Life of Wry

Here I sit in quite the state of which little path should I walk down today? I am overwhelmingly behind on my so-called daily blog (curse you, vacations!) (I love you, vacations!). Can’t decide if I should blog the vacations that are most moist in my memory (or is that moistest?), or should I go back to the first holes in my 2025 documentorama and start there? My inner OCDiva tells me to go back to the first hole and proceed methodically from there. That strategy is met with a deep sigh that sends me instead to the NYT Spelling Bee to see if I can find a few more words (Queen Bee is such a tease), or to my inbox to cull a few hundred now-dated urgent messages from Robert Reich, Jess Craven, Rick Wilson, Robert Hubble, Pod Save America, Heather, Mike, Jim (not my Jim), Peter (not my Peter), Dan, Don… etc. (and this would skim but a fraction of the 4000+ emails in my inbox of dread).

Sooo…

Instead of doing the #1 item on my todo list (or partake in any of its super satisfying distractions), I will take just a short moment to comment on the political fetish du jour.. the Epstein Files.

As I was driving to yesterday’s John Lewis Good Trouble Lives On gathering in Woodland (it was excellent, maybe I’ll even blog about it, if I ever catch up), I was literally on Main St, approaching Heritage Plaza (site of gathering), when the story broke about the salacious letter our puerile, potty-mouthed president sent to his convicted sex-offender buddy Jeffrey. (Whatta perfect pair they are.) I admit to all manner of giddiness upon hearing the early phases of this story!

Two hours later, I’m driving home… and picked the story right back up. Giddiness level still high!

For my Lifeofwry record, the moment we are in:

We’ve had a couple weeks now of Epstein Files news. Musk, bless his heart, brought this story back to life as his bromance with trump started to fall apart and he took to the twitters to vent his anger (thank goodness for ego maniacs who can’t help but put their psychoses on full public display). He teased all kinds of incriminating information about the relationship between trump and Epstein and began calling for the release of The Files. This ignited the far right Magasphere who believed NOT that their dear leader was implicated, but that the files contained, as trump and his people had promised, a mother load of titillating revelations about high level democrats. These guys aggressively campaigned on this for months leading up to the 2024 election. Elect trump and the truth will come out about Clinton and, well, everyone who’s anyone. He promised he’d reveal The Files. Now in office, his personal lawyer, AG Bondi, said she had The List on her desk!

These guys are so full of shit.

They throw the reddest of red raw meat to their base. The red-faced nutcase online Maga influencers then light these conspiracy theories on fire and they spread through crazy town, inspiring their people to come out of their basements and vote. FOX entertainment does its part to amplify the conspiracies and make sure no republican is left behind. trump, of course, wins, thanks to this poor, misinformed, misdirected aggrieved buncha folks who don’t really know anything about current events, history, how government works… it’s just a nightmare. There were enough of them to put him over the top. He claimed he loved them and would fight for them. Of course he said this; he needed their votes. And he got them. And just like in his first term, he fights NOT for them but for the billionaire class, but he continues to keep them on his side with culture war garbage. He uses, to great effect, propaganda that convinces them to fear the other, to hate our government and institutions, to believe dems are evil and hate our country (and them). He bombards and blinds them with this sewage. They don’t even notice that the programs and services they’ve relied on are all disappearing. It’s stunning.

I ramble. We know all this.

But the thing is, now these guys are mad. They were promised the goods. They gave trump their vote and now they want their spoils. But trump doesn’t want to give up The Files (wonder why?). These guys are hilariously torn… they love him, don’t want to think he’d do them wrong, so they’re looking for a fall guy.. and that appears to be Ms. Bondi. It’s just all so rich. She does whatever trump wants, waaay overcommitted, and now she’s stuck holding the poop. He skates away. Maybe.

It sure looks like trump doesn’t care about the base. He’s thrown them, bigly, under the bus (they’re now — according to his desperate, wretched posts on truth social (shudder) — weaklings, and stupid, and he doesn’t need their support anymore). trump’s lashing out at party leaders who think releasing The Files makes sense, he’s lashing out at the influencers and their grubby followers who want The Files. The whole lot of them are torn. They love him, they’ve been with him. He’s letting them down. He’s calling them names.

I think he doesn’t care. He got what he needed from them: to be elected president. That way 1) all his legal troubles vanished (#1 reason for running, to stay out of prison); 2) he has the platform and the tools of retribution he craves to level against Biden and anyone, anywhere who opposed him or embarrassed him; 3) he’s able to enrich himself and family through the stratosphere and beyond; 4) he can (rightly, disgustingly) claim the mantle of most powerful human on earth, abusing power left and right, cheating, bullying, manipulating his way to a level of power orders of magnitude beyond anything any of us have ever experienced — here in our humble little former democracy, and elsewhere.

All he ever wanted.

I think he doesn’t care about the poor schlubs who voted for him. He never liked them anyway. He only needed them. I think he can now rest, play golf into the sunset, let others run our collapsed government and gutted democracy. Maybe a disease will provide 1) the excuse to step back, and 2) engender sympathy. Jim disagrees. Jim thinks he does care about the midterms, about holding majorities in the House and Senate. He’s got three more years to rule. I think nope. I don’t think he gives a damn about the country or about the government he tanked. I think he got his immoral butt ugly bill through, got his tax cuts, implemented a mind boggling escalation in deportation efforts (his legacy), and twisted his dull dirty knife into the hearts of democrats everywhere. I think that’s it. He’s free and immune (thanks to his pals on the formerly supreme court), he’s rich and getting richer, the entire world is bending a knee to him (seriously baffling and mind numbing), he’s getting back at all who made him feel small…. his work here is done.

Who cares if he drew a crude picture of a naked woman with a sharpie and signed his name in her pubic hair in a 50th birthday card to JE in 2003? Who cares if he and his pal Jeffrey shared a secret (their obvious shared penchant for raping young girls) and he wished for his friend more wonderful secrets each day? We might, but he doesn’t. (Can you imagine, some republican pundits are saying his sexual behavior is baked in and nobody cares? Can you further imagine this is generating more support for trump at the moment, not less… that the republican instinct is to circle the wagons in support of their guy as the media piles on yet again? Tragic.)

I don’t know, really, where this goes. Does this all signal a rupture in the Magaverse? Declining support for their dear leader? Or does he slip out the back jack, his usual unscathed? Will the dems overplay this hand? Prolly will. But shouldn’t he be called out? Shouldn’t decency prevail? Shouldn’t justice emerge at some point? Shouldn’t accountability finally happen?

(She screamed into the void.)