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The President of the United States is a racist.

That’s pretty fucking clear. If you think otherwise at this point, then you either have not been paying attention, or you’re one too.

Hell, even Trump himself doesn’t deny it anymore, saying that being called racist “doesn’t concern me… because many people agree with me.”

So there you have it. Being racist is Ok, because other people are racist.

Got it?

His racism, both cruel and casual, is the new normal. In the same way that it’s barely news when he says something stupid, it barely registers when he goes all KKK on Twitter. Nobody is shocked. Fellow republicans smirk, shrug, hide, or double-down to ingratiate (and thus debase) themselves even further. (See “Graham, Lindsey”)

Dog whistles aren’t even required anymore. He’s going straight for “non-white women who dare disagree with me should leave the country and go back where they came from”. Even if these non-white women are….you know…native-born Americans. Such hateful rhetoric is expressly banned on Twitter (which “prohibits targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category.”) but, well….you know. There are rules, and then there are rules for rich white men.

It’s just locker room talk, right?

To Trump, an “American” is white.

I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how we get past this. He hasn’t just created divisions, he’s pissed all over the very fabric of the nation. And his approval rating hangs steady around 50%.

No matter how often he lies. No matter what racist drivel he spews. No matter how many women accuse of him of sexual misconduct. No matter how many dead war heroes he attacks, or how many disabled people he mocks, or how many times he thinks that Frederick Douglass is still alive. Or how much violence he incites. Or how often he embarrasses this nation on the world stage. Or how often he literally brags that his minions are so dumb he could shoot them and not lose their support. No matter. His IQ and narcissism leave him incapable of feeling shame, or empathy.

His head is empty, his heart is black, and his dick is tiny.

That’s a bad trifecta for a guy who runs a fucking Dairy Queen. This idiot is President of the United States.

And so it goes.

What does continue to amaze, however, is the silence and thus acquiescence to all of this from the Republican party.

It’s almost like Trump invited every single one of them over to Trump tower and got pics of them being peed on by Putin’s hookers. What else could possibly turn the grand old party into an emasculated pile of bobble-heads?

Watching Pence recent border visit, as he started vacantly into cages filled with pleading human beings begging for water, and simply turned away without a word, was surely one of the most monstrous photo-ops I’ve even seen. And yet don’t for a moment think that it wasn’t well thought out….and that Pence, one of the world’s biggest pussies, didn’t have his marching orders. The cruelty on display is intentional. Pence was sent down there to do a Himmler impersonation for the cameras, for much the same way Trump broadcast weekend ICE raids that did not materialize. To be a cruel dick. And to be seen as being a cruel dick. Because, again, the cruelty IS the point. What would shame normal people energizes these monsters.

But why?

Trump fears what he does not understand. And since he’s a fucking idiot, this means he fears pretty much everything.

Women are for his amusement. To fondle. To forcibly kiss. To compare to Ivanka. That these new brown women in Congress both mock his idiocy, and refuse to be intimidated by it, scares the fake-tan off of him. So he starts running around in circles, chewing at his own tail. His rage manages to be both frightening and pathetic at the same time. The former because it’s tolerated, and the latter because…..well….because it’s tolerated.

As a nation, I thought all these battles had been fought and won already. I was wrong.

A President can call actual Nazis “very fine people” and remain in office. And on and on….to today. Where he can tell Americans they should “go back where they came from”.

There are new rules. Or perhaps there just aren’t any rules at all anymore.

It’s our collective shame. We own it.

In a bit..

–tf

The government went to federal court a few weeks back and argued before incredulous judges that it shouldn’t be required to provide detained migrant children toothbrushes, soap, towels, or showers.

To level set for y’all….a man named Michael Scott Moore was kidnapped by Somali pirates in 2012 and was held for two and a half years. Moore felt the urge to issue a tweet saying “Somali pirates gave me toothpaste and soap”…quickly followed by another tweet by a former prisoner of the fucking TALIBAN….who tweeted “The Taliban gave me toothpaste and soap.”

So…yep….there you are. We live in interesting times Bubba…

Trump supporters are furious with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and not just because she’s a woman and….you know….not white), who likened the cages detained migrant children are kept in to concentration camps. That kids are in cages in the first place does not at all draw their ire. Nor did the fact that a congressional delegation that toured border facilities reported they witnessed children drinking water out of toilets. Such claims were dismissed as fake news on the same day Trump’s newly appointed press secretary got inadvertently beaten up by the bodyguards of his latest man-crush, that dreamy North Korean dwarf and mass murderer Kim Jong-un, who still has nukes despite Trump lobbying hard for a Nobel Peace Prize for disarming him using nothing but sangfroid and an autographed copy of “The Art of the Deal”. So….nothing to see here folks.

And tomorrow our grand high exhaled mystic ruler will throw himself a Nuremberg style rally, complete with military tanks and planes (hopefully Trump doesn’t order the military to shoot down the Trump Baby Balloon) and squirming Generals, with plenty of white supremacists in red hats cheering him on. You’ll be happy the know that according to the President, the parade will feature “the brand new Sherman tanks” despite that fact that production of Sherman tanks ceased over 60 years ago. So I can’t wait for that part (A US Army spokesperson has warned DC are residents to “not panic” when they see tanks rolling through their neighborhoods, so don’t say loads of thought hasn’t been put into this). Oh, and engineers have been examining the Lincoln Memorial to determine if the weight of stationing tanks there would affect the Lincoln Memorial’s foundation. So there’s that. Trump’s ego is threatening to damage the fucking Lincoln Memorial. This is all so normal.

I eagerly await the price-tag of all this dick-waving, which is being kept under wraps because…well….you know.

Of course all of this would have been considered insane before 2016.

But we’re now in an age of walls and terrified angry white people and Orwellian doublespeak. Dissent has once again become disloyalty. Traditional allies are out, and dictators are the flavor du jour. The free press is labeled an “enemy of the people” because, let’s face it, what’s more founding father-ish than that eh? Our moral authority in the world has not simply been eroded, it’s been eradicated.

Humanity has become a form of weakness. Trump has somehow turned into a political colossus, having cowed his own party into a level of astounding subservience that would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking scary, all this despite communicating to the American public at the level of a bullying 4th grader, appealing always to the dark side of human nature. His administration is, banana republic-like, filled with obsequious toadies and blood relatives. His supporters remain cult-like in their devotion, not even wavering when he bragged about being able to publicly shoot them with no blow-back. Democrats, as usual for democrats, have no coherent strategy, and are currently tearing each other apart on a debate stage near you. A pedophile is one again running for congress in the state of Alabama, and it’s increasingly likely that he’ll win this time. Because of course he will.

(Locally, the mayor of Scranton just resigned, barely a step ahead of the federal prosecutors chasing him down for bribery, extortion, and conspiracy. So at least some things felt normal…)

Sometimes it seems like I’m the only person in the midst of this maelstrom who feels like he’s not living in the same country in which he was born.

In a bit..

–tf