John Rachal's Blog

(The addressee’s name has been changed and the text slightly revised)

Dear, dear Vicki, 

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful and compassionate words—the very qualities that I have always found to define you. And sure, there is a feeling of disappointment here. But it is not a mere political disappointment like it was for Bush’s Electoral College victory and re-election or as it would have been for a McCain or Romney victory—all three honorable men who did not in any way threaten the very pillars upon which the nation stands. I do not wish to re-litigate any of this with you, and of course my wish is that any reply from you will not do so either; but against all my better judgment, I reluctantly enter the arena with you one last time and will then be silent. 

It is true that I am more politically engaged than I was in my young adulthood or even fifteen years ago. And it is certainly true that a draft-dodger Commander-in-Chief having the temerity to call my father a “sucker” for choosing a career military life in the United States Marine Corps is hardly endearing to me. Nor is calling men of high integrity like John McCain and all service men and women who died in the line of duty “losers” any more so. President-elect Trump’s little caper at Arlington National Cemetery this year, just a month or two after I took my son, daughter, and grandson to visit my father’s grave there and see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, was beyond repugnant. 

But please do not infer that my fierce opposition to this man is merely personal. I will not offer a long bill of particulars, but since I am this far in, I will offer a brief few. First I would note that many of his first term’s inner circle including Milley, Mattis, Kelley (all four star generals), McMaster (three-star), Bolton, Barr, Tillerson, Esper, and even Pence have publicly warned of some variation of Trump’s unfitness for office. I know of no precedent for this almost unified opposition from a president’s former high-level staffers, and their warnings should be heeded. He has made clear that he would abandon a democratic ally to fend for itself in its fight for survival against a man he admires, Vladimir Putin. Notably during his debate with Harris, Trump would not answer the direct question from David Muir of whether he even wanted Ukraine to win its war with the same country (though then called the USSR) that the Republican Party once rightly regarded as our philosophical if not wartime enemy—what Ronald Reagan called an “evil empire.” In fact, he lamented the deaths of Russian soldiers, but did not mention the deaths of Ukrainian civilians. 

Character was once a foundational principle for the GOP, and for that reason among others many conservatives could not support the Republican candidate this year. Some, like Liz Cheney and former Republican presidential speechwriters David Frum and Peter Wehner, consider Trump an enemy of conservatism itself. McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt called Trump “the most dangerous American who has ever lived.” Even his vice-president-elect J. D. Vance, in the days before he sold his soul, called him “cultural heroin.” In response to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, The Southern Baptist Convention in 1998 issued a “Resolution on the Moral Character of Public Officials” in which it “urge[d] all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.” Certainly Southern Baptists do not reflect the views of all conservatives, and today’s SBC apparently would not reflect, or at least not state publicly, such a view now. But I hope that even liberals could embrace the SBC’s 1998 sentiment. And if the Resolution were true then, it is even more so now given what we know about Trump. I borrow the quote from Wehner, who wrote a fascinating article which portrayed Trump as an enemy not of liberalism (though presumably that too) but of conservatism. For him, Trumpism is antithetical to conservatism, an abandonment of—indeed an attack on—its fundamental principles. I do wish Fox News could have aired conservatives like him who could make a case against Trump from the conservative side.

Finally I must state clearly that my vote was not just against Trump and Trumpism. It was an enthusiastic vote for a woman who I think is strong, ethical, patriotic, honest, competent, and absolutely supportive of traditional American values. For me not to affirm that would be to suggest that I think that she is merely the lesser of two evils. Not at all. In fact I believe she would have been a very good president, though I might have disagreed with her on this or that policy. But I absolutely know, in the approximate words of conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg speaking of Nikki Haley as compared to Trump, “at least I would still be able to recognize my country at the end of her term.” 

Again, it was not my better judgment to re-litigate any of this with you. A “Thank you, Vicki” should have been my reply. But the devil gets ahold of me every now and then and this is the result. The election is done, over, and you (and Bill) and I (and Val) will no doubt agree to disagree and move on. And again, your thoughtfulness in offering a word of consolation to the losing team is appreciated and wonderfully characteristic of Vicki Smith. 

John

The current dead heat—at least within the margin of error—between Trump and Harris three weeks before election day continues to amaze me: how half of America wants this man to be president—again—is simply shocking. I totally agree with a statement I have seen only once but deserves far wider attention. Roughly, it goes like this: “If you’ve ever wondered what beliefs you might have had or stance you might have taken as a German citizen during Hitler’s rise in Germany in the 30s, just ask yourself what beliefs about American politics you have now, and what political stance you have taken, and that will be your answer.” No doubt that comparison offends Trump supporters—well, at least all those except the neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and all their ilk. But I think the statement is true, a valid comparison. Trump is fascistic, a would-be dictator, an unambiguous threat to democracy even by his own words. But still half the country wants him back. For some he is the Messiah; for others (mainly Republican politicians) he is the popular wave they ride either because they adore him or because they fear his bullying and the possible end of their political careers; for still others he is the plutocrat who will ensure further tax breaks, especially for the top ten percent; and for the masses he is the deified strongman who will install one-party, one-religion rule, eliminate their grievances and fears, and destroy all the conjured enemies within, namely the entire Democratic party along with most of those who are not what those ‘30s-era Germans called “Aryan.”

These Faustian bargains, like all Faustian bargains, have a cost, usually promising some grand and rarefied gift in exchange for one’s morality, character, or soul. In exchange for a Trump victory, the articles of the contract required of the Trump voter include:

An embrace of obvious, continuous, and egregious lying as a new norm, as a poisoned way of life in American politics

An acceptance of a level of public vulgarity never previously seen by a presidential candidate

A willingness to turn the country over to a narcissistic would-be dictator willing to “suspend” the Constitution whenever it advantages him to do so

An acceptance of Vladimir Putin’s view of the world, including the killing of domestic opponents

Acquiescence to a foreign dictator invading a neighboring democratic country in Europe and claiming it as his own, coupled with disinterest in the resulting suffering and deaths of tens of thousands of innocent victims

Satisfaction with the U. S. military hunting American citizens who Trump considers enemies

Satisfaction with the U. S. military being used to shoot peacefully protesting American citizens “in the legs”

A willingness to have internment camps set up in the U. S. for American citizens Trump considers “enemies of the people” (a Stalin phrase)

Satisfaction with Trump’s desire to revoke the licenses of media outlets such as CBS and ABC for running stories offensive to him, directly opposing the first amendment

An embrace of a con man who, while running for president, is peddling golden shoes, a Trump $100,000 watch, and, shamelessly, Trump Bibles

An endorsement of Trump’s dangling the possibility of having members of the military he doesn’t like hanged for treason

A willingness to pay a family average of $2600 per year in the form of increased prices on foreign imports due to putting high tariffs on those foreign imports—imports which constitute the vast majority of, for example, non-food Wal-Mart products

A willingness to add another 7.5 trillion dollars or possibly even 15.5 trillion to the national debt through 2035—after having watched Trump increase the debt from 20 trillion to 28 trillion in his four-year term despite claiming in his first run for office that he would eliminate the debt over eight years

An embrace of a man so ignorant of basic science that he recommended injecting bleach to fight covid

Comfort with U. S. military personnel being referred to as “suckers” and “losers”—the latter term including those who died in the line of duty

An embrace of the use of violence to steal elections (as long as those doing the stealing are on your side)

Being comfortable with denigrating all immigrants, including legal immigrants, as criminals, typically calling them rapists and murderers, despite the fact that two of his wives have been immigrants

Acceptance of a president with no discernible religious or moral values calling himself and called by others as God’s “chosen one”

Acceptance of a president who exploits the religious values of his base for his own political ends

For Christians, a willingness to put Trump and his nihilism above everything we know about the values of Jesus

Being comfortable with having the first convicted criminal as president, a man determined by one jury to have committed sexual assault and another to have committed 34 felonies to hide a sexual encounter

Being comfortable with a president charged with having stolen various national security documents and with a Supreme Court effectively delaying his trial—and if he wins re-election, being satisfied with allowing the charges and two separate trials to disappear

Satisfaction with a president who has been called “dangerous” and “unfit for office” (and worse) by at least half a dozen of his own former high-ranking inner circle, at least two of whom have called him a fascist

Acceptance of a president who has used the Bible and Arlington National Cemetery as political props

Comfort with a president so crude, dishonest, ignorant, and conceited that if you worked with such a person at your place of employment you would despise him and possibly report him to security

Satisfaction with a mercurial president, one seemingly incapable of rising above his emotions and so lacking in rational thought and judgment having the nuclear codes at his fingertips

Being OK with the Oval Office’s only known draft dodger (by paying a doctor to say he had bone spurs) again being president and Commander-in-Chief

Satisfaction with a professed skeptic of the world’s greatest military alliance and defender of democracy, NATO, being Commander-in-Chief

Being comfortable with a president who could only name authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary as a European leader who liked or respected him

Being comfortable with a president who instigated an attempted violent coup against the United States after losing the last election

Agreement with a president claiming that anytime or anything he loses—election or trial—is by definition “rigged,” thus turning the nation into a non-democratic banana republic

Being comfortable with a president so profoundly thin-skinned that anyone who criticizes him is an “enemy of the people” or “the enemy within”

Being OK with a man who stiffed many of his workers and contractors before he became president—then challenging them to sue him—becoming the leader of the country again

Satisfaction with a candidate whose two primary goals as president are “retribution” and dismissing pending trials that could send him to prison

Being just fine with a president who considers himself entitled to grope women because he is famous

Being fiercely critical of Biden’s mental decline and calling him unfit, but not being disturbed at all by the gibberish and frequent incoherence of the man who would become the oldest in history to occupy the Oval Office

These are just some of the things, Trump supporters, you are OK with concerning the possible next occupant of the White House. Of course you will blithely claim there are some minor peccadilloes of Trump you are not comfortable with; but ultimately, when you fill in the Trump-Vance bubble on election day, apparently you really are.

It has become a political cliché to state that any particular election is critical to the history of the country, and it’s true, they all are. But this one really is unique. This is not merely a choice between two contending political persuasions, two visions of America’s future, two individuals of differing ideology but both within the elastic bounds of political competence. Trump, unlike any of his Republican predecessors running for president, is an amoral self-seeker of fundamentally despotic temperament, a crude misogynist, a liar exceeding anything we have seen in decades, a demagogue oblivious to and dismissive of inconvenient facts, a purveyor of conspiratorial innuendo, and a mercurial bully far too uninformed and narcissistic to wield the power of the presidency. I have compared him to Kim Jong-Un, ruler of North Korea, except that as president Trump would have a Constitution, a congress, and a free press to at least partially clip his wings. And so, to the “undecideds,” you cannot congratulate yourselves for your high principles by sitting this one out. If you have to hold your nose while voting for Kamala, fine, do it. And then—but only if you vote for her—if she does something you don’t like, complain at will.

(This was the final paragraph of “A Pox on Both Your Houses? No” posted on August 14, 2016, when Hillary Clinton was running against Trump. I have changed only two things: Bernie-or-busters is now to the undecideds, and Hillary is now Kamala.)

Last night was the first and probably only debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Harris virtually demolished Trump; her margin of victory among those polled on the question of who won was 26%. So what was the most alarming thing Trump said or refused to say in the debate? That Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the pet dogs and cats of people in that community? That “everybody” wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned? That he refused to answer whether or not he would sign a bill implementing a nationwide ban on abortion? That he refused to answer the question of whether he wanted to see Ukraine win its war with Russia? (Close, very close, but not quite the most alarming.) That he lamented the deaths of Russian soldiers but did not specifically lament innocent Ukrainian citizens’ deaths? (Again, very close). On those last two, and on his claim that if elected he would end the war before his inauguration, he all but stated what we have long known: He would abandon Ukraine. The man he admires, Vladimir Putin, would be given an American imprimatur in Putin’s invasion of a free country.

Trump’s entire campaign is premised on scaring us into voting for him. Crime is “down all over the world” but has reached astronomical levels here due to Harris and Biden. (Another lie of course; moderator David Muir corrected him by noting that the FBI reports violent crime is down.) If “she” gets elected, “this country doesn’t have a chance of success”; he even at one point said World War III will follow. The classic demagogue, Trump campaigns on fear—fear that hell itself will ensue if he is not elected. But he does say things that really are scary though he doesn’t mean them to be.

A case can be made that the most alarming thing he said was to praise Viktor Orban because the autocrat—some have said dictator—of Hungary has visited Trump twice this year and praised him. Trump is easily suckered by flattery, but in this case the flattery appears genuine. Orban does like Trump. When Harris said that European leaders laughed at him, Trump’s response was to say how much Orban thought of him, claiming that Orban said that “the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump,” and that China, North Korea, and Russia were afraid of Trump, which Orban admired.

So did Trump refer to any mutual respect, much less chumminess, he might have with leaders of actual western democracies? No, he did not. Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland did not come up. Certainly not Zelensky of Ukraine in eastern Europe. Nor did Japan or South Korea. Trump chose Viktor Orban as his soul mate, apparently the only European leader who does like Trump. Here is the man Trump is so proud to be aligned with according to journalist and Pulitzer-prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag, A History; Twilight of Democracy; and Autocracy, Inc.:

“First, Orbán’s control of the media raises obvious concerns, since it is difficult to hear the voice of opposition leaders in a country that systematically favors the ruling party. [One interviewee Applebaum cites estimates that 90% of Hungarian media is controlled by Orban’s regime.] Second, under Orbán, parliamentary districts were redrawn. The districts are superficially plausible, unlike the geometrically absurd dimensions of many districts in the US, but the upshot of the redrawing is clear: liberal-leaning districts in cities contain more people than conservative rural districts, which gives conservatives more voting power. The effect is obvious: in both 2014 and 2018, the Fidesz party received less than 50 percent of the vote, but retained a two-thirds majority in Parliament after both elections. Finally, Orbán and his party have reshaped the judiciary. They expanded the number of seats on the constitutional court, and also forced justices over 62 to retire. By 2015, 11 of the 15 justices on the court, which decides if laws are constitutional, were nominated by Orbán and confirmed by his Parliament. It is not so difficult to retain power when one enjoys broad control over the press, election procedures, and the judiciary.”  

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is designed with Viktor Orban’s model in Hungary very much in mind. Though Trump falsely claims to have no knowledge of Project 2025, the Orban tactics of creeping authoritarianism and permanent power (Orban has been prime minister for fourteen years) are precisely the tactics Trump hopes to implement in America if re-elected. The Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin Roberts has cited Orban’s policies as the model for “institutionalizing Trumpism.” This is why Trump so admires Orban. He has done in Hungary exactly what Trump hopes to do here.

There are a few fundamental laws that govern the life of Donald Trump. The first and most fundamental, the one from which all the others directly or indirectly flow, is that self-interest is the North Star of all his actions. National interest, public interest, even family interest are all secondary, even tertiary, to the one consuming goal of his life: the pursuit of what is good for him. Money is good, fame is good, ostentatious self-glorification is good, adulation from others is good, subservience and loyalty from others are good. Anyone who disagrees with him is both wrong and bad. Private sector work is good (despite six bankruptcies); public sector work is, if not quite bad, not really work (Kamala Harris has never had a job, he says). Military service is particularly bad—filled with “suckers” and “losers” as Jeffrey Goldberg first reported. Goldberg cites two other quotes acquired from anonymous sources close to Trump: With Marine General John Kelly at Kelly’s son’s grave in Arlington, a son who died in Afghanistan, Trump asked “his” general: “I don’t get it. What’s in it for them?” The fact that he doesn’t get it is precisely the problem—he simply does not have a psychological make-up capable of understanding national service; for him it’s a waste of your life, a strange acknowledgment that self-interest and your own safety might not be paramount. This same obliviousness was evident when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford gave a presentation and Trump asked an aide, “That guy’s smart. Why did he join the military?”

A second Trump law is to never, ever admit that you were wrong. Admitting error is weakness, and a projection of pretended strength is critical to the man who, at some subconscious, reptilian level, knows he is weak. In this same vein, he can never apologize, for the very reason that to do so is to admit error and thus weakness. When charged with something for which he should apologize, he must never retreat; he must double down on the original claim. The most egregious example is his January 6^th coup attempt. The election, he must continue to claim (and in total self-delusion may actually believe), was rigged, and the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol are now “patriots,” all deserving pardons. Offense is always better than defense; not only should you never apologize, you should accuse your enemy of the very thing you are guilty of. I-did-nothing-wrong-Trump of course never attempted a coup, but Biden and Harris actually committed one—Trump actually uses the word coup—when Biden stepped down and passed the baton to Harris.

For Trump, and for dictators and despots the world over, lying has no moral opprobrium at all but instead is a legitimate means of self-service. All lies—unless they issue from former opponents such as “lying Ted” Cruz or current ones like Kamala Harris—are, for Trump, natural statecraft, as natural as breathing, akin to a trick play in football. One is a fool not to lie: they are useful in that they hide unpleasant truths, glorify oneself by taking unjustified credit, smear enemies, or divert blame to others: thus he never had a sexual relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels or Playboy model Karen McDougal; he never sexually assaulted Jean Carroll; his inaugural crowd was the largest ever. The lies can be easily disproved or fact checked by a vigilant press such as The Washington Post’s documenting over 30,000 lies and untruths just in the four years of his administration, or by a knowledgeable insider: Trump claims he never called U.S. military service members suckers and losers, while a trusted general like John Kelly says he most certainly did. So you never retreat and just double down on the lie—No, I never said that—and move on. You never trouble yourself that a lie might have a moral dimension, even if you do possess a moral imagination. Whether the lie claims something good or denies something bad, it is always for self-advancement, and that is good. Hence lying itself is good. In Trump’s inverted moral universe–to the extent he has one at all–lying is a virtue.

When things go south, the Trump Way is always, always blame others. Externalize all blame since taking responsibility for your bad actions or statements is for suckers. He couldn’t, for example, go to the World War I graveyard in France because (he claimed) the Secret Service said it was unsafe to helicopter there because it was raining, when the real reasons were that he did not want to go because the cemetery was filled with “losers” for getting killed and he didn’t want to muss his hair in the rain. While the rule is to blame others for the bad, the corollary is that you claim credit—and the devotion it entails—for anything good, even if you in fact worked against that very good. Trump claims that he was and will be the best president for black people since Abraham Lincoln. From his demand for the death penalty for the eventually DNA-exonerated Central Park Five, to his dinner at Mar-a-Lago with avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes, to the recent “black jobs” comment, to his support for voter suppression laws, his racism is undisguised.

The fact that forty-seven percent of Americans will vote for this ignorant, dishonest, and dangerous narcissist—after all we have seen with our own lying eyes—continues to amaze me. He accuses Harris of being a flip-flopper. This from a man who once said Hillary would make a great president and whose views on abortion have shifted with the wind literally overnight. His own flip-flopping is never the result of a reflective and conscientious change of mind, or even the result of necessity in the process of political compromise. Rather it results from his attempt to ingratiate himself with whichever voting bloc he is addressing at the moment. Every statement, every act, no matter how feigned, is designed for personal and political applause.

In his pretense of religiosity he has used the Bible as a political prop, and in his pretense of respect for military service he used Arlington National Cemetery as a political prop. The photo of a grinning, thumbs-up Trump standing by the graves at Arlington of those he believes to be “losers” with some family members who support him is a desecration nothing short of nauseating. This political stunt had nothing to do with actual respect or reverence for thirteen deaths in an American war, nothing at all. It was all for perceived political gain, namely to blame Biden and by extension Harris for those deaths in the evacuation of Kabul, an evacuation Trump himself had set in motion as president. The fact that federal law prohibits the use of Arlington for political purposes is one more law to be ignored and broken for his personal gain.

If Trump is re-elected, it will be, to use one of Trump’s favorite accusations, a disgrace. If he is re-elected, shame, shame on us—our greatest national shame since slavery.

(Written the day after the event)

Late yesterday afternoon there was an attempted assassination of Trump, apparently from a man with a rifle atop a one-story building outside the perimeter of the rally. A bullet apparently nicked Trump’s ear and he, along with virtually all of the rally-goers behind him, ducked down, or possibly in his case fell down as several Secret Service agents surrounded him and with difficulty lifted him up. Secret Service snipers, or perhaps some other federal agency, zeroed in on the would-be assassin and killed him, but not before the bullet meant for Trump killed a rally-goer, while another was wounded apparently in the wrist. Trump was hustled off, shaking his fist and yelling to the crowd what seemed to be “fight, fight, fight.”

Certainly violence and specifically assassination should be off the table in American politics today, though clearly it is not. I am not so sure, however, that I could honestly say that if I lived under Vladimir Putin’s rule or, even more obviously, Hitler’s. But not here. Of course our politics have become so inflamed that violent outbreaks, even including assassination, should not be terribly surprising. For me the greater surprise is that the attempt was against Trump rather than Biden, given the right wing’s love of guns, proclivity for violence (e.g., January 6^th), Trump’s not-so-subtle encouragement of violence and generally hate-filled inflammatory rhetoric, and the right’s resulting hatred of Biden. Nancy Pelosi rightly condemned the assassination attempt in terms similar to her condemnation of the wounding of Republican House leader Steve Scalise a couple of years ago, though surely in the hidden recesses of her mind she must have thought something along the lines of “So how does it feel when it’s you?”, given the attempt on her husband’s life not so long ago as the would-be assassin sought her.* Even Mike Pence might have been thinking the same thing as he recalled the January 6^th insurrectionists yelling “Hang Mike Pence” and “Where’s Nancy?” as they stormed the Capitol that treasonous and violent day—after being told by Trump that they would have “to fight like hell” if they wanted to keep their country.

After watching news coverage of the event for probably a little over an hour, I turned off the television, and I have not yet read anything about it today or watched further developments. So this is written based on news reporting shortly after the event. It remains to be seen what the repercussions will be. Security will be even tighter for both candidates to be sure. Trump supporters will be even more enraged—of course—and conspiracies will circulate that Biden was behind the attempted assassination. His public appearances may be curtailed as many, many right-wingers will be fantasizing about revenge, and someone, or some group, may even try. Now it is even more unlikely that Biden will drop out of the race since doing so would in the right’s eyes be seen as cowardly. Meanwhile, Trump just got another five million votes.

The last assassination attempt against a president was John Hinckley’s wounding of Ronald Reagan in 1981, in his pathetic attempt to impress an actress. But it had no political overtones. Even Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 (which I well remember as a tenth grader) was mostly apolitical, at least as seen by the general public, if not by the number of conspiracy-mongers who longed for fame with their books. The nation collectively mourned. The 60s certainly erupted, but not yet in 1963. Then there was no huge political divide, no Fuck John Kennedy signs**, no “fight like hell or you won’t have a country anymore” rhetoric spewing from either political party. Things did get uglier beginning in the late 60s, but today’s turmoil has a distinctly Trumpish cast. That is what Trump, the man who just missed death by two inches, has brought us to.

Maybe Trump is “the chosen one,” as he once referred to himself. He grew up rich; he and his father paid a doctor to say that he had bone spurs in his feet to keep him out of Vietnam; he was given millions by his father (despite claiming it was mere thousands); he has been convincingly accused of stiffing numerous contractors as well as other shady practices resulting in his being involved in roughly 4,000 lawsuits prior to his presidency yet has never served a day in jail; he was elected president by an anti-democratic iniquity in the Constitution called the Electoral College which has veto power over the choice of the majority of American voters; he escaped two impeachments, the only president to be impeached twice and only the third to be impeached at all.

His good fortune most certainly does not end there: he has been convicted of sexual assault and thirty-four counts of falsification of business records by paying hush money to a porn actress without, so far, doing a day’s time in jail; his felonies actually increased donations to his campaign; in a single term he got three Supreme Court choices, and he is almost certain to be elected to another term*** where he may get more; the Trump court just ruled that he has immunity from prosecution for any act, apparently including assassinating a political rival or selling US secrets, that might be considered an official action of a president; that very same ruling–slow-walked by the Court–will delay his three other trials past election day, and, presuming he wins, he will be able to dismiss the two federal cases against him for stealing documents and for inciting an insurrection to overturn a fair election. And now, a bullet meant for his head nicks his ear, he survives the assassination attempt, raises his fist in defiance, and will thereby gain enormous sympathy and votes—almost ensuring his re-election. So yep, the gods smile on him—he does seem to be their chosen one. Lucky guy.

* At a rally after Paul Pelosi’s beating with a hammer, Trump sarcastically asked the attendees, “How’s her husband doing, anybody know?” Trump’s mocking was noted by David Frum, while the Trump quote was cited by Adam Serwer.

**As there are Fuck Joe Biden signs.

***Written prior to Biden dropping out

I have been slack-jaw perplexed by all the claims of the far right about what a corrupt, indeed evil genius and manipulator of the New World Order Joe Biden is. Where are they getting all this unbounded, scratch-your-head buncombe? Where is a scintilla of evidence that Biden has used the judicial system to persecute poor victim Donald Trump? Where is a particle of truth to Biden’s interfering to minimize son Hunter’s judicial woes? Where are all those dollars Joe has made steering foreign diplomats to stay in his hotels? Where are all the dollars extracted from the students at Biden University? Where are all the Biden Brownshirts marching in the streets of Charlottesville? Which judge was it who ruled that the Biden Foundation was guilty of fraud?

I really haven’t been keeping up with all of Joe’s corruption, so maybe you folks in MAGA World could help me with a few more. What was the name of that porn star Joe paid hush money to in order to hide their rendezvous from the public? Which general did Biden ask if he could have the army shoot protesters in the legs? Sorry, I can’t remember, was it a four-star or a three? Which state Secretary of State was it that “gimme a break” Biden called to demand that he find 11,000 more Biden votes? Darn it, my memory is getting so bad, which European president was it that Joe pressured to call for an investigation of Trump and his sons? When was it that Joe told his now-deceased Iraq veteran son Beau Biden that he was a sucker and a loser for his military service? Which rally was it that Biden told his cult that if they didn’t fight like hell they wouldn’t have a country anymore? And—sorry, I must have been dozing—what were those dates that he publicly denied doing all these things?

So anyway, in my galactic-wide naivete, I’ve been wondering about the origins of all the claims of corruption and general depravity spewing from the Biden crime family, and in particular why those claims are so persistent. And finally, finally, the 40 watt light bulb switched on. You do that when your guy (I use masculine nouns and pronouns because I am really talking about Trump and Biden) is himself guilty of those very things. You do it to establish immoral equivalence, or, perhaps better phrased, amoral equivalence. If you are wallowing in the sewer, or if your candidate is, you have to try to convince the electorate that No, you are not covered in feces, despite it covering you from head to toe, but the enemy—not merely your “opponent”—is.

Let’s call it guilt transposition—you transpose your actual guilt to create, ex nihilo, the invented guilt of the other guy. Knowing the amoral or immoral depths of your own candidate, you can hardly sit idly by and allow your enemy to stand on the moral high ground, however legitimately he does so, even if merely by comparison. You have to knock him off that high ground, you have to fake slime him with your own real slime. You’re actually incompetent? No, the other guy is. You’re actually corrupt? No, the other guy is. You as candidate, or you as supporter of that candidate, have long since established that any moral or ethical concern about you or your candidate’s behavior is a preposterous consideration, positively laughable. Honor, shmonor. Hence GOP “investigations” of Biden; hence rumblings of impeachment inquiries, at least until your prime witness turns out to be an established liar; hence a subpoena for Hunter Biden to testify before a congressional kangaroo hearing; hence Biden crime family; hence Biden is “the worst president in history.”* You create a looking glass wonderland, where bad is good, up is down, black is white, false is true—and you repeat it again and again, hoping the electorate is gullible enough to buy it.

*Said by Trump about Biden. A 2024 poll of presidential scholars by the American Political Science Association ranked Biden 14^th among our 46 presidents–impressive, I thought, for a one-termer. I looked to see who all the one-term-or-less presidents were and where they ranked in the APSA list. Of those 23 one-termers, Biden was number three, behind John Adams and John Kennedy. Of all presidents, Trump ranks dead last.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today that arc bent heavily in that direction.