A (or One) Skeptic

Well, it didn’t take long for President Trump and the republican right wing to try to resurrect the immigrant boogeyman in the weird pair of terrorist attacks that took place right on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

First, of course, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who drove his rented Ford pickup about a quarter of a mile down Bourbon Street about three hours after midnight, killing fourteen people and injuring and at least thirty-five others. Jabbar has a very suspicious sounding name and is, in fact, not only a convert to Islam but also a follower of the Islamic State. He is not an immigrant, however. No, he was born in Houston, and is a 10-year veteran of the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of staff sergeant.

As one meme suggested, he “daringly made the cross from the state of Texas to the United States.”

I mean, here were our conservatives, so close to being able to blame another effing immigrant for this hideous behavior, only he turns out, really, to be one of our own.

Then, the other guy turned out to be just another average Trump supporting white guy.  Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, 37, on leave from the U.S. Army, rented a Tesla Cybertruck in Colorado in late December which he then drove to Las Vegas over several days. Livelsberger has decades of experience with the US military, having served in both the Army and National Guard. A decorated Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant, he was stationed in Germany but on approved leave at the time of the incident. There’s a photo of him in a Trump shirt from the 2000 election.

His suicidal explosion of the Tesla truck did much less damage than one might have anticipated. It was mostly limited to the interior of the truck, because the explosion “vented out and up” and didn’t hit the Trump hotel doors just a few feet away.

There were a couple of odd coincidences in the two events, including that both used the “Turo” car service to rent their trucks, and both served for a time at Fort Bragg (now known as Fort Liberty). 

Otherwise, there was no connection, other than that nobody seems to know the motive of either of these guys.

But again, look for the right wing to work feverishly to convince their supporters to prove that at least one of these incidents is the work of immigrants.

Well, I guess Jimmy Carter was too good a person to be dragged into 2025.

As a somewhat  prominent (or at least adamant) atheist, people might wonder what I thought of Jimmy Carter. Personally, I loved the guy. He was the kind of Christian that I could really respect. He was a Christian who lived by the words of the Beatitudes, and not the Ten Commandments (which, in any case, is Moses and not Jesus).

Carter post-presidential career is legendary, and is essentially the model for what a post-presidential career can be. 

And Carter is also a model for what a Christian can be. I would most likely still disagree with him on the specifics of his belief, but I cannot argue with him about how he comported himself as a Christian and ex-President.

As a President, Carter had his limitations. He had some bad luck (like when the attempt to rescue the hostages misfired), which was not his fault. He was a bit of a micro-manager, and here he could have taken a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook and set broad policy and let his subordinates work out the details. He was inexperienced, having served only four years in the Georgia State Senate, and four years as Georgia Governor. He clearly benefited from being almost the polar opposite of Tricky Dick Nixon. 

And finally, it’s also pretty clear that Carter got jobbed when Reagan administration officials conducted secret negotiations with the Iranians to ensure that the hostages were finally released on the day of Reagan’s inauguration. Would it have changed the outcome of the election? Probably not. But it’s more of a “stolen election” than anything that Trump was subjected to in 2020.

In any case, Carter was the kind of Christian I can respect. Authentic, sincere, and not a hypocrite. Unlike the followers of #45, who clearly cannot recognize a Christian when they see one. 

Here’s a question you can ask of your Republican friends: if Trump were to encounter Michael Cohen on 5th Avenue, “borrow” a gun from a secret service agent, and shoot him down in cold blood, would that be an offense worthy of prosecution?

Or would that, in their view, be a “political” prosecution?

I’m willing to bet that a good number of them would admit — albeit that Trump famously prognosticated that he wouldn’t “lose any voters” if he shot someone on 5th Avenue — that under those circumstances maybe Trump really should be prosecuted.

So what’s the difference between that and the four cases that were brought against Trump?

It’s basically that your Republican friends don’t think the charges in those four cases are “serious” charges.

What else could it be?

So let’s review the four cases and where they stand.

First, there are the two federal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith., and then there are the two state court cases. These are:

1. The federal case against Donald Trump for inciting the January 6th insurrection.
2. The federal case against Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents.
3. The Georgia case against Trump for trying to overturn the election results in Georgia by getting the state to “find” him 11,700 votes.
4. The New York case against Trump in which he was already convicted of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to use “hush money” to avoid the disclosure of his affair with Stormy Daniels.

The first of these cases was dismissed without prejudice (meaning that it can be filed again) at the request of the Special Counsel when it was clear that Trump had been re-elected.

The second of these two cases was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon on the clearly incorrect determination that the appointment of the special counsel was unconstitutional. That one could also be refiled.

The first of state court cases is still ongoing and involves the ludicrous claim that prosecutor Fani Willis violated ethical codes by getting romantically involved with her chief prosecutor either before (as the defense claims) or after (as she claims) she hired him. (Given the kleptocracy we are about to embark on, this is the mildest possible ethical infringement, and nothing compared to what Trump will do. Nevertheless, a Georgia appeals court decided just last week that this was an ethical lapse that should disqualify her from the prosecution. That decision will, of course, also be appealed, so we’ll see how this eventually ends.) 

The second of the state court cases is also still ongoing. Ironically, there was just a decision yesterday that Trump’s conviction can withstand the US v. Trump decision decided by the Supreme Court. (This case also had a recent decision in which Judge Merchan decided that the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States does not require the case to be overturned.

There is also the separate question of “tolling.” So, for example, let’s say a citizen of Brazil is indicted for grand theft auto, and he flees to Brazil. The offense has a three-year statute of limitations — in other words, the case has to be tried within three years — and the offender returns from Brazil after five years, the statute is “tolled” (or essentially extended) for the period of time that the offender was in Brazil.

So, with Trump, the question would be, does Trump’s presidency — during which time he cannot be prosecuted — “toll” whatever statutes govern his indictments. It will be a novel question because no one has ever been unavailable for prosecution before because they were president.

Until Trump.

The whole point is that Trump did engage in serious offenses — very serious offenses involving the disclosure of national secrets and an attempted insurrection — and these offenses should have been disqualifying. They should have kept him from the presidency, and that did not happen.

Of course, Trump could potentially be prosecuted after his presidency, but what would be the point? The damage will already have been done.

In any case, ask your Republican friends: if Trump were to shoot Michael Cohen on 5th Avenue, would that be a political prosecution?

The New York Times recently surveyed a group of 14 voters who thought of Trump as extreme but decided to vote for him anyway. Here was the basic take-away from the Times:

So, if this is what the rest of the country believes about our current politics than they just do not have a fucking clue. There is absolute fury on the left, and we have never been more divided as a nation. This, at the moment, is a completely balkanized nation, and it’s not going to get better under Trump.

But let’s backup for a moment.

Conservative Resentment

I have to say that a part of me understands the long-standing resentment that conservatives have towards the rest of us, particularly those of us who are liberal/progressive.

We really can be very preachy sometimes.

Very preachy.

And sometimes we are a little crazy.

Like with gender-fluid pronouns.

Do we really expect farmers in Iowa to ask their Mexican farmhands what pronouns they want to be addressed by?

Sometimes we come off as complete lunatics.

And when I watch Hollywood awards shows or the late-night monologues, I can see how conservatives would be resentful of what seems like a universal condemnation from certain parts of the entertainment industry. 

Thomas Franks, who wrote the book “What’s the Matter with Kansas” has argued as far back as 2004, that Republicans have successfully manipulated voters to vote against their own interests by pushing hot button social issues that just made them mad.

And we have been continually feeding them more and more red meat, so really, shame on us.

Liberal Fury

On the other hand, conservatives (and probably non-political America) clearly have no idea about the fury that liberals and progressives are feeling right now. A fury that is unabated and will likely grow with each outrageous decision or appointment that Trump makes.

Eight years ago, when Trump was first elected, I could see clearly that his election represented a giant “FU” to the rest of us. Okay, I got that. Because he was inexperienced and because there were people around him to put up some guardrails, he managed not to destroy the economy. Although his handling of Covid sure led to hundreds of thousands of Americans dying that did not have to die. (It is, however, hard to prove a hypothetical, so many Americans are still completely unclear about this.)

But this time around, there are — as has been observed many times already — no guardrails. Trump has already achieved the one thing that he cares about the most: he avoided prison time. Now he gets to go on his revenge tour — most likely he will find that part of his assignment much harder to execute — and to slap tariffs on other countries and deport the undocumented.

Most significantly, Trump will get the chance to destroy the economy in a way that he simply did not have time for the first time around.

In his Time “Man of the Year” interview, he has already backed off from taming inflation. Of course he isn’t going to tame inflation, nor does he care. It’s not something that will affect him personally. He will only care if it tanks the stock market and leads to bad press.

But I’ll tell you who will care: liberals and progressives. The fact that this malignantly narcissist, compulsively lying, racist, misogynist and casually cruel wannabe dictator was re-elected is something that about half of this country does not comprehend and will never forgive. Oh yeah, y’all might think that we’re just going to get over it, but we’re not going to get over it. Just like we haven’t gotten over January 6th. Now we want to stick it up your ass just as badly as you wanted to stick it up our ass. We’re not “going high” anymore.

At this point I want Trump to slap 20% tariffs on Canada, and Mexico, and China, and European automobiles. At this point I want Trump to deport a million undocumented and see what it does to the economy. (He has no hope of deporting the approximately 11 to 12 million undocumented because that would involve logistics that are way beyond the capability of the federal government at the moment.)

Oh yeah, let Trump be Trump. Let’s find out what his policies would actually do to our country. And then you can tell us again about how the price of eggs made you vote for this unmitigated  shitweasel and about how we all should just calm down.

The reaction to the assassination of of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been, I must say, completely fascinating.

Let’s start with the obvious. We shouldn’t be assassinating anyone here in the United States. 

But, people have had such bad experiences with being unfairly denied by health insurance companies that many people reacted like he deserved it.

And maybe he did.

UnitedHealthcare has been particularly nasty in denying people reflexively and unreasonably, leading people to suffer needlessly and in some cases die, that in some instances it does feel like murder.

Francis Ford Coppola directed a whole film about this phenomenon, 1997’s “The Rainmaker,” based on a John Grisham novel.

The film, by the way, is really, really good.

The media has been wondering about the “motivation” of the shooter, but I think it’s as obvious as the nose on your face: some relative of the shooter died as a result of an unreasonable insurance denial, and the shooter decided to take revenge in a way that he could.

I mean, the bullets had “delay,” “deny” and “depose” scratched into their casings. How much more obvious could it be?

They’ll find this guy eventually — although, they still haven’t found the guy who left two pipe bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarters on January 6th, or, for that matter, the person who leaked the advance copy of the Dobbs decision at the Supreme Court — and when they do, you can be assured that he was an incensed about an insurance denial that happened to him or his family.

If I were the CEO of anything these days — like a company that shipped jobs to Mexico or that has been letting people go in favor of robots or artificial intelligence systems — I might be looking over my shoulder a little bit.

There have been three times in my life when I came to realize that I am seriously out of touch with much of the American electorate. The first time came in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected President in a landslide: 489 to 49 in the electoral college. (That was also the year that John Anderson received 6.6% of the popular vote.) My dismay that the United States elected that doofus actor as President was only reinforced in 1984, when Reagan won a bigger landslide (526 to 13).

But at least Reagan was an amiable doofus.

The second time was, of course, Trump’s narrow win over Hillary Clinton in 2016. And now, the third time, his re-election in 2024.

Words fail me.

So, Trump has increased the number of people who vote for him every time he’s run. In 2016 he received 62,984,828 votes, which was, of course, 2,868,686 fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, even though he beat her in the electoral college. In 2020 he was smoked by Biden to the tune of 7,059,526 votes. And now, with 99.9% of the vote counted — btw, how effing long does it take to finish counting votes in California? — Trump is leading Kamala Harris by 2,397,837 votes.

In any case, this means that in 2020 Trump increased his vote count by 11,239,147 voters (while still losing), and in 2024 he increased his popular vote total by an additional 2,907,780.

Since 2016 and his ride down the escalator, Trump has increased his vote count by a staggering 14,146,927 votes.

Oh boy.

Roughly half of American voters chose this malignant narcissist, this compulsive liar, this racist, misogynist and casually cruel wannabe dictator, this fascist egomaniac (who even cheats at golf) in greater and greater proportions over the last decade. 

Words fail me.

And yet, one has to acknowledge that that is exactly what’s happened. Along the way Trump has beaten everybody except Biden (and he clearly would have beaten Biden the second time around). 

• In 2016 he beat John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Jim Gilmore, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee; 
• In 2020 he beat Bill Weld, Rocky De La Fuente, Joe Walsh, and Mark Sanford (granted, not exactly a “who’s  who” of opposition candidates); and, 
• In 2024 he beat Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, Perry Johnson, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, and his own former VP, Mike Pence.

And in 2024 he didn’t just beat them: he clobbered them. He got 17,015,756 votes, which represents 76.42% of the total share; Nikki Haley managed to get a healthy 19.68% and Ron DeSantis eked out 1.59%. Nobody else even made it to 1%.

Against Donald effing Trump.

He’s beaten all comers. You have to give him that. This shitweasel with all the impulse control of a coked up squirrel is the man that half of America has chosen to fall in love with.

Explain it to me like I’m a five-year old.

What do people love about him so?

It’s killing me that people are all up in arms about Joe Biden pardoning his son because it sets a bad precedent and might lead to Trump pardoning more people.

Are you fucking kidding me?

If people cared about the legality or morality of pardoning your own son, half of us wouldn’t have voted for somebody who had 91 felony indictments against him.

I mean let’s do a reality check.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the prosecutions of Hunter were totally politically motivated, and he was charged with things that most ordinary citizens would never have been charged with.

It was time for Joe to protect his family.

Although somebody should tell Hunter, you just got the world’s biggest mulligan, now don’t fuck it up again.

For people who are surprised by Trump’s controversial first set of appointments to his cabinet, I’m not sure what they thought was going to happen. He signaled pretty clearly what he was planning to do. Loyalty would trump (pun intended) any other consideration.

From here on in, the mantra I’m going to repeat is: this is what America wanted. This is what America voted for. 

It’s going to be four years of chaos, four years of driving a wedge between liberals/progressives and conservatives, four years of more Balkanization, four years of unapologetic provocation.

And about half of American voters wanted this.

I’ve read that Kamala and our side went too “dark” during the run-up to the election because we exposed his fascist tendencies, that he wanted to be a “dictator on day one” or that he was joking about a third term. In 2016 they said we took him too literally but not seriously enough, but should have taken him more seriously but not so literally. In the aftermath it was clear we should have done both.

Now we’re told that we should lighten up and not take him so seriously.

Yeah, okay.

Really, there are three possible outcomes now:

1. Trump ruins the economy and our Western alliances
2. Things go badly, but not quite as badly as we feared
3. Things go surprisingly well, and we will have been proven wrong again (and not for the first time).

Regardless of which of these three alternatives actually materializes, the hardcore Trump supporters will blame anyone but Trump. The people in the middle — the ones who voted for both Obama and Trump — may swing left once again. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

Let’s see how the people in the middle feel if the price of eggs hits double digits, and you can no longer buy a foreign car, and you can no longer get eldercare because of the deported Africans. But it would have to get pretty serious to grab the attention of black men and latino voters and some white suburban women to make them think that maybe this diaper-wearing “Alpha” male isn’t really the solution to their problems after all.

Right now, as we head towards the holidays, I should be waiting for our first female President to bed inaugurated, and luxuriating in the feeling that soon I wouldn’t have to see his smug mug all the time, I wouldn’t have to hear about him all the time, I wouldn’t have to think about him except when his court cases came up. 

So much for that dream.

Now, this never-ending clown show will go on for at least another four years.

This morning I read that the Trump transition team “floated the idea that Trump could sign an executive order creating a board of retired senior military personnel that would review high-ranking officers and recommend removing any they deemed unfit for leadership.” Such a board would enable Trump to “purge the military of the generals whom he considers insufficiently loyal to him.” Generals who refused to carry out orders like using the military against U.S. civilians in his first term.

I also read that our side was “too alarmist” about the dangers to democracy if the Dictator Wannabe was re-elected.

It’s like there’s a house on fire, and one side is there with a firetruck and a firehose, trying to put the fire out. On the other side there is a gasoline tanker truck, and someone is spraying gasoline into the fire. And people are saying, no!, you shouldn’t have mentioned the gasoline truck in your political ads so often, you should have just focused on the firetruck.

Oh yeah, that was the problem.

From now on, no one can ever tell me about the “essential goodness” or “common sense” of the American people. Never again.

Before and after the election I was hearing quite a bit about how both Democrats and Republicans were concerned about protecting our (large “D”) Democracy. From our side, it was pretty obvious: to protect it from a fascist dictator wannabe who already tried once to overthrow legitimate election results.

But what was it from their side?

I’ve now learned that the concern seemed to center on having absolute free speech, especially on social media platforms.

Of course, we don’t have absolute free speech in the United States.

Don’t believe me?

If we did, child pornography would be legal.

And some of the concern of right wing free speech absolutists should have been remedied by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (X), which now does his bidding.

But what rightwingers want is not actually “free speech”; what they want is the right to distribute disinformation without any consequences.

We’ve moved from the information age to the disinformation age. And we’re about to go there big time. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.