Luck of the Damned

An inch to one side, and he is unscathed. A couple of inches to the other side, and he’s a dead man. A few inches lower, and he’s seriously injured and off the campaign trail for a while.

But no, that shot had to nick him so precisely, so exactly, that he could claim a war wound but still be back on the golf course the next day. 

He could wave his fist around, blood on his face, with the American flag fluttering in the background in an image guaranteed to sway a million voters who base their decisions on random feelings and gut reactions. 

He could escape injury while his followers get killed. 

He could claim that he took a bullet for America when all he really did was take a bullet from a white male Republican lunaticopening fire with a legally purchased AR-15. 

No one who gets shot at benefits from the experience, except this guy.

It is astronomical how that bullet had to nip his ear but not actually harm him. How the slug had to cause just enough blood to flow that he could use the incident to boost fundraising. We’re talking millimeters that could decide an election.

Of course, he’s always been lucky. He was born a millionaire, for starters. And who else goes bankrupt multiple times, displays the morals of an alley cat, and spews idiotic lies and pathetic excuses nonstop, only to become more popular with each deranged act or massive failure?

Who else violates several federal laws in a blatant mockery of our system of classified information, but then gets the case against him dismissed because of a motherfucking footnote?

This election was “already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution.”

Now, it looks like it will be a referendum on just how vile, incompetent, and cataclysmic one man can be without any comeuppance or hint of karma. 

The only person who might be luckier is some politically inexperienced buffoon who parlayed his hillbilly upbringing into a brand, sold out his semi-moderate values to fall into line with right-wing insanity, and is poised to become president if a certain obese septuagenarian wins an election but then suffers a fatal heart attack or chokes on a cheeseburger in two years.

Yeah, these guys have used up all the good luck for the entire country.