I’ve never been to a Trump rally. I could have gone to one, way back in 2016 when he came to Burlington, Vermont. But honestly, I’m too old to go starting riots, and sometimes I forget that.
I got up a little too early this morning. Had just barely started my coffee when I turned on the computer, searched among YouTubery for some news — still haven’t finished my coffee even now. In fact, I’m still trying to get my bearings.
There, among all of the clips closing out 2020, clips on the latest on the pandemic, how covid surpassed heart attacks as the number one killer of Americans; clips on the latest rounds of community lockdowns; the latest California wildfire and the nor’easter tearing up the east coast; there among all of this . . . this . . . news . . . I find a clip of Donald J. Trump stumpin’ in Georgia.
Donnie Teabags and his superspreader campaign.
“The Democrats are trying to take away your Christmas.”
~ Diaper Don
I guess it never occurred to the repelican party to calculate the numbers of Georgians who might be too sick to vote come January 5; or who might be so furious at the actual loss of their own Christmas, or loss of a loved one between now and then, never to vote repelican ever again. Or that the blatant promotion of racism, institutionalized in national public policy, might actually be terribly bad campaign strategy.
In all my life, I never imagined that a national political figure would assume center stage, in the middle of pandemic, at a time when Americans are dying at a rate of over one every minute, when projections out of the University of Washington indicate we will have over a half million dead by April One — numbers that are projected to increase to over 770,000 if states do not “flatten the curve” — I never expected in all of my life to witness what took place in Georgia.
He wasn’t promoting public policy. He was promoting a brand. He was promoting Tucker Carlson. He was promoting News Max. Literally. He was promoting these American touch stones on the lunatic fringe — by name.
That mutherfucker took a dystopian cinematic production onto the campaign trail down in Georgia and he assaulted America with it. He brought The Hunger Games to life on that national stage and he stabbed the American soul.
This isn’t some mad dream it’s a fucking nightmare and it isn’t even over. Thousands of us are going to die today. Tomorrow. And the next day. And Donald J. Trump is not done breaking America.
Surely Charlie Daniels was some kind of prophet, and the minions of Satan have arrived.