timing couldn’t be any better because, coming soon to your local theater, is “Gladiator II.”
Great Exudations 