A Slight Reordering of Priorities

Crying won't help you
Praying won't do you no good
Now crying won't help you
Praying won't do you no good
When the levee breaks
Mama you got to move
Going down
Going down now

“When the Levee Breaks”

— Led Zeppelin (& Memphis Minnie)

During this time of crisis, it might be nice to have someone in charge who is not a doddering sociopath who has no experience dealing with crises, can’t grasp details, insists he knows more than experts in any given field, ignores facts he doesn’t like, lies out of instinct, surrounds himself with incompetent yes men, has a history of bankruptcy and failure, and possesses complete disdain for anyone who isn’t related to him and/or can make him money. Plus, it would be beneficial if he knew how basic science works.

But maybe that’s just me.

Yes, the theoretical main motivation for Trump voters — i.e., to elect someone who will “shake things up” — appears even more spectacularly pathetic now than it did in 2016. 

The coronavirus — or as the GOP refers to it, the Chinese Yellow Peril Death Plot — has ended any talk among conservatives of enacting more of their reactionary agenda.

I mean, remember when Trump insisted that he would build a wall on our Southern border, and that Mexico would pay for it? Really, do any Americans — even the racists — give one-quarter of a fuck about that idea now? The sad hucksterism of “Build the Wall” has been revealed. But of course, people barely remember that bizarre goal (or the millions of dollars wasted on it).

They are too busy denying that the COVID-19 is real, or if it is real, that it is Soros-funded plot. Or that Trump has it all under control even though it’s perfectly clear that a blind orangutan thrust into the Oval Office could do a better job.

Those of us who accept the science behind this catastrophe know that older Americans are most at risk. And in a darkly twisted bit of irony, senior citizens constitute a key demographic of Trump’s support. During the last election, many seniors wanted a return to their childhoods of the 1950s (i.e., no blacks or Latinos living next door), and admired a guy who talked tough, with none of that PC bullshit.

However, it’s becoming clear that insulting ethnic minorities doesn’t facilitate an effective government response to a pandemic. And a virus doesn’t care how tough you talk. So those qualifications are, to say the least, unhelpful during this accelerating crisis.

No, the savior of baby boomers doesn’t appear to be saving them. In fact, he apparently thought so little of their well-being that he prioritized his re-election campaign ahead of their safety. That is, of course, a dereliction of duty and a violation of the president’s oath to defend the country, which in turn, is arguably an impeachable offense. But hey, we played that game already, and the GOP assured us that it was in the nation’s best interests to keep their easily distracted ball of rage in the White House.

I wonder if they have changed their minds, considering that the person they so strenuously defended mere months ago has now committed the worst mistake in presidential history (all while denying any responsibility for his own incompetence).

In truth, “the coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation.”

And all that bullshit about shaking things up, or making America great, or keeping the world safe for elderly white people? 

Yeah, that was all just talk. Nobody believes that nonsense anymore.

Embarrassed for a Reason

Only rarely do I quote Kajagoogoo.

OK, I’ve never quoted Kajagoogoo, and if you have to Google this band, you are clearly not Gen X.

In any case, this one-hit wonder from the 1980s had a big hit with their song Too Shy.

It’s possible that this British synth band was so prescient that they were actually flash-forwarding to 2020 and singing about Trump voters.

OK, it’s impossible. So forget everything I’ve said so far.

The point is that political scientists and pollsters both insist that there is a very real phenomenon known as the “shy Trump voter.”

The theory is that our president is so, shall we say, controversial that many of his fans are reluctant to just come out and admit that he has their vote. In fact, “there is evidence that … there are a lot of people out there who are still afraid of saying to a pollster that they support this president.”

I can’t imagine why someone would be reluctant to say, “Yes, I’m all for a racist misogynist who indulges in overt corruption, fawns over dictators, stuffs kids into cages, rewards appalling incompetence, babbles incoherently, and given enough time, will kill us all.”

But that’s just me.

Pollsters often account for social desirability bias when they gauge people’s opinions. That’s why surveys seldom include questions like “Are you a bigot?” That’s way too much of a shock to the psyche, and even people responding anonymously are likely to say, “What? Me a bigot? No way!”

So pollsters are more likely to ask vague questions about bias and preferences, then crunch it all together to siphon out how much actual bigotry is out there (spoiler: it’s a lot).

But you can’t really do that when you ask citizens who they are voting for. And so, the theory goes, the shy Trump voter will display an “unwillingness to express support for Trump when asked by another human being.”

If true, it means that Trump’s support is chronically underestimated, and Democrats who take comfort in Joe Biden’s theoretical leadare fooling themselves.

However, there are three problems with this thesis.

First, there is the fact that many political experts believe that the whole theory is bullshit.

Second, there is a vast amount of anecdotal evidence that Trump supporters are the least shy people on Earth. We’re talking about whole arenas full of screaming fanatics who wave Q signs, dress in right-wing regalia, bellow idiotic catchphrases, and shriek at anyone who disagrees with them. And as someone who has been harassed online, I can vouch for the ferocity of Trump’s followers. 

Really, these are timid people?

Third, even if there are individuals who remain reluctant to express support for Trump, we shouldn’t refer to them as “shy.” Giving them this inoffensive moniker is conservative PC nonsense that spares their feelings. So let’s be clear.

They are not shy. They are ashamed.

They know, on some level at least, that they have sided with ignorance, hatred, and fear. They know that they have caused enormous damage to the country, and possibly the world, in exchange for a tiny, temporary uptick in their 401(k), or for a slight feeling of comfort that the dreaded “other” isn’t moving in next door tomorrow.

They know that they are endorsing a vile philosophy, and that their principles collapsed when subjected to the slightest bit of pressure. They know all this.

They just don’t want to say it out loud.

So don’t call them “shy.”

In closing, there is one more crucial concept that you should know, one additional vital fact that you have to acknowledge.

And it is this:

Kajagoogoo was not the greatest one-hit wonder of the 1980s.

That would be Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

Fight me.

Cough Cough

One of my favorite novels is Stephen King’s The Stand. But that doesn’t mean I want to live it.

Yes, as we all know, the coronavirus is here to decimate our population, destroy our civilization, and in an absolute worst-case scenario, cause our millionaires to lose some money in the stock market.

Experts are still trying to figure out if this is the second coming of the Spanish Flu (which killed 5% of the world) or if it’s the most overhyped near-calamity since the Y2K bug.

But in any case, we shouldn’t worry. Because our mega-super genius of a president has a master plan to —

Ha, no.

As we all know, the odds of Trump handling this crisis well are about the same odds as your pet schnauzer winning the Kentucky Derby.

Even his hardcore supporters know that the guy can’t handle this. They elected the man to shake things up, or burn down the system, or undertake some other metaphor that conjures up images of devastation. Trump voters never dreamed that their beloved doddering reality-show host would actually have to deal with a national emergency. He was just supposed to ban the Muslims and deport the Latinos, not come up with a comprehensive approach to fighting a global pandemic. Oh, the injustice of it all.

Early indicators are that the most racist chief executive in history is not up to the task. After all, we’ve already endured disastrous news conferences where Trump has claimed that we will develop a vaccine for the coronavirus quickly, “when in fact there is little chance that will happen.” Hell, the president doesn’t even appear to know how vaccines work, and he’s implied that stricken people should just go into work and spread the disease among their co-workers.

So our prevention efforts are off to a good start.

Now, it’s not just that Trump distrusts science, “always believes he knows more than the experts about any given subject,” and “has increasingly surrounded himself with a team of acolytes who will not challenge him.”

No, there is also the fact that it is difficult “for the public to believe a president who has made more than 16,000 false or misleading claims in his first three years in office.” 

Put it all together, and there is a slight chance that the virus may yet accomplish what impeachment, the Mueller Report, and myriad scandals, fuck-ups, and immoral actions have not, which is to “throw a spotlight on the Trump administration’s criminal negligence,” massive corruption, and idiotic incompetence.

Hey, even Wall Street analysts are saying that a botched response to the virus “may increase the likelihood of Democratic victory in the 2020 election.”

But I will go even further. I will state the following:

This is the election. This microscopic bug — right here. This will likely decide who the next president is. We are in its hands.

You see, if coronavirus unleashes a wave of illness across America — and in a truly horrific scenario, kills thousands — it will be impossible for even Trump and his squad of conspiratorial lunatics to claim that it is fake news. If the stock market plummets, and the economy shudders, many Americans will finally declare that they have had enough of Trumpian chaos.

Conversely, if the virus burns itself out and doesn’t sicken too many Americans, and the economic turmoil is relatively slight, well then, team Trump will claim that the president vanquished the bug and singlehandedly saved the nation (even if, as is virtually 100 percent certain in this scenario, the administration just got lucky despite its inevitable bungling).

Everything that has come before this has just been set-up, politically speaking. This virus now controls our fate.

You can ponder the insanity of that all you want.

Just don’t forget to wash your hands.

They Can’t Even Deal With It

As any follower of the Q conspiracy will tell you, why accept objective reality when ludicrous theories are so easy to believe?

Americans have always been pretty good at ignoring perfectly obvious answers in favor of convoluted hypotheses. Just look back at 2016, when Trump’s election caused “Americans across the political spectrum” to stammer and rationalize and search “desperately for any alternative explanation… to the one staring them in the face.” This explanation, of course, was that racism helped fuel Trump’s victory.

Back then, Republicans insisted that there was no bigotry within their organization, that rural white people really, truly cared about limited government, and that coded appeals to racism had not occurred for the last half-century.

Some of them still say that. But come on, once you’ve garnered the Daily Stormer’s endorsement, you pretty much know the company that you keep. Can anyone actually deny that the preferred party of white supremacists is the GOP?

Now, before we pile on the conservatives — always fun to do — let’s look at the Democratic Party.

As you know, self-avowed Democratic Socialist and progressive rabble rouser Bernie Sanders has been running roughshod over his fellow contenders for the presidential nomination. According to the Democratic Party establishment, this is Armageddon, Ragnarok, and doomsday all rolled into one.

The party’s leaders are shrieking that a Sanders nomination will be the death of us all, and they are willing to splinter their organization to prevent it. 

Now, I’m not going to start an argument about Sanders’ electability. First, because as our jabbering bigoted president has proven, anybody with money can win an election. Second, because for every poll or opinion piece that says Sanders will be destroyed in November, there is another one that says he will cruise to victory. The truth is that nobody really knows if Sanders would win or not. So let’s just admit that right now.

The point, however, is there is no doubt that the progressives in the nation have just about had it with the scared, centrist, compromise-at-all-costs attitude of the Democratic Party. That shit may have worked in the 1990s, but it had worn out its welcome by the Obama years.

In fact, it is perfectly clear that Obama would have been a more effective president if he had simply abandoned his efforts to reach out to Republicans, many of whom openly despised him, and just rammed through a more aggressive agenda. Instead, Obama tried to play nice, and what he got was Merrick Garland hung out to dry and a conservative movement that is still (still!) trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Really, if Obama had just said, “I’m the boss,” half as authoritatively as Trump has, we might have a public option for healthcare and fewer AR-15s in the hands of psychopaths.

I guess we’ll never know.

In any case, moderate Democrats insist that they can win the next election if they just run Hillary Clinton 2.0, but not the actual Hillary because, you know, everybody kind of hated her. More than that, however, they insist that the Democratic Party’s base is all in on that strategy.

Perhaps they missed the news that “Sanders has jumped out to a double-digit national lead in the Democratic presidential contest.”

Or maybe they skipped over the fact that Sanders has “basically tied or won every single primary so far.”

Or perhaps they ignored the idea that Sanders is winning “because he's promising to transform the way we do things in a country where the actual voting public doesn't seem to like how things are done.”

The truth is that the Democratic base — the progressives, the young, the racially diverse — are feeling the Bern. Hell, plenty of middle-aged white liberals are down with Sanders.

The Democratic Party’s insistence that, no, its voters are secretly in love with Joe Biden or just need more time to get to know Amy Klobuchar is not based in reality. 

Cramming a moderate down the throat of Democrats — when it has been made massively clear that they do not want this — is beyond arrogant. It is delusional and self-sabotaging. 

Sanders is popular. His supporters are passionate. And nobody is clamoring for Mike Bloomberg to be president except for closeted Republicans.

Democratic leaders are in denial about their base, just as the GOP establishment was in denial about its base in 2016. But in both cases, the rest of us know the truth.

You Say “Tyrant” Like It’s a Bad Thing

Let’s say your kid punches another kid in the face for no reason. According to the GOP understanding of human psychology, you should respond by taking your child out for ice cream and saying, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

Yes, in this post-impeachment era, our favorite man-child of a chief executive has gone from barely hiding his criminality to openly boasting of his ability to do whatever he wants. He is more or less “doing that Joker dance down the courthouse steps.”

We would like to believe that all those Republicans who said Trump would learn a lesson have, in fact, learned a lesson themselves. And this would be that a president who is supposedly repentant does not, in general, threaten his political opponents, retaliate against witnesses, pull strings for his corrupt cronies, and treat the Department of Justice more like it is the Ministry of Information — all within mere days of surviving impeachment. It just shows (as if there were any doubt) that “the only lesson Trump ever learns is that he gets away with everything.”

Still, we haven’t heard any apologies or admissions of serious misjudgment from top Republicans. Presumably, many of them are too damn embarrassed to acknowledge their weak-willed naivety and degrading capitulation to an orange buffoon.

However, maybe some of them are not embarrassed in the least. In fact, maybe this entire political nightmare isn’t just a case of Republicans putting up with kakistocracy in exchange of tax cuts and conservative judges. Oh, that’s no doubt true for many of them, and it remains a pathetic excuse for coddling a wannabe dictator. But at this point, it appears that a lot of conservatives are not only fine with a failed businessman becoming king of America, but are actively rooting for an authoritarian despot to run roughshod over democracy.

Keep in mind that studies show that almost one-third of Americans display at least some support for ending democracy and instilling either a strongman or converting to outright military rule. Furthermore, “the highest level of openness to authoritarianism came from voters who supported Donald Trump.”

If you paid attention in history class, you know that we developed the U.S. Constitution to protect against monarchies. But many conservatives are rethinking the whole point of that old parched document.

Of course, nobody really thinks the Constitution is perfect. We may love it, warts and all, in the same way that we love our crazy uncles who think the moon landing was faked. Yeah, we try to dwell on the Constitution’s good parts, and not the Electoral College or that thing about three-fifths of a person. 

But what’s interesting about modern conservatives is that, despite their bellicose grandstanding about how much they revere the Constitution, they really kind of hate it. They hate the separation of the branches of government, the power of the judiciary, and the dominance of the federal government over the states. They hate the 1st Amendment, the 14^th Amendment, the 17^th Amendment, and… well, all them except the 2nd Amendment. They despise most of the principles the Constitution was founded upon, and most of the specifics that it consists of.

They don’t like it — not at all. Nope.

What these anti-Constitutionalists really want is someone to take charge, to wrestle the whole messiness of American life and condense it into a simple, easily understood system.

The fact that this is impossible deters them not at all.

Life, as we know, is inherently messy and complicated. It’s unruly and complex even if you live on an island with dozens of people. So the idea that a nation of 330 million individuals — consisting of hundreds of different races, religions, values, and sports team fandoms — can somehow be squeezed into a pleasing, conflict-free flow of humanity is absurd, even pathetic.

And yet, social conservatives yearn for “a strong sense of social hierarchy (the notion that everyone has their place) [that] can arguably provide a coherent structure that makes the world seem less chaotic — and theoretically more controllable.”

Meanwhile, all of us progressives come dancing along — talking about radical upheavals to healthcare and other discombobulating changes to the old-fashioned way of doing things — and conservatives promptly freak the fuck out.

In addition, all the ideas that “multiculturalists believe will help people appreciate and thrive in democracy — appreciating difference, talking about difference, displaying and applauding difference — are the very conditions that encourage authoritarians not to heights of tolerance, but to their intolerant extremes.”

Trump’s hardcore supporters don’t want to “appreciate difference” or stop using plastic straws or try Ethiopian food or acknowledge any of your crazy commie ideas. Instead, they want things to never change, especially if they reside within an even mildly privileged class of American society. 

More than anything, they want someone to do all their thinking for them. They want the strongman to make it all ok, and to make it simple, and to make all the complexities go away.

Yes, it’s true that this approach has culminated in “an indifference to the health of U.S. political and judicial systems on the part of the president, and a willingness to destroy trust in institutions that could take decades to recover from his power plays.”

But hey, that’s not their problem.