Every once in a great, great while, along comes a person in a very, very important role who is so ill-suited for that role that it makes your skin crawl, your stomach churn and you get a migraine. You’ve never had a migraine before, but you have one now. You’ve had crawling skin before, but it was due to lice or bed bugs. You’ve had lots of churning stomachs, but it was because you drank too much eggnog and eaten too many pop tarts the night before or you were spending Christmas in Mexico and had one too many tacos. No one I can remember in my 77 years on Earth has put me in that medical condition before……….until last night. Last night we saw the Man-Baby for what he was, and it wasn’t pretty.
The last time I had the same feeling as I did last night was watching Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin could spit across the Bering Sea into a bowl of Russian borscht and she could blow off a moose’s head with an AK-47 at 500 yds. (well maybe those examples are slight exaggerations). Sarah Palin fortunately never made it to the White House but she did leave a foul-smelling legacy behind: she opened up Pandora’s Box for the extreme right to become a force to be reckoned with in this country. So much so that she essentially gifted us with the Man-Baby. Man-Baby is the reincarnate of Sarah Palin, only much, much worse.
I woke up at 2:30 this morning with all three symptoms because I watched the debacle last night. We were celebrating my daughter and SIL’s 8th anniversary and having a beautiful evening on the back deck drinking a great IPA and munching on whores-doors and then the grandfather clock gonged 7 times (MST) and the four of us cozily assembled around the boob tube with our eyes glued to the screen. By 7:15 our great evening had gone south. We were in horror, in disgust, in laughter, in disbelief. We were not watching a debate; we were watching a bad joke unfolding before our very eyes. We watched for 1.5 hours the Man-Baby in all his splendor. The anniversary party wasn’t ruined because we saw Joe Biden hang on tenaciously and survive an onslaught that he probably had never experienced in his 77 years before: THE ATTACK OF THE MAN-BABY.
As a country, in 2016, the electoral college failed us, and the Man-Baby went to Washington. America was blinded by a desire to want change at any cost, and we got it. In spades. But the change did not come in the form of substantive, positive change but rather the opposite. None of the big challenges were even addressed and we are losing ground against them.
America is being stretched to the breaking point right now. Our society (and world) is facing a global epidemic the likes we have never seen before in modern history with no end in sight. We are being challenged by climate change that is wreaking havoc everywhere, burning towns, killing people and millions of acres of forests in California, flooding cities and towns all over the Midwest and East, a democracy that is in deep, deep doodoo, and a health care system that is one of the worst in the world. And what is the Man-Baby (aka, POTUS) doing about it? Nada.The Man-Baby believes the solution to climate change is rake more leaves in California. His solution to Covid-19 is to ignore his own scientific advisors and hold rallies of his minions mocking masks and social distancing. His solution to our failing democracy is to call his opponent “Sleepy Joe” and try to get some dirt on Hunter Biden. His solution to health care is get rid of Obamacare and replace it with ????? Blood-Lettting?? Leaches?? Band Aids?? Ventilators??? All of the above??
With this blog, I have been accused of preaching to the choir and I don’t doubt that for a minute. But now is the time, if there ever was one, for the choir to go out and talk quietly and sanely to their conservative friends, if they still have any, and beg, plead, cajole, bribe them into re-thinking their position. Especially the fence-sitters.
Four more years of the Man-Baby is eight years too many. By now, after four years of the Man-Baby any sane human, Democrat or Republican, that can’t see clearly that the Man-Baby is not rational, but insane, has bigger blinders on than Seabiscuit. All you had to do was watch his face last night and watch Joe Biden’s and realize what needs to be done on Nov 3rd. But before then do anything and everything within your power to ensure that we don’t have four more years of the Man-Baby. And while you are at it, beg, plead, cajole these same people to help us flip the Senate. To accomplish ANYTHING substantive regarding health care, the epidemic, climate change and a floundering democracy, people like Mitch “Gobble-gobble” McConnell and his band of Republican cowards need to either retire or lose as the ruling party. Otherwise, they will hamstring Biden just like the did Obama. In Idaho, this includes Crapo and Risch, both afraid of their own shadow.
We are a far, far better country than we appear right now to the rest of the world. If the Man-Baby somehow manages to slink and cheat his way back into office, four more years of vendettas, tantrums, corruption, and inaction when serious action and true leadership is badly, badly needed more than ever before in the this country, could be the nail in the coffin. Last night, the Man-Baby said things that were flat-out dangerous and intimidating. His Proud Boys and inability to condemn radical right groups was extremely unsettling. So, not only is he a Man-Baby, he is a Dangerous Man-baby.
Were he to manage to slink back into office, we could easily not only lose our role as a bastion of freedom and hope in the world, but we will be overwhelmed by the monumental challenges mentioned above. Most of us are good people trying to do the right thing by our country and the world. If Joe Biden loses in November, the Man-Baby and his batallions of Mini-Man-Babies will have won, and the good people of this country and our democracy will have lost big time. Maybe forever.