Hispanic Fanatic

Throughout this long, miserable campaign season, every day the news was like “Trump vows to deport gay, left-handed Asian dentists.”

And the next day the news was like “Polls show surge in Trump support among gay, left-handed Asian dentists.”

I can’t explain it. Fuck it, give me another drink.

If a racist rally — a Coachella for bigots — isn’t enough to convince you that both parties are not the same, you are beyond reason. Maybe one day, you will snap out of your right-wing delusion and realize, “Hey, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to vote for guy who assaults women and tried to overthrow the government.”

We are going to elect a politically moderate, well-qualified woman who will continue economic policies that work pretty well.

Or we will elect a felonious, sociopathic lunatic who will likely drive the economy into the ground, open to the door to autocracy and oligarchy, and make life hell for everyone who is a not a white straight Christian male (until eventually turning on them too, because nobody comes out unscathed when under the thumb of an venal, incompetent dictator).

It really is one or the other.

Good luck, America.

As I may have mentioned, this is an election year.

I also may have said something about how millions of Americans will vote this November for an aspiring despot who wants to crush dissent, abolish democracy, and catapult the nation into a hellhole of authoritarian chaos. But I mumble sometimes, so maybe you didn’t catch it.

In any case, people are taking the inevitable Biden-Trump rematch seriously. Researchers have found that “an overwhelming majority of Americans believe democracy is ‘at risk’ in the upcoming presidential election.” They are correct, of course, because if Republicans regain power, they will burn the country down rather than give it up again.

So it’s a good thing that experienced officials are running our electoral system and focused on making sure the election is fair, accurate, and efficient. Well, at the least the election officials who aren’t running for their lives are focused on that.

You see, “since the 2020 election, state and local officials have faced a surge of violent threats, harassment, and intimidation.” This hostility is primarily from Trump supporters, who accused election officials “of rigging that race and subsequently hounded many out of office.” 

Because so many officials have quit in fear for their lives, more than 20% of election administrators “will be doing the job for the first time in 2024.”

Yes, this is yet another way in which Trump has manhandled the nation, perhaps permanently. Before 2020, “threats against election workers were virtually nonexistent,” but now they are frequent. And the abuse has often been “more severewhen directed at officials who were women, people of color, religious minorities, or LGBTQ.”

Now, you may be saying, “This is all the fault of the woke mob,” or Antifa or whatever imaginary group of progressives that the GOP conjures up as the latest boogeyman.

Well, keep in mind that “support for political violence runs mostly along party lines.” About one-third of Republicanssupport violence as a means to get their way, compared to 13% of Democrats. More specifically, Republicans who like Trump are nearly three times as likely as other Republicans to support political violence.

So yeah, we can safely say it’s that guy’s fault.

In this golden age of political bedlam, America is “grappling with the biggest and most sustained increase in political violence since the 1970s.”

And as bad as the 1970s were, American political violence back then was “perpetrated more often by radicals on the left and focused largely on destroying property.” But the contemporary version of the Symbionese Liberation Army isn’t interested in blowing up an empty bank. Today’s political violence “is aimed at people — and most of the deadly outbursts … have come from the right.”

Basically, you are far more likely to be shot by a neofascist than by an animal-rights activist.

How grim is the potential for carnage during this year’s election season? Well, many election offices have installed “bulletproof glass and security doors amid threats of violence.”

For all of you who thought voting was a dull obligation, that is certainly one way to spice things up.

Welcome to the new version of American democracy.

This will be a very special year. Because it will be our last one.

Well, at least it will be our final year as a functioning democracy if a certain bigoted crime boss / cult leader wins the election this November.

Recently, media outlets have caught on to the fact — at long last — that an insane autocrat will be the Republican nominee for president, and he stands a decent chance of becoming the leader of a government that he tried to violently overthrow. 

Of course, he could not do this if millions of Americans didn’t think it was a good idea to support a narcissistic lunatic who almost destroyed the country when he was in charge. But it’s not really about the racists, conspiracy nuts, and authoritarian lovers who make up the GOP base.

As everyone knows, this election will be decided by that tiny sliver of undecided voters who are torn between a competent but uninspiring octogenarian and a slightly younger guy who faces 91 felony charges in four different cases and who once suggested that Americans drink bleach.

Yes, it’s a real fucking coin toss. Should they go with the man who dodders a bit or the raging misogynist whom dozens of former staffers, aides, and cabinet members say is a direct threat to democracy?

What’s an undecided voter to do?

Recently, the Washington Post looked at this strange demographic. In their article, they profiled an indecisive voter from my hometown of Milwaukee. The man truly didn’t know who to vote for, but he added that he thinks Trump is “hilarious.”

I must admit, I didn’t know that “hilarious” was a legitimate criterion for electing the leader of the free world. But even if it were, I fail to see the hilarity in a deranged old man who spews nonstop insults, lies, and hatred, interspersed only by delusional boasts about how great he is. It’s not exactly the foundation of a tight five for a solid standup act. But maybe I’m just not in on the joke.

And speaking of jokes, let’s consider the Electoral College.

Be honest. If you were building a country from scratch, would you even consider such a tortuous, bizarre, illogical, antidemocratic mechanism?

This “18th-century system — which is unlike anything used by the United States’ 21st-century democratic peers” is a preposterous contraption that “empowers a sliver of the U.S. population in a diminishing number of battleground states.”

In a nation of 330 million people, presidential elections now come down to “about 400,000 people in three or four states,” resulting in an infuriating farce where “more and more people feel that they don’t have a say.”

It also means that an easily persuaded guy in a battleground state who has no principles, concern for others, or awareness of real-world consequences — but who finds a particular candidate “hilarious” — has far more say than you do about whether or not an aspiring despot takes over the nation and grounds our society into dust.

Yeah, I’m still waiting for the punch line.

The good news is that Republicans believe in elections again.

Yes, the GOP was ready to dismiss the gubernatorial race in Virginia as just another larcenous farce, but the election met with conservative approval when the Republican candidate won. You know the new governor — he was the guy who campaigned hard against cancel culture by vowing to cancel books by Black people. 

In any case, pundits are united in declaring this to be a harbinger of doom for Democrats in next year’s midterms, the following year’s presidential election, and every election for the remainder of the millennium. Indeed, Democrats will probably lose control of congress in 2022, and it will certainly be devastating if Republicans take over. After all, the GOP might stonewall Biden’s agenda, in contrast to today, when everything is just sailing through and… oh wait.

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Once you’ve attempted to destroy democracy, overthrow the government, and seize power, it’s a little difficult to say, “Just kidding.”

Yes, I’m sure that in future years, many Republican leaders will insist they never intended to break the country wide open. They were just indulging in “political theater.”

However, even political theater is usually principled or symbolic. It is not, in general, a dangerous and delusional maneuver that breaks through “the last level of neo-fascism.”

Now, we have heard apologists explain that the recent actions of Republicans don’t prove that they are actively hostile to democracy. Supposedly, all these conservative leaders are just appeasing Trump. 

But two rejoinders come to mind:

First, haven’t they done enough appeasing for several lifetimes? And to what end? The guy lost and may end up killing off their political party. And still they’re scared of him?

Second, the idea that the GOP is just trying to keep Trump happy is the equivalent of saying, “I punched my kid in the face only because my husband insisted, and I didn’t want to make him angry.” It’s not an excuse.

The truth is that much of the right wing is all for tearing down America, and they need very little provocation to abandon any coherent political philosophy.

You see, the political party that hates judicial activism wanted judges to be active as hell and overrule voters. The party of states’ rights didn’t want states to run themselves, and instead be subservient to bigger states (like, for example, Texas). The party for freedom and against tyranny wanted to nullify an election and install its own president.

And this is not just a few rogue Republicans. It is vast swaths of the GOP and a majority of conservative voters. In fact, “about 64% of the entire House Republican conference supported Trump’s attempts to invalidate Biden’s win, using baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud as their reasoning.”

Even today, “three-quarters of Trump voters said congressional Republicans should try to keep Trump in power.” Furthermore, over 80% of Trump voters believe that Biden stole the election by committing fraud so egregious and obvious that you would have to be a moron to miss it. At the same time, the fraud is so subtle and devious that no one can find a single shred of evidence or proof. 

That is one tricky balancing act. Damn those sinister liberals.

In any case, many people thought Trump supporters would snap out of it and come to accept reality.

But they will not.

Hardcore Trumpists have turned on conservatives who question their god’s perfection. They have called for violence and martial law. They have made it clear that they will always follow this sniveling old man who “awakened an authoritarian impulse among the citizenry that was far larger and more rabid, and more easily triggered, than most of us ever imagined.”

The specifics and the level of danger may be unique to our time, but “there is a long history of building community cohesion by encouraging members to ignore the facts of the world around them.” After all, the people who believe the Earth is round don’t need to build a community. Reality handles that for them. But when faith and belief clash with logic, reason, and facts, a massive disconnect occurs. And sometimes, “the disconnect between belief and reality is precisely the point,” because when this gap “gets really large and the community becomes more insulated, cults arise.

And that is where we are today, with a cult masquerading as a political party, and truth up for grabs. And when reality itself is debatable, the world spins into chaos and cacophony.

In other words, it’s all very 2020.

There is no master plan. 

There is no four-dimensional chess game being played.

There is no laying the groundwork for 2024, nor is there a rebranding campaign going on.

He is not focused on establishing his own television network, and he is not interested in implementing conservative policies on his way out the door.

And of course, all of his pathetic acts of desperation are not the final maneuvers in a ludicrous, idiotic conspiracy involving satanic cannibals.

It’s perfectly obvious — or should be at this point — that the president is a narcissistic sociopath who is incapable of long-term planning. And although he lies nonstop, he is honest about his lust for power and contempt for humanity, democracy, and Americans in general. 

So why are so many people — from respected journalists to intelligent politicians to pretty good actors —mystified about what is going on?

Perhaps we want to believe, despite all evidence, that Americans did not elect a corrupt con man who is indifferent to the nation’s well-being. We want to imagine some hidden depth to a vapid egotist who received the enthusiastic support of over 70 million citizens. We want to believe that he is not as buffoonish and corrupt as he clearly is, and that there is some misguided principle being manipulated here.

But here is the truth about what Trump wants.

He wants to be president, and he wants Republicans to help him pull off a coup.

That’s it. That’s all.

Sure, there may be supporting malignancies, like his desire for revenge and gluttonous appetite for cash.

But really, he is trying to bully and cajole the GOP into overthrowing the government for him. And he has gotten more than a few conservatives to say, “Sure, why not destroy democracy?”

Apparently, this fact is too disturbing for many Americans to acknowledge, so they scratch their heads and wonder what Trump is possibly trying to accomplish by filing one ridiculous lawsuit after another. Or they question why he flings out wild accusations that shatter upon the slightest analysis. Or they ask why the White House took so long to acknowledge reality and allow the transition process to begin.

OK, one more time —Trump is trying to subvert the will of the people so that he can remain in the White House. It really is as simple as that.

The fact that he is sucking at this endeavor doesn’t mean that he has a hidden agenda. The Trump Administration has been one long study in cartoonish incompetence — from building his mythical wall to protecting Americans from Covid-19. So why should his attempt to seize power be anything other than haphazard and flailing?

There are no smokescreens. His lawyers really don’t know the difference between Michigan and Minnesota. But this just means that Trumpists are idiots. It doesn’t prove that they are master manipulators with unknowable goals. 

After all, if we saw a kindergartener throw a massive temper tantrum for ice cream, we wouldn’t say, “I wonder what he really wants” and attribute complex motivations that end with the assumption that the kid is angling for broccoli.

No, we would say that the little brat wants some goddamn ice cream.

The president, who has been compared to a toddler more than once, is that spoiled kid who wants ice cream. You can tell him that he can’t have any more, or that the store is out of ice cream. Hell, you can tell him that thousands of people might die if he keeps shrieking for ice cream.

It won’t matter. Because he has always gotten everything he ever wanted, no matter how horribly he has acted.

He will never stop kicking, screaming, and threatening. And there is no mystery about what he wants.

Now that this grueling, era-defining election is over, let’s take a moment to reminisce.

No, not about the Trump presidency. We will be reliving that in our nightmares for the rest of our lives.

Instead, let’s fondly recall the myriad ways that the GOP tried to steal this election. Oh, I know that most Republicans are convinced that it was the Democrats who cast illegal ballots, threw out GOP votes, forged dead people’s signatures, hacked voting machines, or mumbled some satanic curse that fooled the media, election experts, and the majority of Americans into thinking Biden won the election. But that just shows how devious liberals are!

Because as we all know, there is just no way that a guy who lost the popular vote in 2016, was projected to lose this time, is reviled like no other president in recent history, and who never once cracked 50% approval for his entire term (a first in polling history) could possibly come up short. 

I mean, it’s just impossible. Right?

In any case, if politics were a football game, the GOP would facemask, eye-gouge, trip, elbow, spike toes, and throw punches in scums. They would do this nonstop. Then they would whine to the refs if the Democrats were off-sides once.

Consider that Republicans, without exception, do everything they can to make voting harder or limit who can vote. To them, voting is not a right. Hell, it’s not even a privilege. It’s a rare luxury reserved for conservatives, preferably white ones.

For example, in my current state of California, the GOP put out ballot boxes, marked them “official” (which they were not) and when caught, simply refused to “comply with an order from the chief elections official to remove the unofficial ballot drop boxes from counties with competitive U.S. House races.” Yes, the party of law and order defied the law and ignored orders. 

In my home state of Wisconsin, “a sophisticated and multi-front effort by Republicans to prevent many Wisconsinites from casting a ballot” was just part of the GOP’s plot to create the most gerrymandered state in the country.

And in Texas, the conservative governor didn’t like all those latte-sipping liberals in the big cities being allowed to vote easily. So Texas counties, regardless of size, were limited to “only one drop-off location for voters to hand deliver their absentee ballots during the pandemic.” Texas Republicans also tried to throw out 120,000 votes from “the state’s most populous, and largely Democratic, county,” which I’m sure was just a coincidence.

Oh, and they also tried to disqualify votes in Pennsylvania, and to stop the counting of votes in Nevada.

When none of that worked, Republican senators just openly tried to “find a way to throw out legally cast absentee ballots.” And if you’re wondering, yes, that effort just might have broken “any number of laws.”

Even after the election was settled, Republicans in Michigan tried to block certifying the results “based on dubious claims of voting irregularities in Detroit.” And then after being shamed into doing their jobs, they attempted to rescind the certification, upon orders from their divine leader.

Of course, the president’s hapless, humiliated lawyers are enduring defeat after defeat, basically getting laughed out of court, as they try to conjure a world in which their delusional client got reelected. Indeed, “some of the lawyers at the firms handling the litigation work for Trump’s campaign or related Republican Party organizations are now raising concerns internally about the legitimacy and purpose of the legal claims they are currently being asked to advance.” The attorneys are concerned that they may run into ethical trouble for filing frivolous lawsuits. But to the GOP, that’s their problem.

However, all this Republican subterfuge really started before the election. After all, it was our neo-fascist chief executive who shrieked those “frequent and false claims of widespread voter fraud and repeated calls for his supporters to ‘watch’ the polls and stop it.” And as we know, conservatives need very little provocation to show up with guns and intimidate people.

Furthermore, it was the president’s supporters who sent threatening emails with the subject line “Vote for Trump or else!” to Florida residents. Opinions vary about whether the originator of the emails was the Iranian government or the Proud Boys (both are winning organizations). But in either case, the message “we will come after you” was pretty clear. 

And don’t forget that the fabled Hispanic vote — which was either a godsend or a major disappointment, depending on your point of view — was likely influenced by “a web of disinformation websites aimed at Latino Americans.” Again, it wasn’t progressives spreading the fake news.

You see, “the objective, pursued by Republicans in a seeming war of attrition, is to use a range of tactics and tools to reduce the number of votes cast by people of color.” The GOP dream is that young people, ethnic minorities, and anyone who lives in a city just shut up and let white rural Americans make all the decisions. 

And yet despite these gargantuan efforts, despite these desperate ploys and unethical maneuvers and pathetic illegalities, Trump still lost — solidly as it turned out.

So to my GOP friends, I must assert — without malice — that if you lie, cheat, and whine but still get trounced, maybe it’s time to admit the truth:

Most Americans just didn’t like your guy.

Look, I don’t know if the guy is planning a coup, or plotting revenge, or just being pissy. Nobody can figure it out.

Even after 48 months of daily insanity, we are still perpetually shocked at the scattershot behavior of a septuagenarian whose rambling self-absorption should disqualify him from hosting a neighborhood bingo night, much less guiding a nation of 300 million people through a pandemic and an economic collapse.

What we do know is that Trump’s administration is “taking on the characteristics of a tottering regime — with its loyalty tests, destabilizing attacks on the military chain of command, a deepening bunker mentality, and increasingly delusional claims of political victory.”

We also know that the number 70 is popping up with disturbing regularity, like it is some kind of mystical numeral.

Witness the fact that 70% of Republicans “say they don’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair.” Their entire basis for this belief is, of course, that their guy lost.

Contrast this with the statistic that Biden’s winning base “encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity.” This means the areas that voted for Trump account for less than a third of our nation’s economic output, which is interesting in that they are supposedly the hardworking ‘Mericans being victimized by the big evil cities, when in truth they are being subsidized and would starve in the gutter without urban areas to prop them up.

The third appearance of this magical number is the stat that more than 70 million citizens voted for the reelection of the worst president in history. They apparently believe that these last four years of hell were the fault of liberals, the media, the Chinese, or anybody but a president who can’t string two sentences together without complimenting himself. Yes, almost half of our fellow Americans are fine with this guy.

Of course, this reveals another disturbing fact, which is that although “pundits suggest that the two different political ideologies in America are about values and principles,” the truth is that “the primary difference between the two camps is between those who are living in a fictional world, created by generations of right-wing media, and those who are living in the real world.”

And speaking of living in the real world, keep in mind that despite the bellowing of conservatives, there is not a micron of proof that massive voter fraud took place. In fact, it appears that the most significant lying and cheating is being done in the name of the GOP. 

Furthermore, Biden’s win was actually more decisive than you think, and it was certainly more convincing than Trump’s victory in 2016. Yes, I’m sure plenty of right-wingers are politely debating those very points on Parler right now.

You see, conservatives are depressed that their hero went down in ignominious defeat. Of course, for most people, the first stage of grief is denial. But for Trump supporters, it’s more like denial interspersed with shrieking, foaming at the mouth, and issuing death threats.

In any case, our favorite soon-to-be ex-president has more or less checked out, and he isn’t even pretending to do his job anymore.

This isn’t all bad, in that a monkey with flamethrower would be a more effective leader than Trump.

But it is interesting that he is abandoning his post just as coronavirus makes its dreaded encore. The stable genius who said the virus would magically disappear seems to have gotten it just the tiniest bit wrong. But he clearly doesn’t care about that insignificant detail.

This collection of motley facts is the full extent of what we know.

So let’s not indulge in conjecture about what happens next. Because to be honest, it’s anybody’s guess.

Like all of you, I am exhausted, so I’m not going to get it into too much until we have a declared winner. But as of right now, you would rather be Biden than Trump.

In any case, many Americans are shocked at how close this election turned out to be. 

Yes, we have plenty of commentators rehashing the same argument from 2016, which is that Democrats have alienated swing voters because of their embrace of “socialism.” This is interesting, of course, because it implies that Joe Biden (i.e., the most politically moderate man in America) has either hid his secret socialist agenda for decades, or that a small group of congresswoman is deviously pulling the strings (and no, there is nothing insane, illogical, or flat-out misogynistic about that — nope).

This argument also lets the Republican Party off the hook, because it implies that they have not built a cozy home for bigots, conspiratorial lunatics, and neo-fascist freaks, who in turn, now feel emboldened to get out the vote for the GOP. It also hints that millions of kind-hearted, good-natured Americans have no choice but to vote for a corrupt, incompetent, authoritarian racist whose degeneracy is obvious to a 10 year old. They just have to vote GOP!

No, my friends, it is perfectly obvious who Trump and the modern Republican Party are. And it is also clear that millions of Americans like it.

But if you want to keep blaming liberals for this mess, go ahead.

I’m just going to get some sleep.

At the end, perhaps it is the “rapists” who will undo him.

That would be ironic, considering that we all remember how this little nightmare started, with Donald Trump announcing his 2016 presidential run by insisting that Mexicans — and by extension, all Latinos — were nothing more than thugs and rapists.

At the time, conservatives and media figures fell over themselves insisting that this creepy failed businessman didn’t actually mean what he so clearly said. The result of the gaslighting was that millions of Americans voted for the guy, only to find — four long, horrific years later — that he did indeed mean every word of his grotesque opinion. Their bad! It could happen to anyone, right?

Ahem. 

But here in 2020, many commentators theorize that the fabled Latino vote could be the tipping point in a potential Biden landslide. For example, if Hispanic voters turn out in force for Biden, it would give him wins in Texas, Florida, and Georgia. And that, of course, would be the end of the line, electorally speaking, for the GOP, regardless of what happens in other swing states.

However, that is a huge “if,” considering that Latinos are less likely to vote than other demographics. And keep in mind that even though Biden has overwhelming support from Latinos, a sizable minority of Hispanics still plan to vote for a xenophobe who would happily deport them if he could.

To complicate matters, remember that there are multiple subgroups within the Latino demographic, so it is impossible to say definitively who is or isn’t Hispanic, or how that lines up with polling. Indeed, some analysts boldly insist that “there is no such thing as the Latino vote.”

Whoa — now we’re getting metaphysical here.

So let’s return to the subject of Hispanics as thugs and rapists. As we all know, rather than sending us their criminals, Latin America is actually sending us their bravest, such as the 100 wildland firefighters from Mexico who are in California to assist with firefighting efforts. And don’t forget that “nearly 40 countries across five continents have received Cuban medics during the pandemic.”

Closer to home, “Latinos are on the coronavirus front lines,” working as essential workers and suffering much higher rates of infectionbecause of it. In fact, global health experts say that coronavirus is causing “the historic decimation of the Latino community, ravaging generations of loved ones in Hispanic families.”

Basically, our country is fine with Latinos risking their lives to keep the nation intact, but not so upbeat about, you know, actually accepting Hispanics as Americans with equal rights. You might find that a sickening contraction, but to Trump supporters, it’s a patriotic virtue.

The good news is that if our health care system continues to flounder, we can just go to Mexico for civilized treatment. That’s right, many Latino families who lack medical insurance and resources “are crossing the border for affordable medical visits and medicine.” More than 2 million “medical tourists” make the crossing each year, because in Mexico, “it is possible to save from 40% to 65% on a treatment compared to the United States,” and the quality of medical care is “usually first class.”

Just don’t tell Trumpists that, because they might actually start heading south for decent medical care. And we certainly don’t want to send Mexico our worst people.

PS: I rarely update my articles after I post them. I figure that once the words are out there, it is what it is (to quote a super-genius).

But I just read this info, and it directly relates to Latino voters, so I’m adding this little tidbit to the post:

“The gender gap among Latino voters — 26 percentage points — is significantly larger than it is among Black, white or Asian voters.” Apparently, for many Hispanic men “the macho allure of Mr. Trump is undeniable.” In fact, “what has alienated so many older, female and suburban voters is a key part of Mr. Trump’s appeal to these men.” 

So the point is that, once again, we should all listen to the Latinas.