Living in interesting times

 

A second morning of waking up and learning that the dumpster fire is still burning, the shit show continues, and legions of lawyers are going to be shopping for Lamborghinis and Bentleys in 2021*. No doubt the Russians and Chinese along with the rest of the world are cheerfully laughing their collective asses off. They say karma can be a bitch. The United States has spent the decades since World War II ended going around the planet lecturing everyone on the right type of government and touting the benefits of democracy, and yet here we are. . . with a wannabe dictator, an aspiring Pinochet or Franco, refusing to follow the rules while busily inciting his acolytes to disrupt normal democratic (as in democracy in action, not the political party) procedures. 

The Donald is pissed that the results of counting absentee ballots are not going in his favor so he's got to cast doubt on the whole procedure. Once again, instead of behaving like a statesman and trying to unite the country he's doing his spoiled 8-year-old throwing a tantrum routine. (A slight digression. I think that's the worst thing about Trump. He doesn't just behave like a spoiled 8 year old, he encourages his followers to behave the same way:  loud, obnoxious, and generally like little kids who are upset no one's telling them how special they are.) 

For anyone who's spent much time observing The Donald in action this is no surprise. We all knew it was coming. He's been using melodrama and chicanery to sustain his businesses and his image his entire adult life. He's always been, as the saying goes, all hat and no cattle. Why so many people bought the snake oil he peddled has always baffled me. Multiple bankruptcies, including having casinos go bankrupt? The man is supposedly a billionaire but he couldn't make money running a casino? 

The S.O. likes to tell the story of how back in the '80s when he was on a traveling crew with Lockheed Support Systems (they did modifications and inspections of military aircraft, both fixed wing and helicopters) he spent several weeks working at the airport near Newburgh, New York. The Donald stored his private jet there. The airport authority impounded Trump's plane because he didn't pay the hanger fees. The man was supposedly a successful incredibly wealthy man but he couldn't afford to pay the rent where he stashed his plane. Think about it. If you scale it down to the level of the ordinary working person, it's like having your car booted because you were short a couple nickels for the parking meter. 

Then when you look at his litigation record -- the quite literally thousands of lawsuits generated because Trump refused to pay his bills. Either he'd try to weasel out of a debt by filing suit claiming work was done improperly or never completed or contractors would sue him trying to get paid for construction work. Instead of simply figuring out how to pay his bills, he spent inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out how to screw people over. 

Trump was pretty successful at selling the image, though. I've been reading Fear, a book that looks at the 2016 campaign and first year or so of the Trump administration. Trump had made a big deal in speeches about not needing outside money, he'd totally finance his run for President himself. Turned out to be total bullshit, but the Republican party insiders bought it. Even Steve Bannon fell for the con. Then when they actually had to ask Trump for money for advertising he stalled and stalled and finally Jared Kushner admitted to Bannon that the Donald didn't actually have much access to ready cash. The supposed multi-billionaire couldn't afford to cough up $10 million for last minute ads. Bottom line: if the media hadn't given Trump a zillion dollars of free advertising with their nonstop fawning over him, his whole campaign would have crashed and burned early in the game. Just like everyone else, the news media got suckered by the entertainment value.

The S.O. has been muttering a lot lately about not understanding how anyone could still be a Trump supporter. Well, it's not a mystery to me. Most people are what pundits like to call "low information voters." The American populace used to be fairly well informed. As a people, we read a lot. Books, magazines, you name it. It was a rare household where no one at least read a daily newspaper. There were multiple publications for men, women, children, you name it. There were multiple news magazines, general interest publications, specialized magazines, etc. And then we as a people got seduced by electronic diversions and decided we'd rather be entertained than actually know anything. So when we saw a scripted "reality" show we believed Trump knew what he was doing instead of realizing the producers laid out the story line. According to the show's creator, Trump's only role was to look successful - he had no actual input into how the contestants were evaluated. He may have gotten to say "You're fired" but he didn't decide who he said it to. It was a role, not reality. Nonetheless, the image of the successful billionaire was thoroughly burnt into America's collective consciousness.  

Although, to be honest, I think the American educational system can take a big chunk of the blame for how easily we can be conned. It spends years training kids to be sheep (shut up and do what authority figures tell you to do) and then we wonder why they're so gullible and willing to believe any weird piece of garbage a friend shares with them on social media. Critical thinking isn't emphasized a whole lot. I have encountered teachers who do actively encourage curiosity and questioning, but not many. In terms of classroom management it's a lot easier to do memorize and puke it back than spend much time on discussion and thinking. 

Anyway, circling back to the subject of ballot counting, just heard a Republican cheerfully lying his ass off about the ballot counting in Michigan. The Trump representatives are claiming that their poll watchers were positioned too far away from the ballots being counted to be able to observe what was on the ballot, implying the ballots were being individually read and tallied by the election workers. You know, the worker would look at the ballot, see what was marked, and then tally that. Total bullshit. The ballots are opscan sheets. The poll workers took the ballots, unfolded them, and slid them into a scanning machine. Any tallies were done totally by machine, not humans, so it doesn't matter at all where the watchers were standing. That type of line is total b.s. intended just to throw doubt on the process. The assumption the Republican spokesperson is makng is that most people won't realize what a Michigan absentee ballot looks like (it's the exact same ballot as the one you get handed at the polls if you voted in person) or how they're counted (the same way the regular ones are). 

And, just like everyone with two brain cells to rub together predicted, in Arizona where the vote is now really close and Biden's lead has narrowed, Trump is demanding loudly that every vote get counted but in Pennsylvania where things are leaning more toward Biden he's screaming there's fraud and shut the count down now. I am so tired of the melodrama, but I just heard the depressing news that Pennsylvania might take another 3 or 4 days to resolve. 

On that note, I'm going to step away from the computer and go hide in the Woman Cave for the rest of the day. 

*At least the ones working for Biden will be able to car shop. Anyone representing Trump had better get their fees in advance or look forward to spending years in court trying to collect from him.