P.R. Problems: Maybe I Don't Understand Politics Very Well, Actually

Trump and his little demon frat held a big ol' screeching hate ball in New York City and...apparently everyone is mad and not voting for him NOW, because that makes sense

I don’t know, man.

I just don’t know.

Was I surprised Donald “Art of the Happy Meal” Trump decided to round off an election bid that has been echoing through the last four years like a long, wet, deafening Dadaist fart in the fascist fucking wind machine by utterly mat-assing the dismount via one big ol’ Madison Square Garden Nazi struggle session full of ids let off the chain, smug gloating over their unstoppable supervillain plans, and absolutely crusted racist, sexist, and homophobic mouth-vuvuzelaing with a side of murderous rhetoric?

Come on. Not even a little bit. Last week he sad he wanted to be a whale psychiatrist super bad, you guys. It’s his passion. Can you even imagine how excited the staffer who got to book THE American Nazi venue for THE new American Nazis? (After making double sure it wasn’t Madison Square Garden & Lawn Care Emporium?) Oh, I bet he could hardly wait to send the dork army out to infest the media cycle telling everyone how stupid they are for making that very simple connection anyone would make, and that the Trump campaign 100% wants everyone to make.

This fucking clown-van full of wannabe Pennywises cannot hide their hideous flag-swaddled erections whenever they feel like they’re getting close to being able to kill everyone they don’t like and laugh about it on TV to thunderous applause. (That last part is key, though. Wholesale slaughter is just no fun if no one tells you you’re an awesome big strong handsome boy for doing it and throws you a big party to celebrate your achievement!) They giggle like schoolboys every time they say something naughty, coquettishly twirl their hair and wag their fingers at us, daring themselves to go a little further every time, then gasping at the audacity of normal fucking humans to…you know…take them at their word.

Was I surprised everyone got BIG MAD about a comedian calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage in the middle of a set that had far more vile and revolting racist-ass jokes lined up with which to bukkake that hungry audience Gallagher-style, opening for people who not only had worse and uglier shit to say, but people who are actually, publicly, loudly planning to liquefy our future and sell it back to us in leaky plastic bin-bags for millions a pop?

And that the media cycle hasn’t instantly buried that for them? (Don’t worry, they’re working on it. Very busy at the moment pretending Biden called all Trump supporters garbage, which he didn’t, and also it really wouldn’t be the same if he had, he called their comments on Latinos garbage, but no reason not to try to pull a Mortal Kombat fatality on democracy at the 11th hour, right, Fourth Estate? Honestly it’s so predictable and I’m so exhausted pitching myself into the cold and unforgiving sea is starting to sound pretty all right.)

And that this, this, of all the Tales from Beyond Cthulhu bonkers blood-drenched psychotically cruel 6000 pounds of hate and darkness in a 2.5 pound bag screeching murdershit Trump and his frathouse of D-list demons who failed to launch out of hell have pumped into this nation and the minds of all of us, this is what is making Latinos question whether to vote for him?

Whale psychiatrist.

YEAH I’M PRETTY SURPRISED.

AND I WROTE AN ENTIRE BOOK ABOUT AN ISLAND OF GARBAGE FLOATING IN THE SEA.

WELCOME TO GARBAGETOWN INDEED.

Honestly, maybe I just don’t actually understand politics that well. Maybe I should scuttle this whole political essay thing entirely. I don’t get it. What? Why this? Because this isn’t even the worst thing Trump himself has said about Puerto Rico. My friends, he has hated you from the minute someone managed to get it through his hot buttered brain scramble that Puerto Rico wasn’t a fantastical land invented to flesh out the worldbuilding in West Side Story like Middle fucking Earth. This illiterate cousin’s uncle, who turns up every year to an intensely awkward Harkonnen Thanksgiving table cranked out of his diaper on ornithopter wiper-fluid has never said the words Puerto Rico without sounding like he just wiped something off his shoe.

It’s so hard to keep track of what I’m actually allowed to be angry about versus what I am commanded to instantly forget and not make a big deal of because FOONIE JOAKES.

I know remembering recent events is not exactly on trend these days, but…I mean…remember when he withheld aid because he though the mayor of San Juan was too mean to him? And threw paper towels at people after a hurricane? And repeatedly, repeatedly, as in, every single time the subject comes up, phrases his sentences in such a way that it’s completely clear that he either doesn’t know PR is part of America, doesn’t consider it to be despite reality, or thinks it should immediately stop? A guy who can’t put sentences together any better than he can put his shitty Spirit Halloween makeup on, but somehow, on the subject of this one place, is fully capable of cleverly crafting implicit rhetoric without slipping up and accidentally knowing the basic factual geography of the nation he wants to rule?

NOW we’re mad?

I don’t even want to get into whether it was funny, because that’s not even the point of conservatives saying it was a joke. I can’t express how disappointed I am in Jon Stewart for siding with his comedian-soul rather than his decency-soul and getting wrapped up in that part of the (barf) “discourse.”

Look: it wasn’t funny, it was stupid, tired, pointless, and even the set up revolves tightly around bringing up something important, that normal people care about, to a group of people the speaker knows don’t give one lonely windswept fuck, and only even understand the reference in the first place because it’s hysterical to them when normal people care about things other than themselves. It’s not even a joke, because that’s just what conservative edgelords actually think about Puerto Rico and the environment.

Have you ever seen one of this ding-dongs actually try to tell a joke? First, there’s only one punchline: I’m amazing, you’re a piece of human filth, and you deserve suffering while I deserve to watch. They almost always fall directly onto their faces and then blame liberals for not laughing. Dennis Miller, one of the funniest people ever, sent himself off to the hinterlands because even he couldn’t make conservative thoughts funny and relatable.

They also never say it was a joke when their attempts to comprehend comedy, an art form about catharsis, shared experience, speaking truth to power, and upending expectations to make people look at life in a different way, thus entirely antithetical to conservative ideals and goals, fail to get a callback. That would mean acknowledging their joke didn’t land and they’re the bestest at everything.

Hilarious

No, conservatives only bleat it was a joke when they’ve just said exactly what they mean and think, with a straight goddamned face, direct to camera, and a dim, flickering notion that they might get in trouble for it this time crosses their rage-dessicated brainpan.

(Ha ha they won’t.)

A joke relies on an unexpected reversal of expectations or upending of the audience’s everyday assumptions somewhere between the set-up and the punchline. But this specific audience never expected or assumed a set-up about a floating island of garbage in the sea was going to actually be about how we fucking created a floating island of garbage in the sea with all our consumerist hog-snorfling and short-sighted maritime policy. They assumed and expected it was gonna turn into some kind of insult at the expense of some group of people, because that’s their fetish, and no one turned up to Madison Square Fucking Garden on Discount Nazi Night to NOT get their fetishes seen to. They got what they expected, they just didn’t know which group of people, and were maybe mildly surprised it wasn’t Haitians, probably. That makes it a shit joke; the equivalent of yelling WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD in someone’s face and then blarfing back WE ALL FUCKING HATE CHICKENS AM I RIGHT FRIEND before they can say anything back, then expecting a Mark Twain Prize for it.

CHICKENS DID 9/11 WAKE UP CHEEPLE

But hey, for once, I guess, we’re only sort of blaming the comic who said it, and mostly, correctly, pointing out that it’s all on the guy whose name is so grossly and obnoxiously in giant letters on everything. And it’s really no better to not vet what speakers plan to say at the biggest event of your campaign, in a place where SUPER-SPECIFIC PEOPLE HAVE SUPER NOTABLY SAID SOME SUPER-SPECIFIC TOP-TIER EVIL SHIT RIGHT BEFORE DOING EVERY LAST BIT OF IT?

Wait, what’s that? Oh, Hinchcliffe’s (which seriously sounds like Andy Kaufman’s new alter ego) set was absolutely vetted, because he planned to call Kamala Harris a cunt, and some poor intern squeaked out hey maybe not? Americans get pretty weird about that word? But A++ to taking a shit on Puerto Rico, bro! The part where you made everyone think you were gonna say something about the very real and very bad news great Pacific garbage patch but instead you switched it up and made a flaccid racist joke about your own country? Fuckin’ hilarious, bro.

I mean, first of all, at this point, why not call her the “c-word,” as the media is helpfully using despite being happy to print any other profanity these days, so that the right can pretend it stands for “communist” while, again, giggling and blushing and winking like a kid with a crush, and that crush is emphatically not on us. They might as well. The media would’ve laundered it for them with a smile and a backrub. They all think it. We all know it. If whatever gremlin-handlers are left doing actual campaign work were smart enough to balk at that, I’m not sure why “Latinos love having babies, they don’t care, they just come inside” was A-OK fun for the…well. Whole fuckin’ family, I guess. Maybe I just lived in Scotland too long, where cunt is a friendly greeting AND a floor cleaner, so I don’t care about that word anymore, but I can’t really see a comedian getting up there and being a misogynist prick moving anyone’s needle much. It’s kind of their brand.

BUT MAYBE I DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT SHIT BECAUSE APPARENTLY THIS IS STICKING WHEN “YES I WILL TURN THE AMERICAN MILITARY AGAINST AMERICAN CITIZENS IF THEY DON’T AGREE WITH ME AND IF YOU THINK I MISSPOKE HERE IT COMES AGAIN, WITH GUSTO” DIDN’T.

Is this actually finally generating the kind of rage every single thing Trump has ever said since sailing down a golden escalator with Resting Mussolini Face should have? Is it actually making Latino voters notice that this toad-souled witch’s curse we’ve all suffered with for a decade specifically, violently, and really, really openly loathes Latinos in particular?

Maybe? There had been some new endorsements and a lot of think-pieces, but the shock and unexpected attention span with which the media is treating this seems all out of proportion given the rest of what happened at that exact rally and also since 2015. No part of the media landscape seems to be able to focus on the detailed horror, privation, fear, and mayhem Trump and Musk are promising to deliver for more than two seconds after the third Betterhelp.com commercial break. But this one they’re holding onto. Not the part where Elon “I Am Good At Many Business” Musk is Trump’s new running mate, not the part where these two billionaires have apparently agreed between them to Thelma & Louise the economy straight into the screaming void, leaving all of the Americas as an island of trash floating in the sea, and certainly not that both of them have acknowledged on the record that their plans will do exactly that and they’re looking forward to it omg so fun guys!

Obviously threatening to kill anyone who disagrees with a guy who can’t remember what he said an hour ago didn’t even make a fucking blip.

Is the media finally peering into next week and realizing how holistically they done fucked up?

Great job, everyone, now line up for the nice men with guns because they have some “subscriptions” to “cancel”

Maybe? But why? Scrambling to distract from that whole festive arrangement of broligarchs suddenly caring so deeply and authentically about journalistic neutrality that they just can’t endorse a candidate this year. And only this year. For reasons. Really good, double plus neutral journalism reasons. They don’t even seem to care much about the rest of the technicolor Nazi floorshow on display that night. They opened by playing fucking Dixie, for god’s sake. It’s all out in the open.

I’m not trying to make light of what a nasty fuckdumb thing to say about an American territory that’s been treated unfathomably poorly by us for pretty much always. I understand how big the PR diaspora is. It could make a difference. Many things could that haven’t gotten this oxygen.

Quite literally, two days ago, Trump got his carcass up on TV and said he and the Republican Speaker of the House had a “little secret” plan to secure the election for him no matter what the voting shows, and then, a few hours later, that same Republican Speaker of the House also went on TV and agreed that it was a super cool secret plan and he wasn’t gonna tell because you don’t tell secrets and as far as I can tell no one gives a fuck beyond lol what lovable scamps!

Is that it? Better to blanket the news with feigned pearl-clutching over a douchebag comedian with an inevitably douchebag podcast saying exactly what Republicans happily admit they think about Puerto Rico any old day, when they can be bothered to think about it at all, and pretend it’s some kind of October surprise that Trump is a huge racist who likes racists and hangs out with racists and is basically a make-work programs for racists everywhere, than to deal seriously with one political party has become a gargantuan blood-spattered all-devouring skull of flames nodding along and agreeing that yes, indeed, they are a gargantuan blood-spattered all-devouring skull of flames GET IN THIS GIBBERING HELLJAW, AMERICA, while the very part of our society that’s supposed to be in charge of revealing the truth and pointing out when the government is getting too twitchy did virtually nothing to stop them?

That’s really all I’ve got. Because this country seems to still think it’s some kind of FUCKING JOKE that we’re all voting between a future with problems, but more or less normal problems normal people can try solving, and the gargantuan blood-spattered all-devouring skull of flames, and the skull of flames is doing pretty well in the polls once the media gets done saying they just don’t know Kamala well enough yet.

We have the opportunity to say no to that, to that terrible future where JD Vance gets to decide what happens to our bodies, Elon Musk gets to decide what happens to our money, RFK Jr and his purple Thanos face gets to decide what happens to our food and medicine, Stephen Miller gets to decide what happens to our neighbors, and Donald “Your Favorite Monster’s Favorite Monster” Trump gets to decide what happens to everyone else. AND WE MIGHT NOT. BECAUSE EW LADIES I GUESS.

I can’t comprehend why anyone is still laughing. Why anyone thinks life will just continue normally after Tuesday if these carrion-eaters get back into power. Yeah, conservatives think Puerto Rico is trash. They think we’re all trash. Just compost to feed their growth. I will never understand why it’s just so much fun to hate and harm other people than it is to just…be rich in an advanced technological society full of comfort, entertainment, and possibility where anything you want can be had in a moment. Or not be rich but still be pretty okay plus same, as most Trump supporters are.

But this is a bad world getting ready to shoot its shot, telling us it’s bad and will feel bad, and we’re still sitting around making jokes. The millisecond Biden said the word garbage, legacy media informed us all Trump was fine now and it’s basically the same. Normal, often shitty, but still functional, life, or a vast hellscape of pain? BASICALLY THE SAME.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next week. I wish I even had a guess. So many things seem to be happening that we can’t see but the media could, if they tried, yet won’t. Please vote. Please do the minimum to not let us become the new Reich. Please see through all this noise to a signal we can hold onto. Please don’t let these goblin men write the history of this century. They’re not even offering anything in exchange for our everything.

See, the thing about carrion-eaters is that something pretty big has to die in order for them to feast.

If we don’t literally lay down and die for them, they will starve, and we will go on.