Bribocracy

 

                        ChatGPT

“Shall I compare thee to a President’s Day? Washington’s selfless leadership, Lincoln’s timeless eloquence? Thou art less lofty and more intemperate.” (Author unknown.)

America’s political divide is wider than at any time since the Civil War, but there’s one issue on which everyone should agree: Trump’s is the most corrupt and dishonest administration in our history. Rather than hiding it, they wave it like that huge American flag on I-5 north of Mount Vernon. Trump has openly regretted not enriching himself more in his first term. Unable to deny, MAGA's only options are to ignore or embrace. We see both. “At least he’s honest about his dishonesty,” they say, admiringly. Or, “ Everybody cheats.”

It’s not merely embarrassing that our great-until-Trump country twice elected an unscrupulous, bribofacient, self-promoting fraudster; the damage at home and abroad is incalculable. Perhaps MAGA-threatened future historians will elaborate. For now, all we can do is enumerate. Following FIFA’s pandering “peace prize," Trump’s next briblical acceptance was the Washington Coal Club’s “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal” prize. It’d be hilarious, had he not, a day later ended our government’s ability to regulate climate change emissions, to which coal is the greatest lump-for-lump contributor.

As literate Americans know, “clean coal” isn’t a thing, whereas climate change most definitely is. From his kingly throne, Trump is doing everything possible to boost fossil fuels and impede sustainable, actually clean energy. The money he gets from oil tycoons confirms his bribocratic corruption. With the fingers of others filling his pockets, he raises a middle one to us.

Bribery isn’t Trumpism’s only corruption. There’s cry-wolfery, gaslighting, and “accusation is admission.” Working to rig elections, for example, while lying that every election Trump or MAGAs lost was rigged. It’s as much a part of today’s Republican agenda as climate change denial, pardoning criminals, rewriting history, and lying to our faces. “Democrats rig elections,” they cry, against all evidence, while doing it. MAGAs wolf it down.

Here’s Homeland Insecurity’s Kristi Noem, promoting the restrictive voter ID requirements in the SAVE act, bragging, “ ... when it gets to Election Day ... we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.” Confirming the anti-democracy and anti-Democrats purposes of voter ID, Republican Study Committee Chair August Pfluger (R-Texas) added, “The American people did not give Republicans a mandate to make excuses. They gave us one to deliver wins, and the SAVE America Act is exactly that.” (Italics mine.) Okay, well, they’re not lying about that. Ms. Noem did lie about another ICE shooting, though.

 

If states requiring it made voter ID equally accessible across all demographics, it’d be okay. In red states, it’s the opposite. They just said so. And who trusts Trump’s DOJ to protect the Georgia ballots they commandeered with no legal justification? His desire to “nationalize” elections is, of course, unconstitutional. Would it matter to his agreeable Supreme Court?

Noem. Bondi. Who can say who’s worse? In a tight race, impudent, arrogant, toadying Pam pulled ahead last week, when she broadcast her and her boss’s contempt for the Constitution; yelling, deflecting, insulting, refusing to answer legitimate, Constitutionally required oversight of her handling of the Epstein files. Why are you asking about that when the DOW is over fifty thousand, she sneered, non-sequiturally. While she scanned her staff-prepared, scripted whataboutisms to gotchify Democrats, Republicans on the Committee, living and dead, like every MAGA, couldn’t hide their glee. In a Congress containing Republicans of old, as in the Nixon era, the hearing would have adjourned immediately, to begin impeachment proceedings. But that party is as dead as climate regulation.

There are rumblings. In deep red South Texas last week, in a district Trump won by seventeen points, a Democrat soundly beat a Republican for state senate despite being outspent by millions of dollars. The same happened in very red Louisiana. Texas Republicans’ unprecedented and cynical mid-cycle gerrymandering, along with growing revulsion at Trump’s ICE brutality and, maybe, his transparent lying, have created unanticipated blue districts, while spurring blue states like California, after Trump’s Constitution-rewriting SCOTUS greenlit Texas, to do the same.

Clear-eyed voters know to assume every word uttered by Trump and his collection of collaborators is a lie; that every action is to their benefit, not ours. As scales drop from pinkish eyes, there might still be hope. But November is far enough away for plenty of Republican meddling.

Now, a mea kinda culpa. Last week, I praised the “unmitigated joy” of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Since then, enthusiastic critics have sent translations which, if accurately rendered, were vulgar. I was disappointed and promised to address it. Since then, though, I’ve seen sources indicating the crudités had been edited in compliance with broadcast standards.

Few words, if any, have single comparables between languages; by definition, translations are subjective. Unless those taking offense are fluent Spanish speakers and heard it directly, I’ll stick with joyful.