Monday, November 9, 2020

Beast is buried, but keep an eye on its grave

"Enrag'd Monster" by John Hamilton Mortimer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)


     Tap the average Democrat on the shoulder in 2019 and ask who they’d like to see elected president in 2020, you would not find a majority for Joe Biden.
     Not when there were exciting young candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang, beloved ideological warhorses like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. I liked Kamala Harris, for her sparkling fierceness.
     Biden was a relic and a sideman, the guffawing Ed McMahon to Barack Obama’s Johnny Carson. Plus, at 78 by Inauguration Day, he would be the oldest man to assume the presidency, a full eight years older than Trump, four years his junior, was when he became president four years ago.
     Look forward, not back. Looking backward is the Republicans’ game plan. They don’t want a president, they want a time machine.
     Biden cleaned up well. The Democrats ran a tight, disciplined campaign. They buried their divisions in the face of overwhelming danger — thank you Bernie Bros., a grateful party salutes you! — the way the squabbling nations of earth unite to battle an invader from outer space in science fiction movies.
     My guess is the joy that radiated across the country this weekend was not so much exultation that Joe Biden will lead the country as relief that Donald Trump won’t.

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10 comments:

  1. "Bigotry, remember, is just fear rampant." Nailed it. Excellent summation overall. For better or worse, we know our neighbors perhaps better than ever, and they are a stubborn bunch. Indeed, I believe Trump will manage to find the worst way to go (though he will go) and he and his supporters will never "concede." Trump will be more free to be their Fearless Leader, which is all I think he really wanted to be, at least at first. He'll barely miss a beat. And we'll have to live with that. But as you noted yesterday, we owe a great debt to the thousands of committed civil servants who simply did their duty managing the voting and carefully counting the votes. That's about as true a picture of healthy democracy as we can get.

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  2. No one was looking to Andrew Yang last year & no one will be looking to him in the future.
    We just had an inexperienced fool as president!
    If Yang wants to get somewhere, then he needs to run for a city council & learn government from the inside & not just say "math" all day long!

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  3. Your last sentence presumes a fact not in evidence: that Trumpism is currently 6 feet under.

    He's still President. His 70 million voters haven't gone anywhere. They're abetted by powerful Republican senators who still evidently believe (probably correctly) that they can't afford to piss those voters off. Folks should keep an eye on lots of things until the valid results of this election are certified by the electors.

    Nice to give a shout-out to the Bernie Bros, but this grateful voter is much, much more appreciative of the African-Americans and other minority segments of the melting pot who have been the main factor keeping this country from being even worse off than it is.

    You're certainly right about the lucky part, though. Imagine somebody just as despotic, just as harmful, but not quite so remarkably incompetent and who had the discipline to not constantly say the quiet parts out loud.

    On the upside, not surprisingly, Dolt 45's "legal team" makes Dewey, Cheatem and Howe look like Clarence Darrow. Rudy Giuliani, speaking from the hallowed ground of the parking lot near the dildo shop Saturday: "Do you think we're stupid? Do you think we're fools?" Ooh... I know the answers to those timely questions!

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  4. So very true.
    Trump’s remains will be with us for a long time, I’m afraid, but for now, we can start to purge him from our constant thoughts and nightmares.
    “Lock him up” in a far removed holding place, and hide the the key.

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  5. I wish I knew where this country is going. It's been careening down the road, just barely in control, always just one wrong move from a catastrophic crash. There's a steady hand on the wheel right now, but he's driving from the back seat and trying not to inflame the crazed driver. There's still a chance that Donald Trump will do something so off the wall, so crazy and senseless that Biden will not be able to fix it, no matter how he tries, even with the help of the legislature and the judiciary, who may, who probably, won't help. And it will be left to our grandchildren or great grandchildren to sort it out: "It was Trump's fault." "No, it was those damned socialist democrats who ruined the country." And on and on, forever and forever.

    john

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    1. You may be right, john, but in my mind the beast will finally start to deflate after awhile.

      Because he has no courage.

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  6. I hope we don’t have to wait too long before we can see Rudy in the freak show by the circus.

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  7. The relief we've experienced is an illusion. Herr Drumpf's minions are spewing big lies about election fraud while filing feeble lawsuits. Lindsay Graham talked about replacing Electors early on. Pennsylvania's Republican watchdog has been threatened with a "Second Amendment solution". Firing the Secretary of Defense is retribution, or part of a nefarious plan? GSA officials, are refusing to approve transition of power protocols. As each new tactic is revealed without accelerated response from rational Republicans and Bidens team, Drumpf will be more emboldened to continue his stated belief, that his loss could only be a nefarious plot to steal the White House from him. Weak and delayed response could mean a change of venue for Giuliani from a back alley in Philly to a victory celebration on the Supreme Court steps. Whatever relief we feel could turn into the nightmare from "Carrie", where the title character reaches from her grave to grab her tormentors. We are in a dangerous territory, unlike anything in the life of the country. This is serious shit and assuming that it will just work out in the end is foolish. When Ben Franklin told the crowd outside Independence Hall that their Government was a republic, if they could keep it, he was talking about a time like this. A wise man, Franklin. Another wise man once said, "It ain't over till it's over"

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  8. A reminder. When civil rights workers were arrested in Mississippi in 1964, the police detained them for a while, charged one of them with a traffic offense, then let them go. We can't know their thoughts while driving away, was fear or relief uppermost in their minds? We do know that it was no freedom ride, any hopes they had were dashed by the police and good citizens of Philadelphia, Mississippi. The offspring of that malignant society are now members of the Republican Party. We should keep this example item Number One until Joe Biden is sworn in.

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  9. The spontaneous nationwide demonstrations of relief, delight, and joy on Saturday made me think of the ones that broke out in May of 1945, upon the newsflashes that Fascism had been been defeated after five years of war in Europe. But there were still months...three-plus months... of war against Japan. Thousands of Americans were yet to die on Okinawa. There were still nukes to be dropped.

    So we may allow ourselves a brief moment of celebration, but we still have another war to fight, and to win. The Plague is killing a thousand Americans a day. Half the country is pissed off at the outcome of this election. Trump may be departing, but Trumpism, which is really just Fascism Lite, is not going away. And Orange Julius himself will still have the keys to the bus, for another ten nervous weeks. He could still drive it over the cliff--and into the abyss.

    Handsome Joe is facing a situation unlike few other presidents in our long history. Not only akin to Lincoln in 1860 and FDR in 1932. It's also 1918 and 1968 all over again. All that on his plate, all at the same time. For Trump, it's just 1974, when Nixon went away. People partied hearty for that, too. I know I did.

    But Trump may yet become another Lost Cause. Meet the new Confederates, same as the old Confederates. Will we have to whup them again, in a rematch? Our long national nightmare may not yet be over...it could still morph into some other kind of nightmare. One that we never saw coming, just like the Plague...and like Trump.

    Time for the Joe Good Guys to lawyer up and find a few good shrinks. It's a lot harder to lead an insurgency from a padded jail cell. But for now...it's Happy Days. These days are ours. Enjoy them while you can. Gonna be a long, dark, deadly winter. There's still a war on.

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