With 25 days left on the electoral clock, there remains the real possibility that this country will goose-step over the cliff and usher in a MAGA restoration – because no scandal, no matter how monumental, seems to deter the dumb, the feckless, the credulous, and the oblivious from deifying Der Leader. Worse yet, millions of low-information Americans living outside the cult are potentially ill-motivated to wake the f**k up.
The many revelations these past few days seem to have landed with a thud. A federal court document which details how Trump on Jan. 6 said “So what” when informed that his goons were threatening to hang his vice president? Snore. Trump’s declaration that migrants have “bad genes,” a chilling echo of Nazi eugenics? Yawn. The report that pandemic president Trump, while downplaying the need to test Americans for Covid, sent some of our testing equipment to Vladimir Putin for the dictator’s personal use? Meh. Or the report that ex-president Trump, having stolen classified files, called Putin at least seven times, a violation of the Logan Act that specifically bars private citizens from engaging without authorization in diplomacy with foreign governments that are in dispute with America? Nah, who cares.
But perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps there are just enough voters in the seven swing states who can be rightly persuaded – as a last resort – that it would be existentially dangerous to deliver the presidency to a 78-year-old whose brain has melted to the consistency of guacamole. This guy should have medical care, not the nuclear codes.
The latest evidence of his cognitive plummet came yesterday during an ostensibly economic address in Detroit. Just as I’ve done several times lately, here and on social media, I wish to share some of his free-form vomitus. Here he was yesterday, verbatim, apparently claiming that companies are taking jobs out of America. That’s how he started off, anyway. (And if you can find this quote anywhere in the mainstream media, congratulations.) Ready? Here we go:
“…All of a sudden you hear that (companies) are leaving Milwaukee or they’re leaving wherever they may be located, it’s very sad to see and it’s simple, I mean you know, this isn’t like Elon with his rocket ships that land within 12 inches on the moon where they wanted to land or he gets the engines back, that’s the first I realized – I thought who the hell did that, I saw engines three or four years ago, these things were coming, no wings no nothing landing on rafts in the middle of the ocean where the circle – boom. Reminded me of the Biden circles he used to have, right? He’d have eight circles and he couldn’t fill them up but then I heard he beat us in the popular vote, I don’t know I don’t know, couldn’t fill up the eight circles, I always loved those circles they were so beautiful, they were so beautiful to look at, in fact the person that did that, and that was the best thing about – the level of that circle was great but they couldn’t get the people, then I heard we lost oh we lost, now we’re never gonna let that happen again we’ve been abused by other countries really been abused…”
Shades of Lewis Carroll’s 1871 poem Jabberwocky:
“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: /All mimsy were the borogoves/ And the mome raths outgrabe.”
Kamala Harris isn’t perfect; she dodges some questions, just like every elected American leader since time immemorial. But the fact that this race is apparently is close is a damning indictment of this country – most notably of the millions who believe that an addled old man in serious cognitive decline is the font of wisdom, and even worse, the millions who will likely take a pass on voting at all.
Trump also said yesterday, “Our biggest threat to democracy is stupid people.” For once, I agree with him.