By Philip Drucker
If I told you removing Trump from office would result in one net life being saved, would you, do it? How many then? 10? 100? 1000? What if I told you the one life you saved was that of a child? No? 10? 100? 1000 children? No? Then please tell me what's your magic number? What's your price for saving the life of a child? You don't know, do you? That is what scares me the most about Trump supporters. Not that you don’t care, but you don’t care to know.
The lack of critical thinking, aka evidence based analysis among Trump supporters is astounding. In fact, I would argue, facts just get in the way. For facts, real facts are subject to authentication that could lead to the dreaded Snopes-o-Meter, soon to be discredited, discarded and debunked. How do I now this? Because alternative facts aren’t facts at all, or when said “facts” are placed in an inappropriate and virtually irrelevant to the answer position of “authority”, well, they are just a form of deceit, deception, misdirection, gas lighting and lies calculated to allow their proponent to inevitably slide down the slippery slope of meth induced dreams and eventually ending in a bereft of logic, stultifying and all but brain dead state of deep, deep state denial. I call it comfortably dumb. Karen in a coma.
Some call it down the rabbit hole. I call it the Faux hole. A place where one pill makes you marginal and one pill makes you dull (witted). Where the White KKK Knight is talking backwoods and the Republican Ruby Red Queen is out of a men’s magazine and probably gives, well you know. Not to him, but you know. I’ll leave it at that and skip what the Dormouse said. For it is all but needless-to-say that when it comes to this bunch, reality bites. Hard. Ouch.
Living the tabloid lifestyle of the pseudo-rich and at a best flamboyant. Famous is not quite the right word. You should at least be entertaining to hear that accolade and I do not find Trump or any of his supporters funny. Not in the least 666 beast sense of the word. Flunky comes to mind as does delusional, deluded, a forest of the mind denuded of working synapses and brain cells for sure. But funny? You lost me at children in cages. I never did like reading the National Enquirer and now I feel safe in saying made up stories about alien abductions and Elvis sightings does not make for sound political policy.
What is this apparent ability to dispel with the obvious for the mere promise but never the actual delivery of the fantastic? Where did it come from? Microchips in vaccines? Potato chips in dip(sticks)? LSD laced Doritos? The “blue” meth? The allure of the seedy, the unseemly, and ultimately the extremely unlikely in exchange for the chance to outright reject easily provable facts, to instead offer memes as “proof” and at the drop of a MAGA hat launch an ad hominem attack while pretending it is meaningful political discourse. Covid-19 is real, but you suck. So there.
How many times have I been told by a Trump supporter something along the lines of “the devil is in the details”. No, it is not. The devil is in the White House and he eats post office boxes for breakfast. He delays the mail and thereby denies veterans the previously timely delivery of the medications. He denies the rent due on the first of the month single mom her paycheck either on or before the first of the month. Single mothers and veterans are not details. They are real and this is now their life.
Right before your very eyes, BeelzeTrump is trying, during a pandemic, to deny your right to the safety of vote by mail balloting. A right he has availed himself of with the justification mail-in and absentee ballots are not the same and even if they are, it doesn’t matter, as he votes in a magical postal paradise free from election tampering and voter fraud called Florida.
The same enchanted state where the 9-11 hijackers were trained to take off and fly but not land a plane. The same state that in 2000 couldn’t figure out how to use a butterfly ballot and in the process, became famous for introducing the “hanging chad” to the world. The state that made it possible for the somewhat recently reevaluated upwards in stature but only by comparison George W. to steal the presidential election from Gore.
I must admit I do in many ways admire the many Never-Trump Republicans suddenly out of their political did I really vote for Sara Palin for VP closet but must ask, where were you in 2000 when you were witness to a fraught with predictable inaccuracies and error, aka rigged election? Oh, that was for a guy you liked. Pardon me, or even better, Mr. Trump if you are listening…
For here, among all his lies, lies and more lies, the divisiveness and division beneath which his most ardent admirers lay their collective heads, from within the governmental pigpen and so often covered with slop, is where Trump bit the big one bigly. During an interview with Jonathan Swan, later broadcast for all who cared see, he acknowledged the existence of the Covid-19 virus epidemic and astonishingly, finally told the truth. “It is what it is.”
For once, he wasn’t lying. It is. And that opened a Pandora Box of full of provable, measurable, subject to real critical discussion and evaluation facts and numbers and, yes, the introduction of science back into the national discourse, or at least everyone who wanted to be a part of an actual national discourse.
If it is what it is, and it is, then let’s talk about the 169,870K confirmed deaths in the USA. Let’s discuss the 5,422,242M confirmed cases. These are statistics from the CDC website. Apparently, the agency exists as well. Let’s talk about lack of adequate testing. Let’s rap about the shortage of PPE. Filled hospital beds and phony plans to re-open schools despite an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary. Let’s chew the fat of the fatted calf, as bitter as it may be, over the fact that Barron’s schooling is all being done online, his school deeming it unsafe to hold classes in person. Hey, your boy said it, not me, it is what it is and, this is what it is.
If you accept my premise as true, it might logically make you start to wonder and perhaps even investigate through reliable sources, what else, well, “is”. As in real, really, real. As in BLM real, and as in George Floyd real. I do not know which is more disturbing to me. The fact we must say Black Lives Matter, or that some people can’t even bring themselves to say it. Then came the echo chamber. Then it came again. Kidding.
Recently, I had a very disturbing conversation with one of my unnamed as always other side of the political spectrum friends. I asked him how with the release of the George Floyd video tape he still denied even the possibility, much less the existence of systematic racism in law enforcement. He told me, get ready, that he thought he had heard the name George Floyd, but didn’t really know who he was or the story behind his death. When I tried to fill him in and got to the BLM part, he told me the organization was a hate group started by three lesbians who’s stated mission in life is to destroy the nuclear family.
When I suggested perhaps he should do a little reading, after the mandatory MSM scoff or two, he went on to air his latest race related grievance, namely that he did not understand why he was in any way, shape or form, responsible for black on black on violence in Chicago. As it turned out, he knew quite a lot about that. Or at least he had several memes he could send that would fully explain the situation.
At this point, I asked if there was any possibility we could skip the personal attack stage I knew was coming next. Seems every year I spend on this planet I get stupider and stupider. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told “You got played”, why, I imagine I must be either a ping-pong table or a violin. Strangely, he skipped the random scripture quote. I guess we have Marco Rubio for that.
Today, as on many days, I have already received my first “Biden is a bigger racist than Trump” meme. Funny though, after watching day one of the Democratic Convention, it occurred to me “it is what it is” will continue to resonate all the way till November 3, 2020 and perhaps beyond. For once again, as so poignantly illustrated by Michelle Obama, listening matters, civil discourse matters, kindness and understanding matters, unity matters, empathy matters, E pluribus unum matters, the Constitution matters, the post office matters, the peaceful transition of power matters, the defeat of fascism and tyranny matters, employment, food and housing matters, our health and the pandemic matter, our children matter and yes, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, matters.
If we don’t elect Joe Biden this November, so help us God for we as a nation have failed. We will continue to spiral into an unruly, unlawful state of hatred, bitterness, rancor and derision where the rich get richer, one-third of our population safely tucked away within their morphine induced dreams of white privilege while the remainder of us have no one to blame but ourselves and that, is the truth.
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