ON MAGA - My Political Self

Well, Guys and Dolls, I apologize for the lapse in content. There’s been a lot going on here, and until we get those 48-hour days I requisitioned, there’s not always time during the 24-hour ones to get everything done.

Next, we have to deal with the elephant in the room: MAGA¹

I remember Dump²from waayyyy back when he used to show up on Page Six of The New York Post. He was one not-too-bright millionaire who liked to be photographed with the rich and famous, with and without his wife and/or girlfriend(s), and he had no shame. When, in the late ’70s, he and his father were fined MILLIONS OF DOLLARS for housing discrimination, he was equally unashamed. If money could fix the “problem,” then he had no reason to be ashamed or humiliated or anything else.

As to his lack of brains, that was another thing money could fix. He was unable to live at home like a normal child, because he was far from normal, and his parents solved the problem with money. Dump was not the kind of kid ever to read a book, ever to tell the truth, ever to do any real work, ever to do any homework, or ever to learn anything but the most rudimentary knowledge needed for basic survival. At least he learned which hole he needed to have open to stuff Big Macs into. For the rest, however, his parents, who were unable (and, presumably, unwilling) to deal with his sociopathic and ODD³ behavioral issues, sent him to boarding schools, and because, again, of his inability and opposition to read, work, do homework, or to tell the truth, he was presumably advanced from grade to grade through generous donations to the various schools from his father. And that was how he learned that money could solve problems that could not be solved any other way.

After his primary education, someone at the University of Pennsylvania was, presumably, bribed into accepting this unaccomplished young rogue, and, I’m certain that along the way, he was passed from class to class through bribery until the school had had enough of him and finally graduated him, though he had learned NOTHING.

Interestingly, at some point, Dump developed Narcissistic Personality Disorder; hard to imagine, as he was so unaccomplished, but his internal machinations somehow interpreted his “graduation” from college as an unequaled achievement, even though he played no part in it, and he was then able to snag a model as his first wife. Notwithstanding his personal sense of accomplishment at having done so, it turns out that Ivana’s father worked for the Stasi, and she was pumping Dump for information which she then passed on to Daddy.

MAGATs: Did you know that Dump was a puppet before he even knew he was a puppet? And that he was actively aiding the Soviets? And did you know that what he did is considered TREASON? Did you read Andrea Bernstein’s book? Or did you just laugh it off as so much democratic hyperbole?

Dump was also groomed by the late Roy Cohn, Esq., who was a great friend of the late J. Edgar Hoover, of FBI ignominy. Roy Cohn was another sociopath who reviled his background and did as he pleased for his own gratification. He’s the one who taught Dump never to back down, lie or no lie. But he also taught him that it was particularly useful when lying; that one could make people believe anything if the lie were repeated often enough. Dump, who’d been lying since he was able to speak, took this advice to the place in his chest where a normal person’s heart lies, and has resolutely stood by it. So, thus far, the three things Dump learned were: where his mouth is, how to fix everything with money, and to double-down on any lies he tells. Nothing about Arithmetic or History or Science or Political Science or Diplomacy or Geography or Economics. Not even a skosh of common sense or common decency. All he learned was how to be as self-serving as possible. And his measure of a man was how much money he has.

Aside from all of Dump’s failed business pursuits, the numerous bankruptcies, the suits for nonpayment from various vendors, the $25 million payout to “students” of Trump “University,” he decided that he would make himself a TV star, just to achieve some kind of popularity. No one who’d ever done business with him had anything good to say about him, and now that “The Apprentice” is long over, no one at NBC has anything good to say about him, but at the time, he made them an offer, and he starred in his own demented game show, thus making him known beyond the NYC metro area, and beyond the now-defunct Stasi.

So when he first descended the golden escalator at Dump Tower in 2015, announcing his candidacy for president, people knew him. People who shouldn’t have known him knew who he was. He’d never been political at all, had no particular political opinions – informed or otherwise – and no political aspirations, yet there he was, in all his smarminess, declaring his desire to run for president. Of course, the fact that he had never learned any of what a competent president needs to know – geography, history, social studies, civics, law, diplomacy, economics, and being a human being – was no obstacle to him because he had been taught that money and lying were the ways to achieve anything, and he was relying on both to win. On the other hand, he had NO idea what winning would look like, and what he’d have to do if he did wind up in the Oval Office, but he had money and he could lie with the best of them, and so began our descent into disaster.

It goes without saying that Dump was being schooled – offstage, as it were – by the anarchist, Steve Bannon, whose background was no doubt similar to Dump’s, but without the money, and Roger Stone, whose homoerotic fixation with Richard Nixon, the first president to be charged with committing crimes WHILE IN OFFICE, led to his having Nixon’s face tattooed on his back. Neither of them has any schooling at all in politics, but both are well-schooled in anarchy, and both have whispered sour nothings into Dump’s ears about how to destroy the US and make a fortune doing so. Anarchy means no plans, no organization, no regard for consequences – at least outside of one’s own sphere – and Dump was easy enough to convince of this since he, too, has no regard for consequences outside his personal self. He is, in the most literal sense, a tool, being used by people who have nothing to gain personally, but who enjoy having influence over this moronic puppet we painfully refer to as POTUS.

And thus began MAGA.

It is far too much to imagine Dump coming up with such slogans on his own. There is a ghostwriter behind him, whispering slogans into his all-too-malleable ears about policies he will never understand, and slogans that will make them echo in the ears of the poorly-educated. Yet the movement began with a slogan whose initials initiated a movement of people who, to date, have been incapable of understanding what lies behind it, what lies beyond, and how they’ve been used. They have been worked and molded by the most visible Elmer Gantry of our time, worked the way the Music Man, “Professor” Harold Hill, held the small town of River City, Iowa, in the palm of his hands, until one day he fell in love and the scales began to fall from his eyes, as well as those of the people he duped.

Today’s MAGATs are bigots; are, for the most part, Evangelical Christians; are homophobic and xenophobic; are resistant to learning the truth about ANYTHING. MAGATs are, themselves, the poorly-educated Dump claimed to love so much, but incapable of recognizing this in themselves. They don’t read – not even the Bible, which they claim is at the center of their beliefs, even though what it says is contrary to their beliefs. They are subjected to the repeated lies of this “administration” and its prevaricator-in-chief. They don’t investigate. They never learned how to discern truth from lies. And that is the reason Dump loves them so much. He knows – or at least someone told him – that the poorly-educated would be putty in his hands, and such they have been.

It seems though, that some MAGATs have begun awakening from their trance, much as the residents of River City did. The scales are falling from their eyes, and they have begun to see how they were duped. Unfortunately, many of them have had to experience, personally, some of Dump’s greatest failures, by having their health care and grocery money snatched out of their hands, and by watching their gas prices increase every single day due to an illegal war Dump started with Iran. Some of them have loved ones who were targeted by ICE, and some of them have lost their jobs due to the collapse of their industries because of tariffs Dump imposed illegally (which have now been reversed by the courts). Some of them have been waiting for jobs to open up when Dump chased all the illegal aliens out of the country, but those same people have been unwilling to pick tomatoes and strawberries, and now wonder why the cost of produce has gone up. Some of them were happily shopping on line when prices suddenly doubled or tripled because of tariffs. Some of them can no longer afford their prescriptions and will die because of it.

It is a bizarre phenomenon, especially because, as self-proclaimed Christians, they have not been behaving as Jesus taught them, and now it is coming back to bite them in the ass. Maybe if they believed in Karma, they would understand. They would understand that Dump is not a genius, stable or otherwise; he is not looking out for their best interests, he is looking out for his own increase in financial status, and his own legacy in the history books, but that is going to look more and more like Hitler’s legacy of dying in a bunker to which he’d escaped. Perhaps that is why Dump’s ballroom is being constructed with a huge bunker beneath it, but now that we know about it, we’ll know where to look for him when the s**t hits the fan. He was aching for the Nobel Peace Prize, but now that he’s got the actual medal, it is no longer so important to him to win it from the Nobel Committee, even though they have proclaimed that the medal he has actually belongs to another. And, of course, in yet another act solidifying his diagnosis of ODD, he has actually begun a war, which the Nobel Committee will see as the last straw for shutting down any hope he had for legitimately securing it.

Honestly, I could go on for days, weeks, years, maybe, about all the failings of this Dump, but what I’m hoping is that MAGATs, or soon-to-be former MAGATs, will see this, see themselves, see how Dump has repeatedly pulled the wool over their eyes, see that many of the side-effects of this “administration”’s policies are spilling over past the intended victims and landing in their laps. And I’m hoping, even though I, myself, am not Christian, that the Christian Evangelicals will reach for their Bibles – not the Dump version, but the real one – and re-read what Jesus had to say about welcoming the stranger and how to treat their fellow human beings.

As you know, I am loath to mix politics and religion, as were our founding fathers, but there are times when it is necessary. The Constitution lays out the way our government should be run and provides protections for people living in this country, but the Bible long predates the Constitution and teaches us as individuals how to treat our fellows, and this is not merely an international how-to, but a how-to for each of us as human beings living on this planet. There are some basics that cannot be ignored. If we each treat one another the way we want to be treated – masochists aside – then we would have a far better understanding of what it means to live in a world without narcissists, without war, without bigotry, in which each of us has the ability to prosper fairly, without cheating or lying or duplicity.

^1. Make America Great Again

^2. A serendipitous conjunction of the first letter of his first name and the last three letters of his last name.

^3. Oppositional Defiant Disorder