“Won’t it be wild,” a friend of mine gushed last week, “if Giuliani winds up in a cellblock with some mobsters he once put away?”
“Well,” I rejoined, “it seems fair that what once was sauce for Sammy the Bull might be sauce for Rudy the Bullshitter.”
What a fall from grace! In 2001, Rudy was Time’s Person of the Year. And, to some, “America’s Mayor.” Now even Mayor McCheese won’t return his calls; he’s barely an apprentice Hamburgler.
Perhaps he (among others) should have read ex-GOP strategist Rick Wilson’s 2018 tome Everything Trump Touches Dies. Granted, The Donald put him up for quite a while at Mar-a-Lago. But still. Trump looks to have called in that favor (with interest). At length, Rudy stuck his neck out like an inquisitive turtle- and never got paid in line with the risks he took.
So, he crashes. He burns. He’s selling his residence. His alimony payments alone rival Trump’s coiffure bills. What remains of his pants may be sued off by voting machine software firms. To deal with some 13 criminal counts, he may need to seek counsel not from some white-shoe razzle-dazzler, but from an earnest, by-the-book public defender. (Or- I kid you not- from the 8-count convicted felon/Rudy-and-Donnie crony Bernie Kerik. Ugh.)
As Little Richard once wailed, “oh Rudy!”
Questions arise. Why have top Republicans gone nutty, hysterical, forked-tongued, and berserk over losing the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes? Why did Donnie take it on himself to prod Brad Raffensperger to “find” him a heap of fresh (not to say chimerical) votes (perhaps in a dumpster, next to what’s left of, say, Manny the Boar or Jimmy Hoffa)? Why did Rudy, conversely, spew whoppers about dastardly Dems finding “suitcases” full of ballots?
In all, why hasn’t Trump’s cult just chirped “fiddle-dee-dee” (a la Scarlett O’Hara), and moved on?
Enquiring minds want to know. So, here it is. For decades, the “Solid South” had gone reliably red. Losing the Land of Tara by fewer than 12K votes (off the bat and after TWO recounts) did not sit well.
In December, 2020, enter Rudy- righteously raging. To the Georgia legislature, he howled, “LOOK AT THEM [election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman]! THEY LOOK LIKE THEY’RE PASSING OUT DOPE, NOT JUST BALLOTS. [THEREFORE] IT’S QUITE CLEAR [to Trump worshippers] THEY’RE STEALING BALLOTS!”
Sigh. As Deep South native/Nobel Laureate William Faulkner points out, “The past is...not even past.” To wit, in 2016, the Ku Klux Klan went cuckoo for Trump. A century earlier, investigative journalist Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) found that, from Day One, the Klan targeted, killed, and mutilated Blacks who (presaging Moss and Freeman) had had the gall to work hard. Play by the rules. And earn a living beyond the barest, most subservient subsistence.
Talk about irony. For all our boasts about being “THE land of the free” (emphasis added), by the time Wells was born just about every nation in the Americas and in Europe had outlawed and abjured the inhuman, indecent bondage that Ron DeSantis (R) STILL touts. (That Italy and then Germany wound up backsliding should NEVER serve as an excuse for ANY American to follow suit. Period.)
Perhaps “birtherist” Donnie and “dope”-y Rudy feel they need no excuse. All the more, better late than never, let’s face it: bigotry and tyranny go hand-in-fist. So stop. Look. On J6, the pro-slavery Confederate battle flag breached our Capitol. Outside, a chillingly Klannish noose stood guard. Stood tall. And stood for abject despotism.
Hours earlier, Rudy had howled for “trial by combat.” Now he faces trial by jury. In the court of public opinion, be it resolved that he has yet to get his story straight. On one hand, he reportedly has admitted to having lied about 2020. On the other hand, he now claims to possess “very persuasive...scientific evidence” that the election was, after all, stolen.
Whatever his “whole truth and nothing but” may turn out to comprise, the past still speaks volumes. Almost a century ago, a self-entitled, race-baiting jailbird named Hitler went free. Like Trump’s, his cult had scant truck with what our Constitution calls “domestic tranquility.” Now as then (to tweak Georgia’s state song) “no peace [we] find.” So, look out. Even in the face of the neo-fascist Vladimir Putin’s blitz of Ukraine, Trump vows to be “coming after you….to do things to you that have never been done before.”
Yes, America. He sounds like he’s coming “for” you (quoting Rev. Martin Niemöller, in 1946, the year Trump was born).
Call him the Teflon Donald. And Rudy, his chum-turned-consigliere. Let it be stressed (early and often): on 1/6/21, on behalf of the GOP’s White-washed regime, mobs of fake patriots tried a hit on Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam. It narrowly failed.
Understandably, shrugging it off feels better than trying to grapple with it. But still. The 80-ton Godzilla (and mixed metaphor) in the Rotunda is that we’re swimming with sharks who’ve tasted blood. Toward even a modicum (let alone an abundance) of caution, ten-hut: ongoing “political discourse” a la J6 cannot help but foreshadow Civil War II. And/or World War III.
Sad. But true.