Been a while, sorry! As Ralph Richardson says in O Lucky Man! when told his daughter needs him, “the trouble is, I’m so frightfully busy.” (You might try subscribing to Roy Edroso Breaks It Down and getting this stuff five days a week in your inbox. The cost is negligible!)
Welp, it’s 9/11 25. Five years ago I said I wasn’t going to commemorate the occasion anymore, but our precipitous decline since then demanded a reconsideration, so -- for our first REBID freebie of the week -- here’s that essay with an update. In its heyday 9/11ism was mainly experienced as jingoism (and of course racism), but recent events show that, to this day, it colors everything rightwingers do.
And while we’re at it, here’s the second tower of my nineeleven-related posts, about why Trump is suddenly lying so hard about his involvement with it. (Senility is only part of it!)
The other big cataclysm this week was Tubby’s midterm convention, all accounts of which are simultaneously astonishing and depressing: A drug dealer/would-be murderer (or, as Fox News has it, “libertarian icon”) praising Trump for busting him out of the joint (for a price); JD Vance spitting some overt racism; and of course the yammering of King Shit himself, climaxing in an offered bribe of $5,000 if his co-conspirators keep Congress in the midterms. Amazingly the cost hasn’t gone up since 1935!
Few in the Prestige Press characterize that last one as a bribe, of course; most stick to Trump’s preferred usage, “dividend,” while Axios explains to their politically savvy readers “How Trump's $5,000 check promise is supposed to work” -- with examples such as this: “The capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the recent Venezuelan oil deal are evidence that Trump can pull off things Washington once thought impossible, and the $5,000 checks are his next big swing.” If he can steal that big, the thinking goes, surely he can afford to share the loot with you, Mr. Average Citizen! It’s not as if he has a record of stiffing people who do stuff for him.
Where all will end, knows God. On the one hand, judges continue to slap down Tubby’s crazier power grabs; on the other hand, a lot of other institutions you’d think would show some spine -- such as international NGOs -- continue to cave to him. Oh well, as least this phase of imperial decline has some thrills ‘n’ chills!
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