Invitation to Die For

The White House Super Spreader

Please Be Warned: This is a Rant.  Usually I have better control of myself, but sometimes things get to be a little too much.

 This nomination was cursed from the start.

I don’t mean that Justice Amy Coney  (“Grin And”) Barrett won’t sail through the Senate and be confirmed as the next justice of the Supreme Court, though these days the Senate itself is looking like a hot spot for the coronavirus.  Mush Mouth Mitch McConnell will undoubtedly figure out a way to ram the nomination through and finally get the conservative majority on the high court that Republicans have been dreaming about for years (before he keels over from Covid-19.  Has he been tested yet?).  It’s been their only real issue in elections for God knows how long.  Other than confirming justices, Mush Mouth is determined to do absolutely nothing.

He certainly won’t do anything for people out of work because of the pandemic.  That’s against his conservative principles.

But ever since MM refused even to consider Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court during the final year of Obama’s term, saying the right thing was to let the voters decide, then jumped all over this vacancy even though there is far less time left in this electoral cycle, we’ve known that the fundamental dishonesty and corruption of the Republican leaders would catch up with them sooner or later.  It’s a law of life.  What goes around comes around is the way people put it these days, also expressed in two phrases I’ve seen in the last few days: Karma Is So Great (that one on Facebook) and, in a letter from my brother, “I didn’t realize God was so just.”  All these things are saying the same thing.  You get to be a total turd only for so long, then it catches up with you.

The tide turned at the reception for Grin And Barrett.

I’m not saying the virus got spread out there in the Rose Garden.  That doesn’t seem likely.  But as the event moved indoors for cheeseburgers and Diet Cokes, or whatever they serve at such events, the arrogance, the hubris, the sheer stupidity of the people there—including the President of Notre Dame—were astounding.  People were hugging, kissing, shaking hands.  They apparently thought that, because they were at the White House, they were immune.  There was also, of course, the fact that the Moron in Chief would have frowned at the use of masks, and perhaps prohibited them.  It was the same hubris, arrogance, and stupidity that, the very next evening, had Trump supporters sitting at the debate without masks, even refusing masks when they were offered, in order to show support for the Blowhard in Chief (or perhaps under his direct orders).  Either way, it comes to the same thing.  Hubris, arrogance, and stupidity.  They think of themselves as winners.

To mention a man who hasn’t had many wins lately, can you imagine how pissed off Chris Christie must be?  Here’s a guy whose last job that we know of was fetching Big Macs for the Junk Food Eater in Chief, also fetching his dry cleaning (though maybe that was just a nasty rumor).  He finally got another gig, preparing the Great Interruptor for the coming debate (what do you suppose he told him?  Interrupt as much as you possibly can?  Be totally and completely obnoxious?  Because if he didn’t say those things—and why does Trump ask for coaching before a debate when he obviously doesn’t listen to any of it?—then he was totally ignored).  And now this mountain of a man, who actually makes Trump look thin—maybe that’s why Trump keeps him around—has himself tested positive, and immediately checked into a hospital.  The only sane response we’ve heard of so far.  But don’t you think he wishes that for once, if only for the rehearsal, Trump had agreed to wear a mask?

Nope.  You can’t show signs of weakness, even when nobody’s looking.

Or maybe it was a dress rehearsal.

By the way, has Guliani been tested?  He was at the debate preparation too.

We don’t know, of course, that the reception for Grin And Barrett was the occasion when all these people were infected.  Maybe they all got the virus in some other way, and just happened to be there together on that Monday afternoon.  (?)  But there is an enormous irony in the thought that this event, of all the possible ones, is the one that infected the Republican Party.  A bunch of self-righteous people trying to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

I’ll be the first to say that I personally am not comfortable with abortion.  If you ask me point blank how I feel, I would say I’m Pro Life, for the same reason that I oppose Capital Punishment.  But I understand that the issue has two sides, and that mine may not be right, at least not all the time; I also believe it’s an issue that women, and in fact any particular woman, must decide for themselves.  Old rich white men shouldn’t be telling them what to do.  They have no understanding of, or sympathy for, women’s lives.  And I know one thing: if men could get pregnant from a casual act of sex, abortion would be legal all over the world.

I don’t know what will happen in the next few weeks.  I don’t know what will happen in the election.  I do know you can’t escape the law of karma forever.  You can’t even escape it in this moment.  We know that by the extreme denial and furious rage with which Donald Trump lives his whole life.  It isn’t that he will go to hell someday.  He’s in hell right now.  And you can tell that Mush Mouth knows he’s wrong.  He’s been wrong all his life.  Just look at him.  Look at his mouth.