Good morning! Hello! How are you? Happy indictment day. Again. Did I spend all night watching MSNBC and gloating? No, not this time. Did I watch a leeetle teeny weeny bit? Yes. Did I watch Jack Smith with those piercing blue eyes give his 30 word speech? Yes. And I read the indictment last night.
Look. You already know most of the stuff in the indictment but you should probably go read it anyway. Only takes about an hour, and there is some new stuff in there, and what new stuff that is in there is even more terrible than the old stuff. Trump is awful, but it really is something, his batshit sycophants and enablers. It’s like the dark corollary to Mr. Rogers’ “Look for the people that are helping” axiom: anyone setting out to fuck things up will find no shortage of willing participants.
But if you read between the lines, I think, on balance, more people in that “room,” that metaphorical room where it happened, more people draw a line. More people wanted no part of it. They may not have been the bravest people: really seems like there was a real shortage of Republicans with backbones that stood up to him. But when it comes to telling the truth, to not doing any harm even they don’t stand up for the right thing, well, more people seem to have erred on the side of the just. The indictment is absolutely brimming with truthful testimony from Republicans who were there who did not want to go through with this absurdity, averred, bowed out, and then told the truth. Whereas there really were maybe six, maybe as many as ten fuckers who were going full-throttle “hey let’s overthrow the government.”
I mean, that’s not a super great ratio, but in the end, I think Mr. Rogers’ axiom still stood. Even in a room full of Republicans.
That’s another important point about this indictment: there is not a Democrat to be found in the thing. I don’t just mean there aren’t any Democrats committing the crime, natch, but every witness, every person who said “hey you lost,” every person who said “yeah we shouldn’t do that, that’s illegal,” was a Republican. There is absolutely nothing partisan about the contents of the indictment, though you will not hear that in the “discourse” of course.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. No one does, and anyone who tells you otherwise is projecting. I can see a million terrible stories. I’m genuinely dubious they can get this thing done through to sentencing before the election. But I am choosing hope. It is unambiguously good news, to me, that this indictment was issued.
I absolutely do not believe that he is Teflon Don and I do not believe his luck can last forever. I give it 50-50 he makes it to the election and 80-20 he loses the election. Those odds are both horrifying, and they may be overly optimist. We are in for a horrible, rough fifteen months, maybe more. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say this is the greatest threat to the union since the Civil War. And at the moment I am literally reading a book about all the threats to the union we have faced.
But in the meantime, I am going to choose hope. Manifest, the Secret, blah blah blah. To my wife’s very wise point, it will get me through this period. I also believe that Don’s greatest strength is everyone’s cynicism, everyone’s pessimism. It paralyzes us, it closes off possibilities, it makes the energy of the country less optimistic, less can-do. This dude is not Sarumon, man. He’s a bumbling sociopath that follows two or three very simple heuristics: deny deny deny, fight fight fight, never surrender, always attack. That’s it.
And I know it is depressing that “half” the country still supports him but a) I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it’s ever really been half, b) I don’t think most of those that do have very strong opinions about it and would drop them in a heartbeat if they thought that was the socially “correct” thing to do in their personal situation, and c) if everyone (including Fox, of course) stopped acting like his shit don’t stink and he was just a thug, a good chunk of them would come along for the ride.
As the wise David Ambrose, screenwriter for Amityville 3D said: Reality is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
At the readers’ request, I went and analyzed the stats of GMHHAY a bit. The total length comes out to 1.45 million words. The longest entry was 7,392 words (really should go look at which one that was, god, I am sorry), average entry 1,557 words. If it were printed in paperback it would be 3.,793 pages and would take about 100 hours to read all of this nonsense, so, you know, if you are someone who’s read the whole thing and keeps track of how many books you’ve read, add ten or so books.
I did a word cloud of the last year and the most-used not boring words were: Jane, old, house, made, years, morning, love, weekend and Emma. I was specifically asked about “Chores” and I’ve used the word 77 times this year — 78 now. I have been using it a lot these last few months but I think it’s a relatively new coinage/minting for me, and I think it has to do with the new house. Back when I was doing a lot of gardening and, like, making videos of the gardening, that didn’t seem like a “chore” but when you’re doing a bunch of specific home-improvement or home-maintenance things, like I’ve been doing since the new house, they feel more like chores.
That is my wise insight for the day.
Jane went to the doctor yesterday to get checked out and her approval from a doctor to go to Kindergarten. Still profoundly conflicted about sending her, but I guess we’re going to do it. I feel like I’m putting one over on her. She feels excited about it now but she clearly hasn’t grasped yet that she is going to be stuck doing this for thirteen years. My god. The horror, the sheer horror.
Anyway, doctor visit all went well. She is small. Seventh percentile. Which is so interesting cuz she doesn’t seem small to me, but, then, what do I know about the size of almost-six year-olds except for Jane. I think this is coming from my side, as I was small for a long time, short for a long time, very delayed growth spurt. She may well have a lot of growing pains in her future. I do not envy her shins.
Doctor said yes, we are all going to get sick and it will get worse around the holidays. Super cool. Great society you have there.
She has also announced that her phase of being unkind to daddy is over and she is going to be nice to me tonight at bedtime. We shall see, we shall see.
She’s been making up words lately, and she does a great job at making words up that sound like words. She made up “regamally” yesterday and it essentially seems to mean “to do something in a very small manner,” or, I guess, “smally,” but that isn’t a word either so why can’t it be “regamally.”
Got a W Hotel In a Better, Alternate Universe playlist for you. Will we ever be able to live in this world? Clearly the answer is only if one of you somehow becomes the CMO of the W Hotels and hires me to program the music in the lobby. I am ready. Go forth, be fruitful and get promoted.
Bye bye love you.