(ThyBlackMan.com) “[He is] a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. [His] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” William Shakespeare, Macbeth
That line from Macbeth aptly sums up Donald Trump’s time as president. And as we move into the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, it’s important to frame the current and coming events based on what the president’s two main objectives are: first and foremost to stay out of jail, and to do that by staying head of state. Note that it’s not about winning the election, because Trump doesn’t want an election.
Remember his opening gambit, “Perhaps the election should be postponed.” His reasoning was odd as it was based on a public health emergency that he had been calling a hoax. He then floated the idea that perhaps he should have a third term, since impeachment “robbed him” of his first. He settled on a strategy to blow up the election all together by alleging wide-spread voter fraud. When his campaign sued Pennsylvania for its attempt to expand mail-in voting, the judge asked for them to produce evidence. In the 500+ page document they submitted to the court, not one valid fraud claim was cited.
“Stand back and stand by”
The debate was to be his chance to show that Biden was not up to the job. It just demonstrated again, however, that he is a bully and a blowhard. In the end, his most memorable line was telling the white supremacist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” This, after the FBI Director and Homeland Security Secretary had just testified before congress that white supremacist organizations posed the foremost domestic terror threat. Of course the next day, after condemnation, he claimed not to know who the Proud Boys were. Of this you can be sure, things which Trump says he knows nothing about – Russian collusion, sexual assault allegations, Rudy Giuliani’s foreign dealings – he know a lot. And things that he says he knows a lot about – forest fires, infectious diseases and money management – he knows nothing.
So where does that leave us? His first campaign manager, Brad Parscale, just got taken away to a mental health facility after threatening “self harm.” Parsacle’s replacement, Bill Stepien, just announced that he tested positive for the coronavirus. Through the pandemic, economic collapse, racial unrest and party conventions the polling numbers have remained relatively unchanged, with Biden in the lead.
Recent polls seem to show some slippage in his white support, particularly among “suburban” women, but his base remains solid. That’s because they’re not supporting him for the economy, judicial appointments or his handling of COVID-19. They love the “again” as in, Make America Great Again. The nostalgia for an imaginary past when whites ran everything and there supposedly were no problems.
Take his attack on the 1619 Project and his counter to establish the 1776 Commission. That’s straight out of George Orwell’s playbook: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” For example, when people talk about a Supreme Court Justice being an “originalist”, what’s that supposed to mean to me? For the first one hundred and sixty-five years of the Court’s history (1789 to 1954), the two decisions that had the most effect on me were Dred Scott and Plessey v Ferguson. The first said that I had no rights and the second legalized segregation, even after passage of the 14th Amendment. Brown v Board Education in 1954 was first time the Court ruled in my favor.
October surprise
And then, of course, there’s the COVID-19 diagnosis. The real surprise is not that he got it, but that it took so long. He flouted every rule his public health officials put out to stop the spread of the virus and belittled anyone who followed them. Wearing a mask was not a health and safety issue but a political statement. That’s what landed him in the hospital and is decimating his administration and party.
Anon conspiracy theorists say either that he’s self-isolating to continue his battle against Satan-worshipping cannibal pedophiles, or that his mic was laced with coronavirus at the debate. Pointing out that only Republicans are now testing positive. They ignore the fact that the Republicans were the ones in the debate audience not wearing masks, and at a super-spreader event for the Supreme Court nominee in the White House Rose Garden a few days earlier. Some of the same pastors asking for prayers for Trump should remember their prayer for Obama: “May his wife be a widow and his children orphans.”
I don’t think the cheating and voter suppression tactics are going to work. Everywhere that early voting has started there have been long lines, and requests for mail-in ballots have outpaced any previous presidential election. Biden is leading in fundraising. I think people are tired of this “shitshow” and want some basic honesty and competence in government. The pandemic has shown the necessity of an effective federal government response in times of crisis and we have witnessed an abject failure by the cabal of incompetents currently in office. His “hour upon the stage” is just about up.
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell