Weird as Sh*t

We are passing through a strange electoral purgatory, between this 'lame duck' administration's rejection and the next's inauguration, with only some vague assurance that we aren't going back to hell. And that's okay; it's better than where we were. There is some consolation in watching the demons eat their own while Trump is holed up in the White House, emerging only occasionally to play a round of golf. Trump's legal team is still recovering from a lost appeal in Pennsylvania on Friday, with Judge Stephanos Bibas writing: 

Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.

Judge Bibas is a Trump appointee. It is a time of thanksgiving, then.

On Thursday, we were able to sit down to an intimate, pandemic-appropriate Thanksgiving almoço with friends here in the Lisbon area. Couples sat in pairs at tables set two meters apart, but it was a true gift to share turkey, stuffing, and Donna's apple pie. The conversation did inevitably turn to the election, and I found myself alone, arguing that the system functioned pretty much as designed. Specifically, the group expressed horror and incredulity at the narrow victory, a sign of new and shocking problems in the system. Like Judge Bibas in Pennsylvania, there was only 'that one guy' in Michigan, marshaling his integrity, standing between us and electoral damnation. I felt like the Dave Chapelle character on SNL's 2016 'Election Night' skit, wondering at the confusion and anxiety. The system has always been extremely fragile, but maybe you need the right perspective or life experience to achieve clarity.

We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have. As John Adams once said, 'We are a government of laws, not men.' This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election. (Aaron Van Langevelde, Republican member of Michigan’s board of state canvassers, calls for the certification of Michigan's election on Monday, Nov. 23rd; soon after the certification, the GSA issued a letter to ascertain the winner, and start the formal transition process)

The system is unfair, it's racist, it's easily manipulated, it's super-rickety and often barely hangs together. The system has always relied on 'that one guy', and we each get our turn. I think it's always been that way. We may work as hard as we can to fix it, but in the end, we have to trust and let it play out.

I will admit, for argument sake, that the system has never been attacked by a president intent on destroying it rather than admitting defeat – but it seems to be holding up to that as well. On the other hand, none of these situations help instill confidence either. The system may have let us down in the past, but it's hard to say that it's ever broken down.

On Tuesday, following the GSA's ascertainment, the Dow Jones Index closed over thirty-thousand points, an historic high. Trump popped into a press briefing to wildly claim credit. His appearance lasted all of a minute, and as he shuffled from the podium without taking questions, a reporter could be heard to say, "Well, that was weird as shit."

My internal VCR fast-rewinds to Trump's inauguration: in defeat, Hillary Clinton is compelled to attend, sits in the VIP section next to President George W. Bush, and listens to Trump's divisive 'America First' speech. Clinton tells the story of Bush's reaction to the speech, "Well, that was some weird shit."

We end where we started, perfect bookends to Trump's presidency.

The next circle in our departure from the Inferno is Georgia's senate runoff elections. Republicans Loeffler and Perdue are easily two of the worst, self-serving senators in Washington. Trump is headed to Georgia next week to hold rallies. At this point who knows what he's going to say – if Georgia's elections are 'rigged' what's the point of holding another? Many of his supporters are attacking Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who now plays the part of  'that one guy'. Loeffler and Perdue have called for Raffensperger's resignation. Other Trump supporters are self-destructively demanding an election boycott. Raffensperger pens a heartfelt op-ed in USA Today:

By all accounts, Georgia had a wildly successful and smooth election. We finally defeated voting lines and put behind us Fulton County’s now notorious reputation for disastrous elections. This should be something for Georgians to celebrate, whether their favored presidential candidate won or lost. For those wondering, mine lost — my family voted for him, donated to him and are now being thrown under the bus by him.

In Dante's Purgatorio, we meet a cast of characters as we climb to Paradiso. It is a catalog of sin: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust. How else to consider Trump and his minions as we leave him and them in the lower circles? Responding to this general question on Quora, Nate White, a copy-writer from the UK, sums him up:

He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

Amen.

Meanwhile, the pandemic rages on. The global cases total passed sixty million on Tuesday. The US passed thirteen million on Wednesday. Portugal is racing towards three hundred thousand cases, but the rate is, at least for now, slowing. The 'second wave' has been very difficult everywhere. Though Georgia has managed better during this recent surge, Trump's tightly-packed, mask-free, shout-fest rallies have consistently turned into super-spreader events. Trump is headed there next week.

cases: 62,408,411 global • 13,558,726 USA • 290,706 Portugal

deaths: 1,455,807 global • 271,942 USA • 4,363 Portugal

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UPDATE (December 1): I've found a prescient and concise history of 'weird sh*t in America' written by Richard Hofstadter, recently re-posted on the Harper's Magazine web site – from November 1964 (replace Roosevelt’s New Deal with Obamacare, etc):

The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism.

The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.

Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.

Today is Restauração da Independência in Portugal, celebrating the acclamation of the Duke of Bragança as Dom João IV in 1640, and the end of the Iberian Union.

Also today, the US records over fourteen million (14,039,630) cases of COVID-19; the world records over sixty-four million (64,026,023). Portugal records over three hundred thousand cases (2,401 new, 300,462 total cases). Since October 9th, Portugal has consistently posted higher case numbers than Georgia – except today, Georgia posts nearly five thousand (4,842 new, 476,405 total cases).