Donald Trump should be unable to get anywhere near the workings of government. He’s ridden a wave of schoolyard anger and misguided patriotism long enough.

Why do so many still look to him as a hero? Why are others seemingly afraid of him? Why do the people at Fox News dismiss the concerns of the “liberal” media, treating their coverage as so much melodrama and total over-reaction to what seems about to unfold?

I hope Michael Moore is right. He’s predicting a blue wave on Tuesday, but he’s pretty much the only one thinking that (did you see Bill Maher on Friday?). Unless it’s just an attempt at self-talk, trying to rally folks in the face of what’s at least sounding like a right-wing takeover. Maybe Maher was doing the same thing in a different way. I don’t know.

We will know, hopefully sooner than later, if things will be different on the ground than what we’re hearing from the anchor desks and pundit chairs at MSNBC and elsewhere. Then maybe we’ll get a short break before the inevitable insanity ahead of November 2024.

Learned recently that Ron DeSantis has decided to back away from a run for the White House. Who knows why—maybe because Crist forced the issue of him leaving before his term was up, combined with the reality of pressure from Trump to stay away? Whatever has transpired behind the scenes, the path just got clearer for #45 to try again.

My goodness. This is exactly like watching an accident unfold in front of us, in slow motion, and being unable to do anything about it. This feels very wrong. The January 6 Committee has to know what his intentions are. They have to know the time constraints they are under to wrap up their hearings and investigation, before he announces and officially becomes immune to prosecution.

It’s all really happening, and it’s always felt inevitable.

The miracle will be if another candidate emerges who dares stand up to him and block his path. But since real courage among most Republicans appears to be non-existent, America is in real trouble, and not just on paper.

How would one’s life be different if they didn’t watch or listen to the news every day? Would they be uninformed, or simply relieved of the daily assault on their ears and psyche? Would their blood pressure drop?

People would be uninformed, but only to a certain extent. Unless one tunes into NPR—and they have their own bias, I’m sure—the news one gets is incomplete, somehow. I watch MSNBC, someone else watches Fox. The information is presented with the same intensity and spirit on either network, but it’s different information—maybe the same headline but a totally different take on what that headline means.

Anyhow, the subject matter of late is disturbing, overall. The war in Ukraine continues, with the added threat of “tactical” nuclear weapons use, the price of most everything is not going down, the two political parties that run the show in this country are at odds over how to run the show. Voters are being threatened at the polls and simultaneously courted, bludgeoned, and constantly bombarded with ads that paint candidates as evil and “bad for Pennsylvania… or Arizona… or America.” And Donald Trump still roams the landscape.

It’s enough to make one want to search out a quiet place and check out for a while, let someone else deal with the mess. Well, after you vote.   

I’ve never seen Barack Obama get so animated. He actually raised his voice and sounded angry. He was campaigning in Wisconsin and lambasting Ron Johnson and others who are toeing the stale Republican line.

I can see why certain people detest him. It must be because he’s a confident black man with obvious swagger, and he’s still riding a wave of love and support and a longing for the return of the sanity and gravitas– and humor– that marked his tenure in office. He didn’t know everything, but he at least applied himself, asked good questions, thought things through, surrounded himself with smart people, took things seriously and gave us the feeling that he cared about the country and respected people and was interested in finding solutions to our ills.

The contrasts are striking. In one corner, we have Barack Obama. In the other we have any of a number of impulsive, hate-filled, short-sighted, smartassed human sound bites spewing nonsense and contempt for the institutions that have sustained us, apparently intent on emulating the worst President in our history.

Owning his ignorance. Dubya certainly did that. He out-Reaganed Reagan, on occasion, and he somehow finagled occupancy of the highest office in the land. George W. Bush once ridiculed someone for asking a question that included the word multitasking, sarcastically impressed by such a “big” word.

According to Andy Borowitz, a lack of intellectual curiosity among Republican candidates for POTUS has not hurt them, but has actually been a selling point. Candidates present themselves as being somewhat– or a lot– anti-intellectual, in an attempt at seeming folksy, less wonkish, more normal and somehow relatable. And more trustworthy? I know where Borowitz is heading, I think. He’s saving the “best” till last, the one who’s broken all the molds.

There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you don’t have all the answers, but when you put your ignorance on a pedestal and treat it as a source of pride, it morphs into a tragic deception, an unpardonable excuse and character flaw with real-world consequences.

Certainly even Dubya must know that there’s nothing wrong with being cerebral, with actually giving thought to important things. It’s just that the schtick worked for getting him elected Leader of the Free World. And it continues to work to this day, though Trump himself would never admit to not knowing something. He’s always the smartest guy in the room, a real genius.

The truth is out there, but its competition is fierce. Truth is being given a run for its money by fabricated lies that spread like wildfire. And we have to decide who we’re going to believe. It’s come to that, or maybe it’s always been that way, just made exponentially worse by social media.

To hear what developed after the attack on Paul Pelosi, one can rightly think that truth is a mere commodity up for grabs. If you’re quick and creative and paranoid enough, and have some command of the English language, you can spin your version of truth and disseminate it to the whole world in a matter of minutes. And voila! A counter-narrative that has people questioning the legitimacy of police reports or motives or whodunnit, or whether the incident happened at all.

Maddow tied all this together with what’s unfolding in Brazil, boiling it down to a stark choice before us next Tuesday: maintain free and fair elections or descend into a world that looks like what’s being threatened in Brazil or what unfolded at the Pelosi residence a few days ago.

The far right, or maybe the whole damned Republican party at this point, has no alternative to free and fair elections. “Free” and “fair” lie in the eye of the beholder. What it’s looking like instead is that they’re OK with the threat of all-out physical force and violence perpetrated against those who they brand as monstrous enemies.

It’s dumb, they know it’s dumb, and it looks like it has a chance of working.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Elon Musk buys Twitter and shortly thereafter posts something conspiratorial about the attack on Paul Pelosi. He posted it, then deleted it. But damage done—it was out there. Just testing the waters?

Musk is apparently a free speech absolutist, meaning anything goes? I’m not sure the framers of the Constitution had anything goes in mind when they penned the First Amendment. Don’t we know that, out of a sense of decency and restraint, if nothing else, there are limits to what we can say? Hate speech is OK then? Libel is just fine?

Most of us have a sense for when there’s potential for crossing a line. It’s probably wise to keep an eye on someone who has $44 billion to spend on purchasing a public speech platform.

The true tragedy is that Donald Trump and the sad sack groupies who have their noses firmly buried in his ass have been nothing more than a cruel, sick though consequential joke this whole time.

He’s behaved as if his words and actions don’t matter, have no consequences. He pleads ignorance, tries to distance himself from, yet somehow condone, the bad behavior he instigates. He is a sad sack impostor whose presence has been nothing but a huge distraction. A time suck, a life suck.

It matters not at all that he’s viewed as a mere symptom, as if this gives him an out, an excuse since he’s just a manifestation of more serious illness that was already festering before his arrival. The maddening fact is that he’s still making noise and won’t go away. He’s a poor sport with the emotional maturity of a fifth grader. He uses people, he doesn’t respect them.

He may run for President again, not because he cares about America or feels he has something to offer, but because he’s still sore about losing in 2020. More significantly, it’s a way to avoid prosecution for, among many other things, the insurrection he fomented on January 6, 2021.

He’s always in our face, running from the law, spending a lion’s share of any given day being ugly and annoying, fighting accusations, figuring out ways to avoid responding to a subpoena, finding lawyers who will actually choose to defend him. And he behaves as if it’s all in a day’s work.

His supporters will indignantly ask why their hero seems to be so put upon, so often in the crosshairs of law enforcement. They refuse to acknowledge, or choose to ignore, that he’s brought all this on himself—because of the way he’s decided to live his life: as someone who’s better and smarter than everyone else. Entitled, deceived, and delusional. A legend in his own mind.

Someone who, sadly, is not worth the time and effort we’ve been expending trying to figure him out. There’s nothing there except outsized and debilitating selfishness. What more do we need to know?

A Trump/MTG ticket in 2024? Perfect.

The circle of life. A match made in their version of heaven, with the added bonus that they could end up killing each other.

Two people with loud voices and the gift of empty utterance, and no gifts for the jobs they’d be campaigning for. It makes so much sense.

A two-for-one sale, both in way over their heads. The ultimate mic drop, the intentionally bruised and blemished fruit born of the far right’s in your face strategy.

And they say they don’t believe in evolution. Well, maybe devolution.

Caught a couple minutes of All In recently, and that was enough for me. I don’t need any more reminders of how effective the Republicans have been (at least as this is being reported on MSNBC and elsewhere) at being devious and conniving, specifically in gerrymandering their districts.

Republicans know their stances and platforms don’t resonate with certain demographics, so they boldly rearrange boundaries in an effort to ensure outcomes and, ironically, keep their own minority in power. It must be widespread enough that no one can do anything about it? Is it actually happening as much as we hear it is? I suppose nothing is being done because Democrats over the years have engaged in similar antics?

It’s stunning how focused and intent humans can get when it comes to devising ways to cheat. Some will hail this as simply being resourceful. But of course that’s not what it is. It is an act of desperation and fear. It’s the dark side of proactivity. It’s rigging the system in order to create an advantage and maintain a status quo. It’s muting the voting process for people who have as much of a right to participate and be heard as anyone else, and whose voices will be marginalized and essentially silenced.

And it’s been going on for years. As American as apple pie, apparently.