The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe I live too far from Rome. Which, these crazy days of politics gone mad, might be viewed as a blessing from the gods. But unfortunately I’m a news junkie and even worse, I care about the world beyond the South End’s porous borders. As hard as it is to believe, I’m watching the increasingly probable return of Donald J. Trump, convicted felon. A man indicted on so many counts, we’ve all lost count. Impeached but not convicted, twice. We all know who this guy is and yet …

What I cannot comprehend from my perch at the end of an island at the far reaches of the continent is how this election seems to have lost focus on the real issues of our time. Trump is gaining traction with the Hispanic vote. Doesn’t matter, apparently, that he calls the immigrants criminals, insane, rapists, murderers. Trump is polling better with the Black voters. Doesn’t matter that for a decade his dog whistles underly a racism that ought to disqualify him for any black votes other than Clarence Thomas’s. The young voters, all those Gen Whatevers, have begun to swing his way. Doesn’t matter that the greatest threat to them is climate change and if Trump wins, it’s more drill baby drill. Bring back coal, kill the EV automobile, forget about cutting emissions. He’s even gaining with the women, maybe they’re tired of the Me Too Movement and a guy who grabs crotches, rapes women and pays hush money to porn stars isn’t as bad as they thought.

How hard is it to make this case? He blames the deficit on Biden but was the one to cut corporate taxes. And wants to cut them further. He wants to put tariffs back on Chinese imports. How difficult is it to point out the average household will pay even more than what inflation has already cost us? The economy, despite Trump’s dire prediction, isn’t going down the toilet. It’s in better shape than most other countries, employment is growing, wages are up, inflation is down.

I guess our attention spans, shrunk to a few seconds max by Instagram and X, certainly can’t recall when this pre-felon advocated treating Covid with bleach and other quack remedies. Only one million Americans died of that disease but we’ve forgotten by now. Big deal … and the next pandemic he’ll outlaw masks and isolation.

January 6th was far too long back for most of us Inattentives to remember. Mobs hunting our senators and representatives, howling to hang Pelosi and Pence, killing and beating a few capitol police. What the right wing calls a tourist imbroglio, nothing to see there; in fact, given the chance, the instigator will pardon the convicted.

The list of outrages is too long, too depressing, too egregious. But this country, apparently amnesiac, may vote him back in. It takes your breath away. And it will take more than that before his next term ends. Assuming it ever ends.

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