The Narcissist in Winter
You may have heard that he made a couple of appearances this weekend.
Or maybe you didn’t. You can read the reports, but usually we don’t have to wait for the news to hear what he said. Everybody’s talking about him anyway.
But not Friday night, and not Saturday night, either. Statue garden? Barely a ripple. New race war? Save it for the Analysis columns.
For the first time since he descended the Escalator to Hell, Donald Trump was being ignored.
We first observed this phenomenon, this condition, a couple years ago, how there was no escaping him, no escaping his presence, day in, day out, how smothering it all was.
And we don’t even watch television. Stopped listening to the radio some time back. Haven’t heard him actually speak for more than a sentence or two since the convention. Donald Trump permeates the culture as only a dictator can, inescapably.
He wasn’t ignored for lack of trying this weekend. He didn’t take the holiday off. He was doing his best to grab attention like he always has, as only a sociopathic narcissist can do, and all we heard about was Those Damn Kids setting off private fireworks all over the place.
Donald Trump had given up on Covid, given up on America, and now Americans were giving up on him.
We’ve been seeing the signs for weeks. The faltering polls. The shambolic attempts at grandstanding. The private admissions of failure. Mitch McConnell telling Republicans they need to fend for themselves. Tulsa.
It’s all winding down. Finally.
We’ve been careful about that, careful about our optimism, careful about our hope. Like everyone else, we’re desperate to extrapolate, desperate to take a nugget of information and stretch it into the downfall of tyranny. (Well, this tyranny. The Senate ain’t going anywhere.) But against that is our deep fear of another oh shit at 10:45 on election night, when we learn that everything we know is wrong.
We know where the majority of voting Americans stand, have always stood, but we also know that the Electoral College has nothing to do with the consent of the governed, and that many in power would prefer that some of the governed not express their consent at all. That all remains in play, especially during a pandemic, especially with a Supreme Court majority that would rather see voters risking their lives than spare them that danger.
And yet.
We’re 120 days out from the latest Most Important Election of Our Lives, and dammit, people are ignoring him, consigning him to the dustbin of history in real time. Maybe it’s just the holiday weekend, the incessant pop-pop-pop-pop grabbing everyone’s attention instead, but fuck it, we’ll take hope where we can get it.
He’s irredeemably, mind-numbingly boring. An ignorant fat old man who still thinks trolling twitter’s a thing.
Trouble is, a lot of people have made a lot of money off the trolling. A lot. I mean a lot. Not just Fox but all the TVs, the newspapers and magazines. I’m not blaming them but they sure are part of the spectacle and it’s why I don’t watch any of it. If I want to pick up dog shit I just go outside. I think everybody knows what they think of him. I read some damn place that this year’s undecideds amount to 6% of the electorate. In the year of our Lord 2016 they were 20%. The only thing we have to fear, it seems to me, is voter purges, shutting down of polling places, throwing away ballots, and changing results, you know – the usual.
As an immigrant who can still be puzzled by your funny Yankee ways, I might be a tad over optimistic. And I confess, I did think for a while of pricing properties in the Olde Country but it’s not much better there. Just the level of smug is higher, almost reaches Canadian or New Zealand-like proportions. Plus HM’s government’s been overtaken by a bunch of rabid old-Etonian Nigels sitting in the saloon bars of newly re-opened Hampstead pubs quaffing warm beer and hooting at each other. Say what you will, I’m not yet ready to give up on the country that gave us jazz and the musical theater.
I don’t know what that thing in the picture is and I’m content to leave it that way.
@Benedick: Google says it’s a Cheeto. I’m trusting them on it.
@nojo: Well it’s very disturbing. It could look like other things.
@Benedick:
“If I want to pick up dog shit I just go outside.”
I may be stealing that. Virtual hugs to you & the pugs.
This cannot pass unnoticed or unpunished. If we let this go, we deserve our fate.
@Benedick: Hey, great to hear from you. We’ve missed you!
Hope you’re doing well. (hugs)
Tax returns? Tax Returns.
Is anyone else breathing a sigh of relief that this Supreme Court term has almost concluded?
It looks like they’ve made a very public break with Prezinazi AntiChrist, and hey LGBTQIA anti-discrimination laws nationwide; in any other time, this would be national news for months as the New York Times goes on the Cletus Safari Road Show to publish what every dipshit in a diner thinks about human rights.
It’s like we’ve just avoided an asteroid strike, since it coulda been an historic debacle.
So, yay?
“The battle’s done,
And we kinda won,
So we’ll sound our victory cheer…
Where do we go from here?”
—Buffy 4evah
@¡Andrew!: Not like the relief I’ll sigh if all nine survive until January 20.
I swear to fucking God the only way I know what day of the week it is, is the Trump Administration always engages in total fuckery on Fridays.
I’m sure Susan Collins is very concerned about Drumpf commuting Roger Stone’s sentence. As a public defender friend of mine said, “I had a 14 year old spend more time locked up for stealing a candy bar from a bodega than that asshole spent in jail.”
@SanFranLefty:
As much as I would enjoy seeing that motherfucker go to jail, the fact that he cried hysterically like the cowardly slimy ratfucking brat he is and pull every favor he could to get a get out of jail free makes it still somewhat satisfying.
The reckoning will happen to Roger. Trump’s just delayed it.
Trumpidiot is finally wearing a goddamned mask.
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