Death by Republican

Dear Lockdown Protester,

Suffering this tyrannical assault on your civil liberties must be very painful. As are the tyrannical measures which kept you alive. Let me say how very sorry I am.

How thoughtless of the rest of us.

To paraphrase a sign seen at several protests: “My health doesn't end where your impatience begins!”

Reasoned, well thought-out measures were put into place by people way smarter than us to simultaneously protect us and prevent the spread of this highly-contagious virus. Measures like requiring a state show a sustained, two-week decline in COVID19 infections before it be considered for re-opening.

But someone on Facebook told you that was stupid—even fearful, so it is.

We have yet to test even two-percent of the population. Again, people way smarter than us feel capriciously re-opening densely populated urban areas because we're anxious and bored amounts to posting I heart COVID19 memes on our social media accounts.

You don't want it to leave. You want it to stick around, like it was Tom Brady or Laura Ingraham that dropped in and you can't bear to see it/them depart. How will normalcy ever be the same after a celebrity crush has popped in?

Look on the bright-side. Your president has mandated that meat processing plants remain open despite being confirmed hot spots for COVID19 infections. You can feed your death wish by consuming all the pork, poultry and beef these plants can crank out, and your survivors won't be able to sue thanks to your president's generous offer of immunity.

What a great leap forward towards the dystopia you so obviously crave.

I haven't seen a breakdown, but I suspect most of you are Republicans. Again, I apologize for your continued existence. I am as unhappy about it as you are.

To the woman who said “We can't pay taxes when we're dead”, I offer this: We won't be able to engineer a better, safer way forward, either.

I pray we are able to manage the second wave better than we did the first. Practice, I am told,  makes perfect.


Sincerely,

La Piazza Gancio

Again with the Hissy Fit, Lindsey?

My joy is transcendent and luminous. Watching the Trump administration implode in a series of puerile tantrums is a wondrous thing for which words barely suffice.

But even in days stuffed with the petulant antics of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, William Barr and Rudy Giuliani, one support player reliably steps forward and—however temporarily—steals the spotlight..

Yes, I speak of the senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham. Ol' Lindsey is never, ever shy about opening his mouth, and sometimes even thinks before doing so. Thankfully, that was not the case Thursday.

Graham again entertained the hell out of me by issuing an indignant hissy fit about the Democrats and their 'closed' impeachment inquiry. I mean, seriously Lindsey? You're in a snit because the Democrats did something without inviting you and your fellow Republicans along?

Aw. Hey--weren't you supposed to be giving Charles Koch a hand-job or something?

I guess those big, bad Democrats plum forget how open and transparent your boss and his henchmen have been. You know, the whole ignoring subpoenas thing and the obfuscation and the cover-ups and the lies and the threats.

And that picture of you posing with the posterboard explaining point by point how respectful Republicans were of Bill Clinton while they attempted to impeach him for lying about a blow job? 

Yeah. Sure. 

Sorry Lindsey, but I was alive in 1998. So were lots of other people. That was a political smear. Character assassination. A hatchet job. If that's the context for impeachment, what's appropriate for Donald Trump? 

A firing squad? 

Come on, Lindsey. I'm sure this plays really well at Fox for the high school drop-outs who thought it'd be fun to turn the federal government into a reality TV-styled source of entertainment.

But to the majority of us who didn't vote for the Trump-whore, it is clear you've spent far too long in the Republican whine cellar.

Sober up.

Trumped

That seems just about right. The man responsible for the most toxic and divisive political movement of the last hundred years (with the possible exception of Joseph McCarthy), is walking away with forty-million dollars.

And that's after the sexual harassment charges and twenty-million dollars worth of hush money his boss shelled out to silence accusers.

The truth behind all of this is that Roger Ailes made his boss, Rupert Murdoch, a whole lot of money. Fox News corrupted the truth and distorted perception. It put 'facts' on the endangered species list. It helped polarize a population into left and right while the wealthy ran up the middle for trillion-dollar touchdowns.

This is the twenty-first century ethos that allows Donald Trump to be considered as a legitimate candidate for the office of President of the United States of America. Lies over leadership. Demagogues, not democracy. And worst of all, entertainment over experience. 

Have Trump supporters even considered what Donald will be if he wins this thing? 

A politician!

After watching the farce-slash-forum last night on NBC, and imagining the mouth-breathing minions awe-struck by Trump's celebrity and single-cell political platforms, it is difficult not to imagine him winning this election.

Donald has perfected the verbal and body language snark of the reality TV crowd. Of the monster truck crowd. And of the professional wrestling crowd. To them, Trump's comical ego passes for confidence. And his put-downs for wit.

Clinton's fatal flaw is to credit Americans with a.) an attention span, and b.) a brain.

Like scores of Republicans before him, Trump successfully plays to the lowest common denominator: white, stupid and angry. He pushes their buttons like the teen-aged king of an eighties video game arcade. 

He is also a masterful manipulator of media. Even as his campaign threatens to curtail their freedoms, they cannot stay away. Every utterance of Donald's is front page news. Every new slander, every new libel, every new outrage is the lead story on that night's network news.

See what I mean?

The great irony, of course, is that the LCD folk who are his core supporters won't even exist after a Republican victory. They won't even be beneath the radar. They'll remain marooned in their small towns, mired in the hopelessness of their opioid abuse and abortion/LGBT/racially-fueled hatred.

Oh, they'll bellow on Rush Limbaugh and fly Confederate flags from their pick-up trucks. But they'll be among the first thrown under the bus when the TPP is enacted and the wealthy are further enriched, their power even more firmly entrenched.

If nothing else, a Trump victory will certainly prove that a people gets the government it deserves.