So the big news today from the ethical fire swamp that used to be the White House is that Donald Trump is pardoning far-right flim-flam-maker Dinesh D’Souza, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to violating campaign finance laws by funneling money to a Senate candidate through straw donors.
Seems like a pretty cut-and-dried case, but what do I know? I’m just a dorky, naive liberal who legally contributed money to Hillary Clinton — money that would have been better spent making an election-year film about the Illuminati parasitic twin who does all Trump’s tweeting for him.
But the pardon — which followed that of Joe Arpaio, the racist concentration camp warden who’s somehow become a cause célèbre of the right — fits with Trump’s M.O. And whether Trump realizes it or not, that M.O. is precisely this: Whatever it is you think the Joker would do — do that.
Here’s a checklist, in case you don’t believe me:
- Smear Batman by manipulating millions of poor and working-class Gothamites into thinking he’s the real villain.
- Prey on people’s fears and insecurities to convince them that only someone as tough as the Joker — who alone knows how to navigate Gotham’s underworld — can fix the city’s problems.
- Spring the Penguin, Catwoman, and Bane out of jail. Convince the people they were all unfairly persecuted by Batman.
- Continually undermine the rule of law and Gotham’s law-enforcement institutions to cover up your own crimes, leaving the city vulnerable to further depredations.
- Sow chaos at every turn to divert people’s attention from what’s really going on.
- Give a little money away to the middle class to distract them from the public looting you and your evil friends are doing right under their noses. Recover that money — and then some — later by robbing the city treasury. When the city goes to shit because of a lack of law-enforcement and maintenance funds, find some way to blame Batman.
I mean, with just a few tweaks, that last bullet point is essentially the plot of the original Tim Burton Batman movie:
At his core, Trump is nothing but a clownish comic book supervillain, and it’s all out in the open. It always has been.
Unfortunately, things may get a lot worse before they get better. Unless, well, a Blue Wave rises.
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Yo! Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing is now available at Amazon! Buy there (or at one of the other fine online retailers carrying it), or be square.