Oh yes. The satire…
What happened last night was real life on one side of the stage (and the split screen), in the person of U.S. President Joe Biden who had taken on debating the other side of the stage, i.e., the not-real-life, the satire.
He struggled, yes. He has decades of experience and knowledge about our complex government; he has the facts. How does one select pertinent facts which will (a) fit into two minutes and (b) rebut the satirical figure on the other side of the stage, who spent his time spewing slanderous lies and making up stuff?
I don’t know. I couldn’t have done it.
And then what about the utterly bizarre creature on the other side of the stage? My overall reaction was that some stupid crazy guy had wandered in off the street, spouting endless delusions about how he once been president of this country and had been the greatest everything the universe had ever known.
What the fuck? Why was he on that stage? I kept thinking about the famous Apollo Theater Hook, the one brought out from the wings to remove a bad performer. “The hook!” I was mentally yelling. “Give him the hook!”
But no. He was allowed to stay there, spouting…well, I can’t dutifully call them “lies;” they were more surreal than lies.
Then, to my further irritation, the otherwise great hosts on MSNBC, with the exception of Lawrence O’Donnell, focused their obvious distress almost entirely on Biden. As if Trump hadn’t been there at all. After a rudimentary, “Oh, Trump lied all the time,” they addressed themselves to Biden’s stumbles.
Are people really suggesting Biden drop out of the race but not suggesting that Trump be forceably yanked from our screens? Not suggesting that the entity entirely responsible for Trump’s awful presence in our lives, i.e., the Republican Party, should take the blame for letting Trump win their debates and become the GOP candidate back in 2016? The worst candidate they’ve ever produced?
So let’s leave that nasty satire for real life.
On Monday, July 8, I will be having a cracked tooth yanked and a flipper installed. Unrelatedly, a couple of days later, Thursday, July 11, Trump will be standing in front of Judge Juan Merchan in New York’s Criminal Court hearing his sentence after his (real life) 34 convictions. I believe he will get prison time.
Before then, though, this coming Monday, the Supreme Court Six, participants in both the satire and the real life (they’re really confused, those six), will tell us whether Trump is immune from prosecution for January 6 and other indicted crimes. After which scene, real life will take up the DC case against him. I believe they’ll be able to try him before the November election.
So here in real life, we will vote for the real life candidate so we can continue to have a real government, one capable of dealing with the corrupt mess the SCOTUS Six made, and give the status of multiple loser to the GOP satire.
Our Department of Justice will take over from there.