Under The Influence

How I learned to stop worrying and love Daddy Don’s great big bomb

On January 6, 2021, Carmi was still blanketed in Trump signs. The next morning they were all gone. Where did they go? Why did they disappear so suddenly and thoroughly? I just keep wondering, why you all felt the need to take the signs down on January 7, and seem to have forgotten why.

A third of Americans are functionally illiterate. The percentage of Americans who can read at an eighth grade level is less than 50%. As has been the case for most of human history, these are the ones you can count on to follow a leader, no matter where that takes them.

Liberals can’t understand why people believe the blatant lies Trump tells. The truth is it’s the demographic above he’s reaching out to. The others realize that duping the customer ensures Trump has a quarter of the votes locked up. You all are in the joke. Trump has guaranteed you a pay raise.

I watched Trump onstage with Elon Musk, who started his career working illegally in the US. Musk went right wing and bought his way into Trump’s spotlight for north of $60 million dollars, carving out a chunk of the swamp for himself. Musk’s PAC ran a sweepstakes to get people to sign essentially an oath of support for Trump, in order to glean their personal information, in return for a chance to win a million bucks. Given away every day. How’s getting money out of politics going Donald?

But as we found out today, the winners were decided well in advance. The rest of the people were suckers. That’s how the richest man in the world, and the man who wishes he was, looks at those of you who think they will look out for the little guy.

The problem with Trump is a big chunk of those followers can easily turn into a mob, as we’ve already seen. When that happens Trump either can’t control them, or doesn’t want to. Either prospect is terrifying. After all, the two would be assassins had one thing in common. They were former die hard Trump supporters.

What we’ve torn out of our American experience is trust in our fellow Americans. We don’t disagree now, we demonize. Trump literally demonized Harris, before turning his eye of Sauron on the rest of us who oppose him. Taken literally, we are the enemy, in a fight for this country.

Dehumanization is the last hurdle that lands you in a civl war. There are those among us who have already leapt that hurdle.

Maybe it’s time for a divorce. Except now that it’s the enemy within, it would be like getting a divorce from a Siamese twin.

I realize this and also realize, I’m their fucking target. What the militarized groups admit is it has to be a terrorist war, which means targeting each other. My parents didn’t raise me to keep my mouth shut. And I live in a town where my political beliefs put me in a distinct minority. I see what you all say on Facebook when you talk about Democrats. And I’m pretty sure more than a few of you are a couple bubbles off plumb and well armed.

I don’t think Trump set out to be a petty tyrant. He wanted to be loved, and it didn’t turn out how he expected. So he removed the remaining filters that kept us a civilized country. Tucker Carlson said at a recent rally, to wild applause, “There has to be a point at which Dad comes home, and he’s pissed. He’s not vengeful, he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them, because they’re his children. … And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.” When Trump came on stage it was to cries of “Daddy’s home.”

I imagine I’ll have a recurring nightmare of walking down the street and hearing voices from behind the shrubberies, “hey little girl. It’s time for your bigly spanking.”

Half of American voters want to elect as the leader of the free world, and the custodian of the nuclear codes, a man who called his opponent a prostitute and a demon, extended the description to all his opponents except for the men – we’re all gay, who wants me to dress like a little girl so he can be my spanking daddy and publicly expressed admiration for Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.

Where do I sign up? This sounds like the grade school playground all over again. Near the end, my mom reverted to her childhood as well.

This election brings out the William Butler Yeats in us …

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Is voting for Trump the Christian thing to do?

I was raised to be a Christian, and though organized religion and I have our differences, a lot of what I learned in church stuck. Enough that I have to ask, can you vote for Trump and still call yourself a Christian?

I know we’re not supposed to judge. So here are the facts which Christians are being asked to ignore.

Trump has made his fortune and fame literally building golden idols. You can’t miss his ego. Insult him and he responds with vengeance. His homes and businesses are awash in gold. The Christmas ornaments he sells are gold versions of Trump Properties, or the simple round ones emblazoned with his name in Gold. Is Trump and his love of wealth the new reason for the season?

And let’s face it, he’s made himself the idol he wants us to worship to. It’s not just a new America he envisions, it’s a new Christianity, stripped of the teachings of Jesus, because Trump has very little knowledge of the teachings of the Bible. Though he’s making a profit hawking his own Bibles. Something about money in the temple comes to mind …

Over the past week I’ve actually been listening to Trump and his minions. They’ve painted Harris as a prostitute, a loose woman, they even ran an ad where she was called a … well I can’t say it on Facebook. Starts with a C and typically when you call a woman that to her face it ends in a slap, tears or both. Trump has the strong support of white males, a demographic known for standing up for a woman being disparaged. Where are they now? The ones I see are laughing and cheering when he does it.

What I come away with, is if I talked about any woman around my mother like he talks about Harris, she’d slap my face. Then dad would have taken a crack at me. We’re supposed to honor our mothers and fathers, not make them ashamed of us.

And if you’re going to besmirch either for their sexual past, I’d think that’s on election Trump would win pants down.

Trump is after all, a proud playboy and a convicted sex offender. I know, some of you don’t believe he did to her exactly what he said he does in that video … you know the one. But the standard of law he was convicted under bears a remarkable similarity to ancient Israeli law, including the financial penalty. By Biblical standards, Trump is guilty. In that situation, one should show some remorse. Instead he attacked the woman verbally who he was convicted of attacking sexually. Why exactly do we excuse this one as Christians?

Then there’s this …

1. Trump is a social liberal. He always has been. He dodged the draft in Vietnam, but his own personal Vietnam he says was trying to avoid V.D. in New York’s social scene. He’s an adulterer, so chalk up that violation of the Ten Commandments. You heard the video, which he excused as locker room talk. A couple weeks back he exposed Arnold Palmer’s genitalia to an audience of billions, which is more locker room talk. If a person changes by finding God, it should show in their actions, shouldn’t they?

2. When he stood on the stage with Elon Musk, those two men have had 17 kids with 5 women. True, with Trump the two women were wives (one of whom claimed he sexually assaulted her). The most recent wife wouldn’t be allowed citizenship under Trump’s proposed immigration laws. Musk doesn’t bother with marriage for the mothers of his kids any more.

3. Trump lies incessantly, and without giving thought to the consequences. Even Republicans have said his lies have made recovering from the last two hurricanes more difficult, and put people’s lives in danger. His own people try to excuse it … “you can’t trust what he says. It’s what he means.” I’m sorry, I want a president who I can trust what he says. Let’s see, lying, bearing false witness is one of the Ten Commandments. If he opened his mouth today, odds are he broke that one.

4. Abortion? He appointed Supreme Court Justices who have so far kept him out of prison, and will be instrumental in clearing the way for the government he envisions. And who also overturned Roe v. Wade. That didn’t make abortion illegal, just left it to the states. Which as Trump says, is how it should be. He’s fully aware that when a state passes a measure supporting abortion, which is happening all over the country, it’s further entrenched in law than it was with Roe v Wade. Congress could draft legislation outlawing abortion, but it would likely never pass. And if it did, Trump has already said he’s veto it. He’s no friend to the pro life movement.

5. Project 25 is like the Sears and Roebuck catalog for Christians. Trump has distanced himself from it over and over again. Well before the cock crowed three times. He helped to get it started to get your vote, then ran from it when it ate into his centrist base,

6. I’ve heard people say Trump was ordained by God by sparing his life. Doesn’t that mean God guided the bullets away from the former president and into the bodies of others? Couldn’t he have just made his aim a little high, instead of off to the left?

That doesn’t sound like God to me. That sounds like a bad shot that killed an innocent person. And what do the two people who tried to assassinate Trump have in common? They were both former Trump supporters. Strange things happen when you stir up a hornet’s nest. The Biblical verse for this one would touch I believe on reaping what you sow.

When you literally demonize someone, as the Trump and his surrogates have done to Harris, you open the door to the army of crazies out there who now actually believe she’s the antichrist. He’s intentionally inflicting lethal danger on another person. I was talking to a guy from the neighborhood last week who told me he was in Ridgeway a few weeks back, where they were using photos of Harris for target practice. Are these the people Christians want to align themselves with?

How is that Christian? That’s turning very real barrels on your opponent. And all the time, he’s mocking her. Did Jesus do the mocking, or was it those who were driving him towards Calvary?

He played Christians like he plays anyone who trusts him. He’s the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing you were always warned about. The false prophet we were taught to beware. And if either of the two are the Antichrist, as Trump’s people has plainly stated, it’s not Harris. She’s just the poor unfortunate who found herself in the position to run against Trump. Whoever that turned out to be would have gotten this same treatment.

None of this even touches on his policies, which lack compassion, and he’s said he’d encourage the invasion of weaker countries by Russia, which leads to wholesale slaughter.

On the last Sabbath, to chalk up another commandment. Trump said “For the past nine years we have been fighting against the most sinister and corrupt forces on Earth.” Those forces are people who believe we are to love our neighbors, who turn the other cheek, the meek, the honest … the very foundation of what Christianity is supposed to be. Those people he rails against it the fifty percent of our country who don’t agree with him.

He once had a Vice President who stood with him, who from all appearances, has unshakable faith in his God, and his country. When Pence chose to honor his oath to God to uphold the constitution, and certify the vote, Trump supporters were looking to hang him. When Trump found out his VP’s life was in danger, his response was “so what?”

Trump had no problem turning away from his oath on the Bible to uphold the constitution, and the man who tried to make him see sense. Pence’s life meant nothing to him. You don’t see Pence on the stage this election, for Trump doesn’t want a person’s Christian beliefs stopping him from grabbing the ultimate in Earthly power.

I can’t believe that God has ordained Trump as our next president. But if he loses, I might be convinced the almighty had a hand in that.

What the well-dressed would-be assassin is wearing this season

People keep asking and speculating about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the kid who fired on Trump Saturday. We know he was a smart kid, good at history, quiet, a bit awkward, possibly bullied. I have my own theory, based on his shirt.

It’s a safe assumption he knew he was about to die, knew he would soon be one of the most famous people on the planet. When you’re dressing for that gig, you put some thought into it. So why that shirt?

Demolitia … you can’t quite miss the word militia. It’s sold off a YouTube site called the Demolition Ranch, which has eleven million subscribers. The site is well known at gun fairs, a place where a lot of young people come into contact with the militia movement. Not all militia in this country now are MAGA Republicans, though most are. But you can get so far to the right that Trump becomes as unpopular as Biden.

The site features gun videos, several with titles referring to snipers and assassins … the best guns for the job. The best bullet. This isn’t a site for hunters and homeowners. But you can’t put the blame on that one website. As the owner points out, they leave politics out of it.

Trump’s new running mate places the blame squarely on Biden’s shoulders. He has a valid point, Even Biden said that his statement about putting Trump in the bullseye was a mistake, he shouldn’t have said it. But that saying Trump is an enemy of democracy, and other statements were fair.

�That’s crap Joe. I mean I’m a Biden supporter and if he’s still unfortunately running come November, I’ll vote for him. But we all know, even the shooter knew what Biden meant when he spoke of bullseyes. It was a metaphor. We all also knew that the part about being a threat to democracy, to our country, that’s the dangerous part. Democrats know because we’ve been saying the same thing about Republicans since Trump first ran for office.

A famous question asks “if you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he started his march to madness, is it wrong to do so?” Most of us would say no. So in this kid’s mind, he was acting as a patriot.

As Biden says, Trump has made his intentions, and why he’s a threat to democracy quite clear. It broke my heart when the Democrats starting running on fear instead of ideas. Sure, it worked for Trump, destroy people’s belief in the media, in our institutions, then make us fear each other like we never have before. So only law and order can keep us safe. Because we can’t trust our neighbors.

So you can’t blame the website, you can’t blame Biden and you can’t blame Trump. There is no single cause for what happened. It’s a perfect storm of hatred and fear sweeping our country. What strikes me is all the people saying political violence has no place in America. Whoever says that has no knowledge of our history, or chooses to believe we’ve somehow outgrown it.

I’ve know a few people involved in one way or another with militias over the years. They consider themselves patriots, are in all respects intelligent people. Are mostly good people. But aren’t shy about professing the need to put a bullet between the eyes of a leader who is a threat what they see as American values. “An armed man is a citizen, an unarmed man a subject.” In their eyes, Trump would stir as much hatred as Biden.

Keep in mind, this is not unAmerican. It’s as American as apple pie. We say there is no place for it here, but that belies our nation’s history. That doesn’t mean it’s right, it’s just the way it is.

Crooks was a history student. In class debates, he staked out a hard conservative position and stayed there. He was no liberal by all reports. I’m sure he was familiar with the following letter Thomas Jefferson wrote.

Jefferson could have been speaking of Trump when he wrote “Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves.“

That leads like prophecy. What he wrote next has stirred people to act ever since.

“If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

We call them whack jobs, but keep in mind … in all likelihood, Timothy McVeigh had a higher IQ than you do. He wanted to start a revolution. So did Chuck Manson. Revolution … Even John Lennon sang in the song of the same name, “But when you talk about destruction, Don’t you know that you can count me out, in.”

They shot him too.

So who is to blame? There’s plenty of blame to go around. They’ll call the kid cracked, but perhaps what is crazy is believing either political party at the moment. Judging from how we all seem to fear, and quite honestly hate the other side now, we’re all kind of cracked.

As Mercutio said in Romeo and Juliet, as he died from a rivalry he had no real part of, “a plague on both your houses.”