I will admit to ignoring much of the national press on Sunday. I, like many Americans, feel overwhelmed by the fray of pre-election maneuvering and speculation. Every analytical piece trying to explain the state of the race based on polling and/or intuition brings on a stronger and stronger sense that it’s time to sit back and let the dice fall where they may. That’s a very hard thing to admit for someone as committed as I am to the justness of the Harris cause and the evil of the Trump cause. I recognize that my outspokenness on these issues potentially hangs me out to dry in eight days….or whenever the final tally arrives and is certified.
But then Trump held his Madison Square Garden rally on Saturday night and it all went into a cocked hat, as they say. The hateful rhetoric of that rally is the subject of countless reviews from the respectable media. Only Fox News had the bias to say only, “Trump, powerhouse guests rock packed MSG with historic rally”, ignoring content in favor of crowd size. It was less the resident crassness and racist insults that Trump and his powerhouse messengers of doom spewed that was surprising. We’ve had 9 years now to recalibrate our political sensibilities to the Trump standards of propriety, so where was the surprise in all of that? What co to use to shock and cause disbelief is the degree to which Trump is prepared to shoot himself once again in both feet for the sake of comic sensationalism.
What the MSG showed the world was everything any sensible Trump team member, including running mate JD Vance, have done to deny the worst of Trump’s rhetoric and suggestions, hangs hopelessly cast aside in the wake of the Trump juggernaut. Bowing to and proving out the similarities of the Trump agenda to fascist extremism and every vile aspect of American carnage that exists makes it harder for supporters to claim ignorance of Trump’s lunacy. Opening the Hitler comparison door even wider than it has recently swung is an audacious tactic that ranks up to Trump’s old suggestion that he could shoot someone in plain daylight on Fifth Avenue without voter repercussions. But like 800,000 Polish-American voters in Pennsylvania that have had to grapple with Trump’s anti-Ukraine stance, 500,000 Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania now need to find ways to deny his direct comparison of their homeland to a “floating island of garbage”. The 5.8 million PR voters are also big voting blocks in NY, NJ, FL, GA and MA and have every right to be troubled by the racist remarks made at the rally to insure an even bigger popular vote swing to Harris and perhaps tip the results in major electoral college states like PA, FL and GA at the same time. This all makes Trump act like the bully boasting about his invincibility while one hand is tied behind his back. With bullet wounds in both feet (not to mention his right ear) and at least one hand bound, Trump is starting to look like Monty Python’s Knight of Ni, trying valiantly to defend his bridge against the seekers of the Holy Grail.
Both Trump and Honey Badger don’t care. Playing to the base and perhaps just playing out his normally vitriolic self to its limits again invokes the podium pounding of Hitler, Mussolini and perhaps Khrushchev. And you don’t need your go to a movie theater to see it on a newsreel. It’s out there everywhere, everything, all at once even without Jamie Lee Curtis. The comic book figure that has become candidate Donald Trump stands proudly with the ripped open shirts of a babe on each arm while his rippling forearms flick away undesirables (everyone not a Trump clone). Trump needs no one to win as he sees it, because he already has the fix in, or so he thinks. He even bragged about his “secret little weapon” in the House of Representatives, meaning little Mike Johnson in his Speaker suit thwarting any electoral count that doesn’t favor Trump. And he’s proud to announce his invincibility to the world, thinking that anyone who matters thinks like he does that the only thing that matters in the final analysis is winning. Righteousness of path means nothing.
Trump feels that a nation of our worst selves is ascendant and that he has discovered the secret key to unlock this Cracken on the world. I’m too weary to argue on behalf of the American soul at this late hour. I’m now looking up at the Jumbotron in Times Square (assuming the Venezuelan gang who controls it as Trump suggests will let me stand there) with all the other gobsmacked Americans, awaiting the results of this truly incomprehensible and unpredictable election. Beside me are other normal-looking Americans who may have worst selves, but may also just be as flummoxed as I am.
What? Me worry?