As a former Humanities teacher, I’m vaguely concerned about what the history books will say about the American election of 2024. Perhaps I shouldn’t be because the idiocracy that just prevailed won’t be breeding readers. Famously uneducated, steeped in stupidity, indoctrinated into the cult of orange jesus, the heathen imbeciles who voted for Trump have missed glaring monstrosities of uncommon nonsense: megalomania, corruption, fraud, sleaze, etc., etc…
Of course, libraries of words have already been spilled over this folly, and will for years to come. Certainly, I have no particular insight, and hope that some strange paradoxical good will eventually come from swinging pendulums, swords, or sensibilities. Unlike my brethren, I think the Donald is shrewd, even brilliant in his audacity. It is his voters, especially those who claim to be Christian, that I disdain. Yet, based on Hanlon’s Razor, I’ll quote the real Jesus: “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Except, they did! The lies, the hatred, the bombast, the misogyny, the slander, the hypocrisy, the felony convictions, the moral bankruptcy, the obvious sociopathic behavior were well known and should have precluded serious consideration. Yet, the brainwashing by Fox and the deplorables of rightwing radio – and pulpits? – was complete. To my mind, the perpetrators of the January 6th insurrection should have been executed for treason, but they’re about to be exonerated as heroes. Last time, it was a fluke. This time it could be disastrous – or not?
To be fair, Merrick Garland should not have been Attorney General. Partly because he should have replaced Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court as appointed by Obama, but mostly because he failed to prosecute Trump for the January 6th insurrection based on the 14th Amendment, Section 3. To be further fair, the woke politics of the left has become ridiculous. Poor old Joe stayed too long at the fair, and Kamala, though potentially awesome, had too much going against her. Mistakes were made.
While systems might need the coming disruption, and all kinds of reckonings might be good, the desperate masses may come to regret their roosts when the plucked chickens come home to vote. Deportations may cause shortages, tariffs may cause even higher inflation, more tax cuts for the rich may cause the poor to be poorer, and the chaos of pomposity politics may cause our fragile democracy to disintegrate? And climate change is gonna be a-comin’ faster than ever! Or, I could be wrong…?
In conclusion, I’ll leave some links, that I hope will not be purged by the new reich, and that I hope may be considered by those writers of history books, or programmers of neuralinks, or sympathetic bots bamboozled by the lesser Gods who created them. This is only a sampling. There’s so much more…
- NYT Opinion piece from people who know Trump’s character: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/26/opinion/donald-trump-personality-history.html
- NYT article from people who were Trump’s advisers: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/30/us/politics/trump-administration-criticism.html
- Atlantic article on unthinkable moments of Trump’s first presidency: https://www.theatlantic.com/unthinkable/
- Atlantic article on the legal cases against Trump: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/donald-trump-legal-cases-charges/675531
- Wikipedia list – Trump administration controversies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Trump_administration_controversies
- Trump’s timeline of hate: https://www.hrc.org/resources/trumps-timeline-of-hate
- 15 reasons to not like Trump: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article244460337.html
- 30 reasons to oppose Trump: https://www.thestate.com/opinion/article243771942.html
- 50 reasons why Trump is bad for workers: https://www.epi.org/publication/50-reasons/
- Jimmy Kimmel’s last ditch appeal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy0zq8YzY9w
- Stephen Colbert’s concession monologue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNX5OPkrfZk
- VP Mike Pence on Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s6agDUSgdw
- Robert De Niro on Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55fJ0FgPSQk
- Republican officials on Trump: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_APYcvqr_Gw
- Former Trump voters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahBKWQssQ5o, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_fYrykccPA