So now, officially, it's all about him. Criss-crossing the country, the Worst President (by far) in the History of the United States stands before adoring throngs of brain-dead white people. He ridicules women and those in the giddy crowd cheer.
He denigrates the principles on which this country was built and they cheer. He makes fun of handicapped people and the poor and the sick and sexual assault victims ... and they cheer. He is a stupid, vulgar and vile person and yet, two out of every five Americans cheer him on. It is a very bad time in America.
On Election Night in 2016, I felt the same bitter taste as the majority of the people of this country. But, ever the cockeyed optimist, I thought that sometime in the coming months, many of those who had voted for the liar and cheat would recover from the hangover of their ill-conceived, screw-you vote and come back to the position that America—while not always right and never perfect—is better than that. But it hasn't happened and dread and disillusionment has set in.
I've figured that Melania, who sold her self-respect for a life of gauche luxury, deserves everything that she gets. The chest-thumping Christians, who spent the last few decades wrapped in a political cloth (supposedly) woven of morality and rectitude, will someday have hell to pay (and will richly deserve it) for trading everything they claimed to believe in for a Supreme Court justice or two. (Please know that the WORST possible outcome for these people would be the repeal of Roe v. Wade. There would be a burst of celebration followed by years of moaning and gnashing of teeth over the loss of their one and only political raison d'etre.) And the Republican Party, some of the core principles of which I used to admire and support, sold its very soul for a minor tax break and way more pollution.
They all deserve what they got or what they're going to get, but America doesn't deserve it. The wonderful idea of America doesn't call someone with whom you have had intimate relations "Horseface" to try to get a cheap laugh. America doesn't piss on its international friends and then turn around to kiss the asses of thugs and demons. And America at least tries to be inclusive. It rarely succeeds, but it at least tries.
If you were to take the derivative of America at this moment, things look very bad. Our trajectory is awful and our acceleration is even worse. And it can all be traced to one petty, narcissistic and vengeful person who has decided to make the upcoming election a referendum on him. Not surprisingly, in classic punk-bitch style, he has said that if the Republicans win, he'll take the credit, but if they lose, he won't take the blame.
In many ways, it feels like the most important election of my lifetime. That doesn't make me feel any better, because in the last election that was so named, 1968, an openly racist slime won the electoral votes in five Southern states and the craven slime that was Richard Nixon was elected President.
We have an election to complete and there are a lot of important things and races to consider. I would never presume to tell anybody how to vote. In fact, I have never understood newspaper endorsements. I damn sure don't understand the Arizona Daily Star's endorsement of Doug Douche-y, a guy who is openly hostile to public education, only opens up the checkbook for schools when his frustrated and adamant business buddies tell him to, and then has the unmitigated gall to call himself the Education Governor.
The race that's getting the most attention is that for the U.S. Senate. I have mentioned that I used to consider Martha McSally a friend. If she had lost her mind, she would still be a friend. But she has intentionally set her mind aside in a win-at-all-costs pursuit of a Senate seat.
Critics of this column snarkily invoke some nebulous civility clause. I never signed on to such a thing, but I know where the boundaries are. You don't call somebody a child molester and you don't call somebody a traitor. And Martha has leapt over that line with gleeful abandon. I like Kyrsten Sinema about as much as I liked Hillary Clinton (which was not very much). But I despise what Martha McSally has become and the things for which she now claims to stand.
I'm going to vote for Prop 127 and Prop 463. As a state and a community, we're not nearly forward-thinking enough and we are severely undertaxed, considering what we want and need.
In all my years of following politics, one of the main things that I have learned is that anybody who says that they are going to run government like a business is a moron. And any voter who thinks that's a good idea is a moron to the 3.7 power. One of many reasons that it's an idiotic thing to say or attempt to do is that a good business is run to make a profit, an efficient government, at best, will break even. It's like saying, "I'm good at basketball, so I would make a great violinist."
Steve Gaynor, great businessman. Moron.
