The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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So you thought you’d take a break from politics the day after the elections, did you? Sure you did, but you forgot, the Trumpster never takes a break, the Trumpster never sleeps, the Trumpster is the Energizer Bad Bunny of America. Like those sci-fi creatures from the ‘50’s, he cannot exist without your attention. He feeds on your horror at every tweet, at every dog whistle, at every misogynistic slur. Avert your eyes for a few days and he’d dissolve in a puddle of his own slime like the Wicked Witch of the West after a bucket of cold water.

Get ready for another two years. They don’t call it Mid-Term for chuckles. Halfway through our national ordeal. Expect some cabinet shake-ups. Some firings. Some name calling. Another Saturday Night Massacre. Get ready for a stand-off at the border with the zombie caravan trudging north. Gear up for a little saber rattling with Iran and more of that loveable John Bolton, the guy who loves a good ground war. If you thought the Blue Wave might shut these folks down for awhile, you’ve been out of the country for too long on some cruise ship to Antarctica.

The Trump/Bannon paradigm is to use tweets the way a mass killer uses an AR-15. Careful aim isn’t what matters, what matters is keeping the trigger finger engaged. Given enough time and ammo, the splatter spray will bring a building down. Congressional hearings will take months, investigations will take years, Mueller may be fired … but meantime the ricocheting tweets and executive orders will be a constant barrage on the 24/7 news cycle. The man is a human whack-a-mole, popping up here, popping up there, popping up everywhere.

He didn’t lose those elections yesterday. He never loses. And we didn’t win any yesterday. There is no winning with this guy in office. Buckle up, the ride isn’t anywhere near over.

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The mizzus and me were thinking of having an Election Party this mid-term. Serve up some bubbly and hopefully celebrate a Blue Wave. But then we remembered the last two election parties we had, one where Trump thumped Hillary and the other where Gore lost to Bush. Now, I like a good cry as well as the next man, but three in a row, not so much. So we’re going to skip that party and hope our luck changes for the better.

Trump is on the stump now. Hell if I know who’s running the country while he’s jetting to the red states with his little red MAGA cap, maybe Kellyanne, maybe Sarah Sanders. All I know is he can’t do as much damage on the road. And even he seems to understand that if this election goes Blue, his next two years he can look forward to some real investigations, not the pretend ones we have now. What is in those tax returns he’s waiting for the audit to conclude before showing us how the Master of the Deal evades paying anything. While we’re at it, maybe take a look at those emoluments, at the nepotism, at the Russian connections, at the Hillary e-mails that turned up in Trump’s campaign committee, at a few of those business deals of his.

Goodbye to the ‘pass’ the GOP gave him for two years if that happens, hello to Bob Mueller’s detailed results of his investigation. Course, if it’s a Red Wave, it’s crying time again. We’ll get the message that Trump wasn’t just some anomaly where the electorate wanted to shake things up and he was the monkey wrench. We’ll discover the majority in this country love a thug, a bully, a dog-whistling demagogue who prefers dictators far more than the democracy he intends to subvert.

I’m optimistic the country made a mistake two years ago and now realize the damage done. I’m hopeful we’ll right the ship of state and send Trump’s enablers packing for their new lobbying jobs. But I’m too cynical to be confident. Trump showed me what this country can easily become. And worse, what it already is. We’ll see shortly if we’ve seen an even darker future. Meanwhile, we’re skipping the party.

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Rep. Matt Shea, a state legislator in the Spokane Valley, has been putting out a pamphlet citing Biblical passages to promote war and violence. His ‘Biblical Basis for War’ is a four page guide to waging holy war against those who refuse to obey Biblical Law. Now, I’m an eye for an eye kind of guy most of the time, but this is maybe a little more, I don’t know, close to what the good Representative for the Inland Empire might accuse the Muslims of doing if they could impose Sharia Law.

You have an abortion, you change gender, you marry someone of the same sex, well, you’re guilty of violating Biblical Law and should be punished. And, to quote from Matt’s text, ‘if they do not yield, kill all males.’ Kinda harsh, Matt, but pretty clear. Maybe stone them. Or behead them. Whatever you like but send a message to all the liberals and scofflaws, you ignore the Bible, buddy, you get what you deserve, death delivered by the righteous!!

Death to the gays, death to the woman who has an abortion, death to the folks who get a sex change, death to the unyielders, boy, howdy, that’s a lot of executions. And if you start throwing in death because you eat pork, death if you commit adultery, death if you steal, death if you worship false gods, holy prayer meeting, Matt, who’s gonna be left to vote for you?

These are strange times in the Holy Land, no doubt about it. Probably smart to get your hands on a Bible and read it, maybe take some serious notes if you want to avoid the Wrath of Matt. Over in Pakistan the True Believers are up in arms over some Christian woman who blasphemed the Prophet. She’s been on death row for years, but the Courts there said she was free to go. Not so fast, Sister, the Muslim Mattsters cried and poured out into the streets of Islamabad by the thousands, blocking her exit out of that less than tolerant country. Now the Supreme Court says they’ll review the verdict to avoid a political crisis. Seems to me we could defuse this fairly easy. Trade the woman for Matt. They’d both be happier in the other country.

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Let’s recap the week, okay? Kashoggi assassinated in a Turkish embassy, a massacre in a Jewish synagogue, an announcement to pull out of the nuclear treaty with Russia, a scheme to smear Mueller before the midterms with a paid accusation of sexual malfeasance, troops sent to the border to guard against hundreds of women and children escaping violence in Central America, pipe bombs sent to a dozen Democrats and news organizations, Trump’s threat to end birthing rights to those born in America, try to keep up if you can….

It’s impossible. Most of us have already forgotten Kashoggi, murdered apparently by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of Trump’s son-in-law and Trump himself who thinks maybe the twenty-seven excuses the Prince has given should be assumed true at least until the next alibi. But, hey, it’s already page 17, old news, buried under 250 tweets. Our short attention spans have been diverted down 16 rabbit holes since then and the Next Big Tweet is coming in like a Tomahawk missile soon as you open up that computer. There are terrorists in the invading force south of the border. There are people with diseases they intend to spread across borderless America. The children of immigrants should never be given citizenship even if they’re born here regardless of the 14th Amendment, not if an executive order can stop them.

An anti-Semite walked into a Jewish synagogue with an AR-15 assault rifle and murdered 11 people who had spent their lives helping immigrants acclimate to this very strange culture we have. The President tweeted that when he went to Pittsburg to show his empathy to the grieving city he and Melania were shown a great deal of respect. Not one word about the victims, not one word about the climate that created a monster. Nope, nice visit, thanks for the courtesy to me and the mizzus.

Did his politics of division trigger this rampage? Hell if I know. But the drumbeat of mockery, the dog whistled racism, the attacks on the press as fake and unbalanced, I think we know they had something to do with it. Don’t blame the messenger, he says, don’t blame me, we need to come together, one America, united we stand. Then he tweets that the lying press is the enemy of the people.

This week we’re voting. My ballot went in last week. Rumor in the lying press is that we’re turning out in record numbers for the mid-term. We’ll see in a week who America thinks is the real Enemy.

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