Last chance to get in some licks before Election Day:
– Those of us who voted for Donald Trump have been called “a basket of deplorables” by Hillary Clinton, and members of Trump’s “rube, 10-tooth base,” by Never Trumper Republican “strategist” Rick Wilson. As a registered Republican who voted for Trump, it’s difficult to avoid the studied conclusion that we don’t get no respect.
Last week presidential historian John Meacham, an NBC analyst, piled on, saying this:
“There is a lizard brain in this country. Donald Trump is a product of the white man’s, the anguished, nervous white guy’s lizard brain.”
Seems kind of harsh, don’t you think?
On Facebook, I posted this:
“I just saw historian John Meacham call people who voted for Trump ‘lizard brains.’ What I like best about liberals is their compassion.”
A liberal friend responded that he has compassion for me, citing his sympathy for my tiny lizard brain as evidence.
I responded that I would have expected something better from a noted presidential historian like Meacham, adding that “it boggles my tiny lizard brain.”
The question is, will this name calling (didn’t John Meacham’s mother teach him better?) make lizard brains like us (there were 63 million of us in 2016) more or less likely to go to the polls and vote for Trump?
I say more likely. I say walking through hot coals and crawling over broken glass likely.
Out here in the West, we have a response to insults like this:
“Smile when you call me lizard brain, pardner.”
– Joe Biden has repeatedly accused President Trump of “attacking my family” in his references to the curious activities of his son Hunter Biden.
I think, however, there is a difference between attacking a candidate’s family – say, alleging that “your mother wears army boots,” or that your children are ugly – and asking a perfectly justifiable question about family members, and perhaps Old Joe himself, getting rich off of public “service.”
Most of the news media are far too partisan (nutty liberal) to ask Biden about this, making me wonder if Nixon and Agnew could have avoided resignation if they had only been Democrats.
– I may have a primitive reptilian brain, tiny and insignificant, but it can still be boggled by politicians who – despite the needs of Americans suffering from Covid-19 shutdowns, loss of jobs, lack of income to pay for rent or mortgages, and the depression of long-term isolation – have so far refused to place the needs of struggling Americans above their political careers.
They like to call themselves “honorable,” but what we have seen is despicable. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi demands trillions in coronavirus relief, while Republicans believe hundreds of billions should suffice. (!) And instead of granting mere hundreds of billions, to get help flowing to folks running out of groceries and losing their businesses, with the possibility of more help in the future, Pelosi stood in the way of any help at all.
One must conclude that a political victory, or depriving Republicans of one on the eve of an election, are more important to our Speaker of the House than throwing a life-line to pandemic drowning Americans.
I believe this is the very definition of the word “craven,” and the reason most common-sense Americans feel a degree of disgust when it comes to politics.
And politicians.
(Thank heavens self-serving people like this weren’t aboard the landing craft at Normandy.)
– An advertisement for a Parkinson’s Disease treatment drug called “Nuplazid” shows a picture of an anxious man who has “started believing things that aren’t true!”
Who among us, in this Chinese water torture of a presidential election, hasn’t thought the same thing – they believe things that aren’t true – about members of the opposing party?
– And lastly, if it turns out that Joe Biden wins the election and becomes the 46th President of the United States, I intend to regard him with all the respect, dignity, good will, cooperation and benefit of the doubt that our Democrat friends have extended to Donald J. Trump.
Every. Single. Stinking. Bit.
Payback, as they say, will be, well, let’s just say, pretty unpleasant.
Dave Simpson can be contacted at davesimpson145@hotmail.com
