Let The Draining Begin

 

                    Cartoon made using AI

This, my final column before the election, ought to be special, right? Presenting insights so original and profound they’d never been proffered anywhere. Reasons to vote Democratic so compelling that even MAGAs would be convinced. Impossible. It’s all been said. By now, minds are made up, millions of votes cast. Around here, we’re seeing ads for judges.

Everyone, including “Trump’s lies speak to me” diehards, has by now heard of Vivek Ramaswamy’s desperate “engovernorize me” ad beseeching Ohioans to accept the word of an edentulous (no offense to the toothless), disheveled woman his people tracked down (and paid?), who abandoned her two children when her daughter, now running against Vivek, was twelve. Who married the man that raped that daughter and skipped town with him to avoid prosecution. A mother who hadn’t seen or been in contact with candidate Amy Acton for decades. Even conservative sources have confirmed Dr. Acton’s story. 

Billionaire Vivek’s character, if previously obscure, is revealed by the ad and the $4 million he’s spending to run it. J.D. Vance, though, and Trump? Their defense of him is as unsurprising as the next time Trump falls asleep on camera. It’s not the ad that bothers J.D. What angers him is Republicans denouncing it, because in his mind, devoid as it is of any immutable core values, Republicans mustn’t deplore weaponizing child abuse or criticize the sinking to any disgusting low by any candidate of their party. From that dark place, it follows that unquestioning allegiance to Trump, who lies constantly, blocks release of the Epstein files, thirsts over people’s asses, and hallucinates sex-change operations by second-grade teachers, is, to America’s Vice-President, an absolute requirement of party membership. (For swallowers of Trump’s gruelty: Children coming home from school in body bags -- over five hundred. Children coming home from school with body changes -- zero.)

Trump, who wouldn’t recognize truth if it punched him in the nose, called Ramaswamy’s ad a truthful statement by a mother who knows her child as only a mother can. That’s as counterfactual as anything he’s ever expelled. The ad and the way the deplorable duo currently leading their party and our country defend it defines what Republicans have become under Trump.

When he’s not renaming things both wet and dry, degrading or destroying D.C. landmarks, or pathetically plastering his name everywhere, Trump is spending the days leading to next week polluting the populace with increasingly incoherent ramblings at rallies, the central theme of which, aside from those ass-inine, definitely-not-weird or sexually ambiguous comments or making noises that suggest a need for exorcism, is that Democrats will impose communism on America.

Like every credulous MAGAphyte, he has no idea what communism is, nor does he point to anything factual that Democrats propose that’s remotely akin to it. Because there are none. But it’s a reliable applause line and food for MAGA hunger, when, in reality, by having his government buy up shares in giant corporations, Trump is the closest thing to a socialist “president” America has ever had. Also the most anti-democracy and Constitution-trashing. Not communist, though. So there’s that.

At his self-glorifying rallies, he’s also been conditioning doing the right thing, something with which he’s been unfamiliar for his whole life, like compensating Marines sickened by water at Fort Lejeune, on Republicans retaining Congress. It’s a raised middle finger to all Americans and naked bribery, like $100 million for a Defense Department plant in Kentucky, year-round ethanol-added gas in Kansas, and disaster relief from Georgia. If Republicans lose, he said out loud, those citizens get nothing. Speaking of asses.

Lacking anything substantive to attract voters, the desperate closing arguments of Trump and his candidates are character assassination, the most disgusting Islamophobia, transparent lies, and phony scare tactics. “Transing” your kids. Banning your religion. Calling Dr. Abdul El-Sayed a jihadist (Trump does) and raiding the home of Ilhan Omar while remaining strangely silent on Muslim Mehmet Oz, one of Trump’s many science-averse medical advisers doing actual human harm. Supporting criminals like indicted and impeached Ken Paxton while mendaciously smearing his opponent, James Talarico.

All of it is funded by tech and media billionaires who have less respect for democracy and fair elections than Trump, or Vance, or Hegseth, or Blanche, the latter of whom has openly stated his fealty to Trump, not the American people. As proof, he’s suing Alaska over its right to choose its own senator, as directed to by Trump (). Plus multiple bogosities against other states, including ours; intended not to win in court, but to sow distrust of elections and prime their predictable cries of fraud when they lose.

So, yeah. There’s nothing new to say about the most corrupt “presidency” ever, nor MAGA Republican politicians who’ve become submissive belly-bearers to it. What must happen on Tuesday is obvious. And imperative. Despite Trump’s unconstitutional attacks on voting, we vote and we hope.

Use drop-boxes. Don’t rely on Trump’s USPS.