Goodbye, and good riddance

 Understand this: I'm not a petty person, nor am I particularly vindictive. It takes a lot to earn my hatred, and even more to earn my contempt.

Ultimately, Donald J. Trump got both.

When I say "hatred" or "contempt" I mean exactly that; there are any number of people I've met in my personal life who've earned one or the other due to their behavior towards me or friends and loved ones of mine, and most of them will only be able to get off of my shitlist for the things they've done by fixing the damage they've caused.

Politicians, at least in the United States, are different - they can always be voted out of office if you're in the right jurisdiction, and if you're not they can always be made targets of the derision they deserve in other, perfectly legal ways. It's a normal thing in a democracy to dislike people holding public office that you didn't vote for or ones that ended up a disappointment that you did, and there's no reason to feel guilt at that fact unless that dislike is based on irrational, ridiculous reasons.

The reasons that I hate Trump are hardly irrational or ridiculous. If anything, they're anything but that (see this link in RationalWiki that details a good number of them), and the idea that only one human being sitting in the White House for four years could do so much damage to the country he falsely claims to love so much is horrifying.

Unfortunately, that damage is real. And extensive.

I could go on and on about how his administration's feeble, incompetent actions during the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in a death total of over 400,000 (nearly twice the second worst national total, Brazil's), or the fact that his cult-like standing among his followers led a number of them to join with white supremacists and other armed wackjobs in attacking the assembled Senate and House of Representatives on January 6th in order to violently overturn the counting of electoral college votes. Those are only two of the most recent things he's managed to do to us in four years, and if I listed all the others it'd take hours to read in summary form and days to finish if I went into full detail. So I'll have to be brief and say that he was nothing but trouble since his inauguration and the closest thing to a walking plague in expensive shoes at his worst.

And in roughly an hour, he'll finally, mercifully, be out of office.

As expected, his farewell speech was full of the usual triumphalist, egotistic garbage and was singularly lacking in self-awareness or even a connection to outward reality, and I'll only listen to it if I have to remind myself of why I despise him.

Joe Biden may be able to undo a good deal of the damage Trump caused to the Federal government's ability to function, but it's questionable if he can undo the damage to our already fractious political culture. That latter issue may take years - if not decades - to address, and we can't keep going this way as a nation and survive. And in a way, this may be one of the greatest crimes Trump has committed. National politics in the United States since the 1980s have been increasingly zero-sum and unpleasant, and Trump and his enablers have succeeded in making it exceedingly ugly and even barbaric at times. Just one look at what happened on January 6th will convince you of that fact.

After all that, the nicest thing I can say about Trump being gone is this: "goodbye, and good riddance". He came close to ruining us. Here's hoping he never finds a way to finish what he started.

The aftermath

 I've already made the comment elsewhere that I really need to keep my mouth shut when talking about possible future events; the disaster that was the invasion of the Capitol building by a pro-Trump mob bent on overthrowing the result of the electoral college vote was actually far worse than I could've possibly imagined, and the very real possibility that it could happen again on Inauguration Day fills me with a dread that I shouldn't be feeling in a country that's never previously gone through such a naked coup attempt. I'm under the impression that security will be incredibly tight on January 20th. Indeed, it'd be utterly ridiculous to not have airtight security after what happened on the 6th. But what if the neo-fascists (and make no mistake - that's precisely what they are) try it again?

One of the more reassuring sets of facts about what happened on the 6th is that a good deal of the energy that Trump created by stoking anger in his followers in Washington has been dissipated; their figurehead has been permanently stripped of his public megaphone on Twitter and is rightly facing the possiblity of removal under the 25th Amendment or a second impeachment. In addition, a number of the new-generation Blackshirts responsible for the Capitol building riot have been arrested and will eventually be facing a number of felony charges. Even so, the possibility that any number of co-conspirators are still at large and active is not a happy one. Especially considering that the current sitting President is a completely treacherous bastard: witness how he allegedly wanted to use the National Guard.

All of this is a highly mixed bag, and it's exceedingly grim in parts. But this country has survived far worse, and someone who was responsible for making that survival possible during another crisis needs to be quoted here to reassure anyone that we can, and most probably will, come out of the other end of this intact:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, March 1933

A constitutional game of chicken

Understand this before you read any further: I am not in any way advocating a civil war. Not even close to that. Civil wars are invariably bloody, visceral descents into hell for any country that fights them, and this was true for us in 1861 just as much as it was in other eras for England, Ireland, Russia, Lebanon or the Balkans. You don't want to go there. Ever.

That being said...

The degree of unconstitutional fuckery currently being advocated by certain halfwits in Congress such as Louie Gohmert, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz in order to support the mindless power fantasies of their thoroughly delusional caudillo seem guaranteed to push us in that direction, even if the electoral college vote is upheld tomorrow. Because there will be any number of Trump cultists (and forget about denying that it's a cult, since there's plenty of evidence affirming that fact) willing to do any number of stupid things if our Orange Caligula is turned out of office on January 20th.

In my opinion, this is the closest we've come to Fort Sumter in 1861 since Fort Sumter itself.

And if that's the case, you'd better hope that things proceed as normal on January 6th.

Because if they don't, we're all in deep trouble.

Told you

 I don't normally refer back to up the accuracy of my own posts after the fact, but it seems like Orange Caligula's never-ending effort to discover nonexistent election fraud based on false claims and (more recently) abuse the power of the Presidential pardon to give as many of his political cronies an undeserved Christmas present proves my point way too well about his malign nature. And all this came after he lost.

At this point, we've got 27 more days of this.

Here's hoping someone remembers to inventory the silverware after he leaves the White House.

The case against Donald J. Trump

This is going to look like preaching to the choir, since many of you have already voted and I'm fully aware of who you probably voted for, but...

Tomorrow is election day. And the importance of this particular election can't be understated. It may be one of the most important election for President other than 1860, 1932 or 1968, and that's not hyperbole - not in the least.

Because Donald Trump has to go. It's just that obvious.

I could spend hours compiling all of the reasons why he needs to be driven out of office by January 20th, 2021 (there are articles in RationalWiki and the Encyclopedia of American Loons that have compiled a huge chunk of them, so look for those instead), but there's a simple set of facts that make it glaringly obvious:

There's the narcissism. The deranged Tweets that will end up in the historical record whether he likes it or not. The self-dealing. The filling of his cabinet with fellow would-be oligarchs, incompetents and fellow self-dealers. His need to browbeat the few competent ones into resigning when they're no longer sycophantic enough for his liking. His abject refusal to release his tax returns when every other Presidential candidate has been doing it for decades. The repeated accusations by women he's encountered of sexual harassment and outright sexual assault. The fact his family are mouthpieces for his knuckle-dragging brand of politics and simultaneously in on his grift. The fact that that grift is only further enhanced by his refusal to let go of his business holdings. The fact that he's used his position as President to enhance the monetary gain of those business holdings. His inability to handle criticism, hard questions from the press or any status other than someone never to be questioned, ever. His butchering of environmental regulations, national parks and wild spaces in the name of profit. His abject slavishness to Vladimir Putin. His cozying up to the likes of Kim Jong-un. His use of the race card and the xenophobe card every time he needs or wants to. His cult of personality among people who'll ultimately be humiliated when they finally realize what they've been worshipping. And on and on and on.

Donald J. Trump, in short, is not worthy to be President. He never has been and he never will be. And he doesn't deserve your vote, my vote or anyone else's.

People will still be foolish enough to give it, but that's because he's used his nascent personality cult to whip people into a state of fear of anyone or anything different from them. Never mind the fact that he's done everything he can to prove that he's a sociopath, a narcissist or both: there's always been plenty of room in Anerican politics for candidates who appeal to racists and bigots stretching all the way back to the Anti-Masonic and Know-Nothing parties, and there will be in the future. But no one has combined that with a hostility to - or an outright ignorance of - the workings of democracy and the Constitution more than Trump has, and that's one of the reasons that he's so dangerous. He wants to stay in power in order to avoid the consequences of his corruption, and he's practically willing to do anything to accomplish it. Which is precisely why he needs to be defeated.

So if you haven't voted yet, do yourself a favor and vote him out of office.

Because I don't want to end up in a refugee camp for exiled Americans somewhere outside of Auckland or Winnipeg four years from now saying "I told you so!" because they didn't vote.

And that's not hyperbole, either.

Grifters gonna grift, infinitely

 You don't have to go any further than the latest New York Times' article on how Donald Trump makes money off of VIP access to his businesses and his Presidency to see how well the grift works:

Federal tax-return data for Mr. Trump and his business empire, which was disclosed by The New York Times last month, showed that even as he leveraged his image as a successful businessman to win the presidency, large swaths of his real estate holdings were under financial stress, racking up losses over the preceding decades.

But once Mr. Trump was in the White House, his family business discovered a lucrative new revenue stream: people who wanted something from the president. An investigation by The Times found over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments that patronized Mr. Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration. Nearly a quarter of those patrons have not been previously reported.

With all of that money, prestige and political power at stake, is at any wonder why he's also been openly chivying his Attorney General to indict political opponents lately?

After all, oligarchic regimes in Central America have been doing this sort of thing for decades. Not just years. Decades. Which is why you should disbelieve any statement by Trump that his role model is any American businessman he's liable to invoke, including himself. What his real goal is something far closer to a less bloody version of Guatemala than anything else.

Restating the obvious

 Not that anyone should be surprised at this by now, but over the last few days you have a real choice of things to know about Donald J. Trump: that he's probably a massive business and tax fraud, and that he's definitely giving aid and comfort (and probably veiled orders) to white supremacist groups.

Just keep all of that in mind if things get especially hairy in the run-up to November 3rd.

Looking for a flashlight at the abyss

 The title isn't intended to be overdramatic. Honest. But the feeling I've been having lately is that we're all standing near a very deep pit and while there may be a bridge there, it's not all that visible. Matter of fact, the fog in this place is quite thick, which is not only a warning to watch your step but make damn sure that the bridge is still there as well.

Consider this: in September 2020, we currently have a President who is anything but an ideal leader for anything - including leader of a squad of garbage pickers doing community service for drunk driving. There's tons of news articles and Tweets (most of which were authored by him) that prove this point. He's one of the people who put that metaphorical hole in the ground, along with any number of domestic and international political enablers. The stakes for the upcoming general election are extremely high, and the possible fallout has been theorized about in things ranging from the Transition Integrity Project's wargaming of a contested election to Mike Selinker's darker four scenarios for a post-election civil war. Things are precisely that dangerous right now; the situation literally makes the legal fallout from the 2000 Presidential election seem like a contentious PTA meeting in comparison.

My own opinion is that things might go in a direction where we're not all screwed in the end. Notice the key word there: "might". There's no guarantee that a sitting President who's been exceedingly reluctant to guarantee a peaceful transition if he loses will actually accede to leaving voluntarily at noon on January 20th, 2021. But the real problem is that period between November 4th and January 19th. Just about anything can happen - much of it bad. I'm hoping it doesn't. But hope is just that - a best of all possible worlds conclusion to this mess we're in. It may happen. Then again, it may not. Again, the stakes are just that high.

And then there's me as the individual, as opposed to me as a blogger. If things go especially pear-shaped in the US, it wouldn't surprise me at all - not in this era, and not under an increasingly dysfunctional Federal government. I hope it won't. But I'm in my 50s and I fully realize that my life expectancy would be on the downside in any major civil conflict that would go off because of a contested election result. There's been a lot of things that haven't worked out in my life, but something like this would dwarf them all. I was in preschool and elementary school during Vietnam. I saw 9/11 on the TV like practically everyone else, as well as Afganistan and Iraq. But all of those happened overseas, not in Chicago, Washington or New York. If things get that bad, all of the previous wars and terrorist attacks would be like nothing in comparison. The bloodletting could be precisely that awful because it would be in American streets instead of Kabul, Baghdad and Mosul. And in a case like that, a lot of the people reading this right now might not be around to survive it.

...unless I'm wrong, of course.

I'm hoping I am. But I've never felt this insecure about the possible results of an election in my life, and although my money's on sanity winning out in this situation I can't guarantee it.

So here's hoping I'm wrong for a change. Because that metaphorical hole in the ground might not have a bottom.

Now reading

 Chronopolis and Other Stories by J.G. Ballard, which is a restart from January 1st. The reason? I've been remiss in my reading habits (the last novel I finished was in July 2019), and real life has been so bizarre and even vicious over the intervening eitght months that I lost the urge to read anything except non-fiction, and usually online. So it was time for a change

In Memoriam: Gale Sayers, 1943-2020

 The nickname "Kansas Comet" was entirely deserved.

A warning

 For those of you who scoff at the idea of getting the hell out of the country if Trump gets re-elected, let's put it like this:

You can wait until the November election is over and done with. At the first sign of the Orange Duce not accepting a Biden win or declaring some sort of national emergency or martial law to nullify a loss, you better be prepared for the worst. I don't believe for a minute that the lunatic in the White House will ever accept any sort of voluntary departure from the oval office as legitimate. He can leave on a stretcher with a blanket over his face after Tweeting himself into a stroke at 5 in the morning, or he can leave at the business end of several guns held by Federal agents next January. He's already made ridiculous noises about "negotiating" a third term as if all of this was just some business scam he's participating in, and he probably believes it.

So be prepared. The worst hasn't happened yet, and I'm doing my best to not be alarmist, but when your house is on fire you don't just sit there and let it burn. You call the fire department, or try to put it out. And we may be at exactly the point in time where we're all starting to smell smoke. I sure as hell hope we're not, but I'm not sure of much of anything any more. And I wish I was.