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Tomorrow’s Mug Shots

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Trump “Rally” in Grand Rapids, MI

As we head toward the culmination of another anxious election season, I suddenly had an inkling of what could happen. Donald Trump has always relied on rallies where he speaks with a bigly group of mostly young supporters with posters and MAGA hats at his back.

These rallies vaguely resemble the rallies that Trump’s hero, Adolph Hitler, staged in the 1930s. Of course, they couldn’t hold a candle to the giant 1935 rally in Nuremberg which was filmed by Leni Riefenstahl and released under the title Triumph of the Will. Now that was a real rally, with over 700,000 supporters in attendance.

Hitler Rally in Nuremberg 1935

The thought came to me that the whole Trump moment in American history will end badly. The electorate is largely made up of two groups:

  • People who hate Trump with a passion
  • People who idolize Trump with a passion (but who will come to hate him when they wake up and find out they have been used)

What I think will happen at some future date is that those faces at MAGA rallies will become a mark of shame, and that people will scan photographs of the rallies with magnifying glasses to find neighbors they could blame for their predicament, which will probably get worse over time. (Even if it doesn’t, the voters will think that.)

I look at cars that bear political bumper stickers and think, “What happens if they park their car in a neighborhood which is strongly ‘anti-’ their candidate?” That’s one of the reasons my car is devoid of bumper stickers and decals.

The blame game will only get worse.

Jane, You Ignorant Slut!

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Saturday Night Live Had It Right Way Back Then

Early in the 1970s, CBS’ Sixty Minutes news show had a segment in which a liberal debated a conservative. I could just imagine that CBS News was all thrilled they they were being “fair and balanced.” Then, Saturday Night Live parodied the segment with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, with Dan always opening with, “Jane, you ignorant slut ….”

That same genuflection to “fair and balanced” reporting results in segments where the political philosophy (?!) of QAnon is discussed with the same seriousness as the Federal budget. Attempts are made to mirror all sides of an issue, even when the one of the sides has (1) no merit, (2) no appreciable following, (3) dangerous repercussions to the nation. If you can’t find an articulate spokesman, there’s always of the more incendiary members of Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. Hell, you can always find some bozo in a Missouri coffee shop whose word the media will treat as if they were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai.

The misguided attempt to treat all sides of an issue as having equal merit has resulted in the public not knowing where to turn. That was certainly the case in the days of the Tea Party a few years ago, and still an issue when some bonehead in or out of office says something flagrantly stupid that is picked up by the press and widely disseminated.

So many news stories are picked up from Twitter (or X or whatever) and splashed around because they sound likely to result in fear or outrage. Trump’s tweets were certainly in this category. And we all know that even if he had no idea of how to run the country, our former president certainly knew how to manipulate the media.

Nowadays I am not likely to give any credence to political farts from the right or left. I don’t care what some Texas congressman or Trumpian fellow traveler has to say. My life is too valuable to allow myself to be crassly manipulated by people I do not in any way respect.

Coming Apart Like a Cheap Suit

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In the End, Will His Main Legacy Be Gold Plumbing Fixtures?

I fear that, in our country’s history, the Trump administration will in the end be like a persistent skid mark on one’s underwear. The disintegration seems to be accelerating, as our President is being assailed on all sides—except by his die-hard fans in flyover country. The incompetence almost seems to be spreading, like the Nothing in the movie The Neverending Story (1984). In that film, the Nothing is described as “a manifestation of the loss of hopes and dreams.” That is a very good description of the way I feel as the 2020 election approaches.

Since his inauguration in January 2017, Trump has become the anti-President, whose main goal was the dismantling of the apparatus of government—especially those benefits that seemed to benefit voters in any way. His rule has benefited only those multi-millionaires, who, like him, are against paying any taxes at all.

The political parties gearing up for 2020 are like, to use a witticism by Jorge Luis Borges, two bald men fighting over a comb.