As a teenager, when someone made nasty comments about my hair/clothes/ general appearance, mother used to say, “You look as good as she does.” That was a loaded response depending on who my aggressor was. If they were attractive, I felt better. If they were a bit lacking in physical attributes, not so much.
Now many dog years past teenage angst, I don’t care what other people think about my appearance. However, being quarantined presented an opportunity for a bit of self-awareness; I would even go as far to say overdue inventory.
Since Reconstruction ended a century and a half ago, the white power structure, particularly in the South but in other states as well, have used various mechanisms to try and suppress black and minority voting. Initially, those in power were conservative white Democrats, but over the last half century they have been supplanted by conservative white Republicans. Starting with poll taxes and threats to black voters by the KKK, it has morphed into gerrymandering, voter ID laws, purging of voter rolls of minority citizens and making voting more difficult for blacks. This was achieved by decreasing the number of polling places in black neighborhoods and cutting the number of hours polling places were open. And any slight deviation from the registration forms and the voter’s ID would immediately disqualify that voter.
In this era of the Corona virus, where people are afraid of contact with strangers, one would have thought that attempts to make the voting process easier and faster, and remotely when possible, would have been pushed by politicians. Instead, President Trump and the Republicans have been trying to make voting as difficult as they can.
From slurring words to appearing confused about where to walk to his challenge in lifting glasses and bottles of water, his health is once again an issue (leaving aside his obesity and heart disease).
Now, according to reports in the Washington Post, Trump is increasingly preoccupied with demonstrating his mental and physical well-being, especially after the West Point graduation ceremony earlier this month. It’s important to him to be able to establish a false contrast with former VP Joe Biden, whom his campaign intended to paint as feeble:
“In recent weeks, Trump has fixated on Biden’s physical and mental acuity, aides said, casting about for ways to attack his Democratic rival and stewing over media coverage that he believes makes him look weak or feeble.
Remember that Trump ad showing my President marching to his Church’n’Bible photo op?
The one complete with dramatic, triumphant music?
The one they took down when they discovered voters didn’t like it?
Small, Subdued Attendance at Trump Tulsa Gathering
From Green Eagle:
And here is something that I have not seen anybody commenting on, which was noticed first by my son: The audience, predicted to be a cheering, wild mob, looked grim faced in practically every crowd cutaway. These people, the most fanatic Trump supporters, who risked their lives to be there, were utterly disengaged from Trump’s stale, two hour rant. There was hardly a smile in the place, and even Trump’s best lines got hardly more than a couple of polite claps.
If you spend any time at all interacting with right-wing fantasyland (and it’s inescapable these days, since right-wing fantasyland constantly impinges on reality), then you’ve certainly heard plenty about the “deep state”. The deep state is, the wingers claim, a well organized and malevolent shadow government composed of (liberal) bureaucrats, (Democratic) politicians and (leftist) media figures intent on using underhanded means to bring down the Forty-Fifth White House Occupant, destroy America and establish Marxist/ Muslim rule. Not necessarily in that order.
One of the more spittle-flecked among them, Dan Bongino (all you need know about him is that he had a cozy niche on the mercifully defunct NRATV) is very typical and by no means unique. Do a Google search for “Dan Bongino deep state” and just see how many hits you get of his ramblings and rantings on the subject. At one point he sums up the deep state delusions of the tin hat crowd thus:
They want a scalp, and believe me when I tell you the deep state is going to get one.
To be fair, there are a few on the right who are rather more sane and real — although some of them may be… well, dead. The late Charles Krauthammer, who was a staunch Republican until the end and was even a frequent contributor to the ever-entertaining National Review, was nonetheless quite skeptical about this particular right-wing bogeyman:
I don’t believe in the tooth fairy, the Knights Templar, Bilderberg, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a vast right wing conspiracy, or, for that matter, a vast left wing conspiracy. Are there in the U.S. government individual bureaucrats that are Democratic holdovers that would love nothing more than to damage [45]? Yeah, of course there are. Is there a concealed web of conspirators, malevolent permanent hidden shadow government? Rubbish. And I would add that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone without the help of Ted Cruz’s father.
But this attitude is quite uncommon among GOP loyalists.
US Attorney Geoffrey Berman Outlines Conspiracy Involving Giuliani Associates
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
Comparisons to the original “Saturday Night Massacre” for anything happening in TrumpWorld already seem super-cheesy and done-to-death. I mean, what about Sally Yates, or Jim Comey, or maybe Andrew McCabe? Peter Strzok? Jeff Sessions? (And it sure looked like the end of the Mueller Report and Mueller’s own exeunt was stage-directed). All of these IG’s, lately? Basically, the one thing we can count on for sure about the Trump Administration is that it’s always Celebrity Apprentice decision time, and if you are doing some law enforcing (or even allowing some law enforcement or maybe thinking about it) that is inconvenient to Trump–you’re fired!
