A little good news

Keep your head on straight

As Harold Ross said to Joseph Mitchell, I’m no goddamn ray of sunshine myself and sometimes I feel as if I’m just making everybody feel worse by double-underlining the atrocities and misgovernance that characterize current American life. This past week it seemed the angry gods were laying it on particularly thick, between the latest police violence (part infinity in a series) and the President endorsing summary execution of suspects and the news that Trump’s goons muscled the CDC to lie about how bad COVID-19 is because it made the administration look bad and so on.

Oh, and there was this Trump associate, fresh from his presidential pardon, advising on electoral matters:

[Roger] Stone told [Alex] Jones Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act and arresting the Clintons, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Zuckerberg, Tim Cook of Apple and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity”.

He also said: “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr President!”

Now all these things are genuine threats to the Republic and it’s important to make sure people know about them. But at the same time, we should try and keep from getting ourselves discouraged or even panicked by the sheer number and audacity of the malfeasances.

One thing it may help to keep in mind is that the people who are making these threats — all of them — are weaklings.

Trump is, as the saying goes, clothed in great power as President. And, guided by the rightwing assholes tasked with making sure he holds up his end of the “just let me grift and you can have whatever laws you want” bargain, he has done real and considerable damage to the country.

But in order to steal the election, as he is also clearly trying to do, he has to convince us that he’s the Great and Powerful Oz, and that we can’t possibly refuse him, let alone fight back.

And that is ridiculous, because Donald Trump is a wimp. For one thing, though he postures and blusters to look like a tough guy, he backs down whenever it looks like things are getting tough for him. Remember when, for example, during the 2016 campaign, Trump said women should be punished for having abortions and, within 24 hours, reversed himself? And where’s the Obamacare replacement he has endlessly assured us is coming? Or his tax returns?

Foreign leaders have known from the start that Trump is gutless. From a 2018 David Graham Atlantic story:

In the first weeks of his presidency, they angled for face-to-face meetings with the new president, realizing that in personal meetings, especially when subjected to flattery, he could be swayed. The efforts paid off: Trump shared sensitive intelligence with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador. He backed down from threats to brand China a currency manipulator, and said that a 10-minute lesson from Xi Jinping on Chinese–Korean relations had convinced him Beijing had less sway over Kim Jong Un than he had believed. That same spring, Trump called the leaders of Mexico and Canada to announce he was going to pull out of NAFTA. The two men convinced Trump to agree to renegotiation instead, a significant climbdown.

Foreigners are not intimidated by Trump’s bluster, but Americans, even those who oppose him, seem to be. Think of how often he’s suggested he’ll pull the U.S. out of NATO, then pretended it isn’t really a big deal (“I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete”), then suggested he’d do it again. He’s like a local blowhard who keeps promising to fight a guy and then always has an excuse.

But the dodge works, in part because the press plays along with it. You can see it in the way a recent New York Times story, “Allies and Former U.S. Officials Fear Trump Could Seek NATO Exit in a Second Term,” takes what should be a here-we-go-again story and makes it sound like a cliffhanger:

For nearly four years, President Trump has publicly railed against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, angrily demanding that its members pay more for Europe’s collective defense. In private, Mr. Trump has gone further — speaking repeatedly about withdrawing altogether from the 71-year-old military alliance, according to those familiar with the conversations.

In a second term, he may get his chance.

Recent accounts by former senior national security officials in the Trump administration have contributed to growing unease on Capitol Hill and across Europe. They lend credence to a scenario in which Mr. Trump, emboldened by re-election and potentially surrounded by an inexperienced second-term national security team, could finally move to undermine — or even end — the United States’ NATO membership.

This time for sure! Almost no one calls out Trump’s flip-flops for what they are because reporters and operatives are apparently not allowed to talk about his weaknesses (unlike any vacillation done by any Democrat who ever lived). They’ve cast Trump as a tough guy and won’t let anything interfere with that characterization.

But he’s not a tough guy. He’s a pampered rich punk who has never had to work for a living and is disinclined to work for any other reason; who is observably either stoned or pumped up with mood enhancers and speed much of the time; who dyes his hair like a vain dowager; who literally cannot be relied on for anything at all — not in any alliance, not in any policy, and God forbid you should take him at his word. (In fact, “seriously but not literally” was the original tough-guy spin on his gutless weeniehood.)

Trump is able and willing to torture the weak, like the kids he has caged and the protestors he has gassed. But he cannot face anyone who fights back. If he loses the election, he will not have the guts for caudillo business — not least because he has no physical courage — and the U.S. military is not going to back a wussy would-be dictator.

I will go further: I think Trump expects to lose. His method has always been to try anything and say anything — lie, cheat, sue, etc. — to achieve his goals by running out the clock or his adversaries’ finances or patience, and thus far it has worked, which (again) is why his followers think he has the magic key and cannot be defeated. But when the votes run against him, Trump will just stuff some heirlooms from the White House into his luggage, jerk off on the sheets in the Lincoln Bedroom, and vamoose to some country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.

A lot of the other forces we’re all supposed to be terrified of are similarly overblown. Take QAnon. It’s supposed to be all-powerful. (“I’m numb to crazy stuff Trump says, but utterly terrified of crazy stuff Americans believe,” says the normally astute Will Bunch.) Why, there’s about a million of them in official Facebook QAnon groups!

Well, here are some other Facebook groups with more than a million followers: DIY On A Budget Official; A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony; and รอยัลลิสต์มาร์เก็ตเพลส. (That last one may not be local.)

I share the general concern with these hypnotized/brain-damaged freaks and their insane beliefs but, having been around Americans for several decades, I see these people as being more like Liberace truthers than storm troopers; there’s no muscle behind their mania and I doubt Republicans, evil as they are, can figure out a way to bring it out of them. They have about as much real fight as the Jade Helm nuts of 2015 — or the right-to-lifers who constantly assure us that abortion is murder and also constantly demonstrate that, to them, murder is something against which they can be bothered to demonstrate against in parking lots on weekends.

So be of at least fair-to-good cheer: Sure, Republicans are fucking up the country — what else is new. And things could get very grim if the consent of the governed or a reasonable simulacrum thereof demands more Trumpism (which I doubt will happen but admit is possible). But so long as democracy holds, it’s all smoke and mirrors, straw men, and paper tigers.