Detox

 “If the enemy has no scruples, then the side with scruples is doomed to defeat.” Javier Marias, Berta Isla

After a long overdue decision to quit the daily barrage of political social media that has been my staple diet for several years, I signed out of Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Medium and Facebook. That was three days ago and it already seems quieter inside my head. It’s not a total break from national politics because I read enough periodicals to stay abreast, rather a retreat from the daily torrent of prognostications and analysis of Trump’s latest past-midnight all caps post, the most recent polls showing Trump leading Biden, or the odds that the GOP will deliberately torpedo the economy with its debt-ceiling blackmail.  

Getting off Twitter paid immediate dividends as the platform is simply an outrage machine that never fails to set my blood boiling. 

More than a year ago, after a late summer trip to Oregon to visit my brother, I vowed to reduce and self-regulate my exposure to political news, but I couldn’t do it for more than a few days, and, like a dope fiend, I was back in the deep end of the pool, being reminded every five minutes that my country is in deep shit. I know it is, and an insufficient number of people seem to give a damn. If American voters can’t see by now how dangerous Donald Trump is they must agree with him, don’t care one way or another, or believe the danger of a second Trump term is overstated, which it most certainly isn’t. Trump is far more unhinged in 2023 than he was in 2015, with a firm grip on the GOP, which is even more radical than it was during his disastrous first term. Madness and cruelty reign. Twenty-five years ago any public figure who pulled a smidgeon of the shit Trump has would have been sunk. 

Unfortunately, shame is no longer a moderating influence in politics (just ask George Santos), and I honestly believe that if Trump roofied Ivanka and fucked her in a hottub at Mar-A-Lago while Jared Kushner and a dozen guests sat nearby watching, GOP bigwigs and the corporate media would normalize the transgression. 

Kevin McCarthy: “But what about Democrats who mix cocktails with the blood of aborted babies!”

Lindsey Graham: “Do we know for sure there was penetration? Because if there’s no penetration there’s no incest. Unless you can prove penetration, I don’t see a problem.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Nancy Pelosi roofied her husband all the time and twice when the moon was full.”

And so on and so on and so on until public horror fades and is forgotten. 

I don’t need to be teased several times a day about how close Special Counsel Jack Smith is to completing his investigations into January 6 and Trump’s theft of classified material and other public documents, or the latest from Fani Willis in Georgia. Smith and his team of prosecutors hauled the dim-witted Christian eunuch, Mike “Ever Pious” Pence before a grand jury, but strangely, not Mark Meadows though he was at the center of the effort to monkey-wrench the 2020 election. Even the cadre of pundits on MSNBC are silent about Meadows. I find this very strange and wonder why Meadows has been given a pass. Until Meadows faces a grand jury I’m not getting my hopes up for a DOJ indictment of Trump and his many co-conspirators. 

My hunch is that Trump will be pardoned long before he’s ever convicted. For the good of the Republic, of course.