Yes, it’s a helluva thing Trump still hasn’t delivered on his promise to shove more people into all those “clean, beautiful” coal mines, but that aside, there does seem to be some good news for Trump’s supporters these days. It doesn’t appear as if he will have to grab one by the scruff of their red neck and drag ’em into the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot ’em just to prove a point.
Praise God Almighty, it’s good to stay alive!
Trump’s supporters, otherwise known as the Republican Party, seem plenty pleased with the job their golden-orange idol is doing. Whether working with Putin to undermine America, lying 10 or 15 times a day, exhibiting absolutely no command of any fact or policy, headlining the bludgeoning his party took in the Midterms, paying off porn stars to get elected, wrecking our global alliances, watching TV and tweeting misspelled bilge, or “proudly” shutting down the government (which will affect them far more deeply than they have yet to imagine), the no-matter-whats of the GOP are with their fearful leader every slithering step of the way.
This is both illuminating and disgraceful, of course. It is also where we are. A decided, unwavering minority of this country stand with an unethical, anti-American madman.
It’s now safe to say there will be no patriotic moment when McConnell, Graham, Romney or Collins take to the Senate floor, grab hold of the truth and lift it toward the sky. They have anchored themselves to their base and decided to take a breather knowing it would be impossible to go any lower. How freeing for them. They have flipped the keys to Trump knowing full well he will drive through every stop sign put in place by the architects of this imperfect, Democratic maze and wreck this country.
Doing what he does better than just about anybody, the New York Times Nate Cohn went out with a cold-slap-in-the-face write this weekend, that basically depicts we are in the same place electorally and intellectually that we were two years ago. Trump is polling at around 40 percent, and Cohn uses his sharp elbow to rub in the point that despite those grimy numbers — and yes, yes, it IS depressing 40 percent can still somehow support this filth — “Trump’s approval rating isn’t particularly far from what he may wind up needing (to get reelected), given the G.O.P.’s current advantage in the Electoral College.”
I’ll let you have a good cry before the assault on my keyboard continues …
Thing is, here’s where Trump’s constant need to have whatever life is left in his haggard, 374-lb. frame hugged out of him by his supporters makes no sense: The Wall is somehow less popular than he is and opposed by states that account for approximately 400 electoral votes — or more than enough to wash him away in a landslide if God forbid he is still around in 18 months or so. In other other words, the wall is doing him and his party real political damage.
Makes you wonder why political animals like Graham and McConnell would still go along with this, eh? It’s enough to make a guy wonder what Putin has on them, too.
Because I am rubbing it in this morning, I’ll point out that while still underwater, his wall is more popular than you might expect in places like the shadowy nooks and crannies in the Northeast. As Cohn puts it, “It mirrors the president’s support in the presidential primary and tracks with longstanding measures of racial resentment.”
In other words, let’s not pretend “racial resentment” (bigotry) are confined to the Deep South. Unfortunately, I know many people in the Northeast who voted for Trump on this singular issue alone. They believe the brown people are threatening their way of life. It’s literally the only thing they care about. Seriously. And, no, I don’t try to understand them any longer, and care little if they are ultimately killed by the disease of their making.
Trying to shake this latest gust of cold reality and get something productive done today, like calling my senators five or six times and sending out 78 angry, hash-tagged tweets, I’ll finish by typing I still think we are headed for an epic, life-altering crisis in the next few months the likes of which we have never seen before. It will be made crystal clear to 60 percent of Americans and 80 percent of the world, that Trump and his miserable family conspired with a foreign government to take office and many Republicans aided and abetted this treason. It will be proven without a shadow of doubt that Republican and National Rifle Association money financed efforts to make the Oligarchian Empire great again in exchange for more riches and more power.
A snorting Trump, arms crossed defiantly, will threaten McConnell, Graham, Romney and Collins to stay with him on this or else. He will take to the airways and tell them and his supporters he will be ready to shoot one of them, or anybody really, in the middle of the street to prove a point. He will remind them he has the military at his disposal and the power to do whatever he wants. The GOP will do nothing. A jittery world will watch while other fascists and tyrants take their cue. We will all be inches from self-incinerating and tumbling into the sea.
So here is the question you should be asking yourself right now: What do you plan to do about it?
