Trump supporters

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — September 23rd

Fandango27 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 23rd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 23, 2017.

Relevance is Relative

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“One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.”

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

What one person finds relevant, another finds irrelevant. In other words, relevance is not absolute. Relevance is relative.

Let’s take Donald Trump as an example. Donald Trump is a liar. That is an absolute, indisputable truth. Yet to many people — to too many people — the fact that he is a liar is irrelevant. It’s not that they don’t know that he’s a liar. They do. It’s just that they don’t really care. They are not bothered by his lying. To his supporters, his being a liar is irrelevant.

To others, me included, Donald Trump’s lying is highly relevant. It means that you can’t trust anything that he says (or tweets) to be the truth. And he’s the President of the United States.

Some people claim that all politicians lie, so the fact that Trump lies is irrelevant. They point to Obama’s promise that “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” as the illustration of a lying president. Yet most people under Obamacare were able to keep their doctors. I was.

But everyone knows that Mexico is not going to pay for “the wall.” Most people, even Donald Trump, know that Russia interfered in last year’s presidential election. Most people don’t think that climate change is a hoax.

But to Trump supporters, it just doesn’t matter. To them, it’s irrelevant. Because relevance is relative.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “irrelevant.”

Share Your World — Dammit, Melanie, You Got Me Talking Politics Again

Fandango20 Comments

It’s Monday and that means Melanie is here with another one of her Share Your World set of questions. So let’s give it a go.

What inanimate object do you wish you could eliminate from existence?

Fox News, Newsmax, OAN News, and any and all of the other far-right news media outlets that continue to spew the Big Lie, conspiracy theories, and Trumpish propaganda that is designed to promote and elevate Donald Trump and to further split, divide, and ultimately destroy our American democracy.

What tells you the most about a person?

Their eyes.

What is something you thought would be easy until you tried it?

Downhill skiing.

What ridiculous and untrue, yet slightly plausible, theories can you come up with for the cause of common ailments like headaches or cavities?

Hearing, watching, and reading about how congressional Republicans, right-wing pundits, and other deranged Trump supporters attempt to justify Trump’s claim that the election was rigged and that he is the legitimate president, and who continue to kowtow to a man who was unquestionably the worst president the United States ever had.

What are you grateful for since they ‘cured’ Covid? (Yeah, I realize it’s not cured. But at least the vaccine is available and restrictions have eased up in many places. If that’s a good thing or not remains to be seen I suppose).

I am grateful that my wife and I are able to invite a group of about a dozen and a half family members and friends (all of whom are fully vaccinated) to our home on Sunday to celebrate our grandson’s first birthday with us.

Our Wartime President and the Zombie Apocalypse

Fandango16 Comments

As I was casually browsing my newsfeed today I saw two things I felt compelled to share. First, was this political cartoon from Rob Rogers of Andrews McMeel Syndication.86BB6FED-8966-4A97-B099-3C849DA639A3Late last month Donald Trump started trying to redefine coronavirus as a foreign threat (“the Chinese virus”) and himself as a wartime president defending the nation against what amounts to an invasion.

As the crisis deepened, Trump has likened the pandemic to a war. He said, “We’re at war, in a true sense we’re at war, and we are fighting an invisible enemy.”

And now he has vowed, via an executive order, to suspend all immigration into the United States during the coronavirus outbreak, which is kind of ironic, given that the U.S. has, far and away, the largest outbreak of COVID-19 cases and deaths of any nation on the globe. I would think most people from other countries would elect to ban themselves from coming to the U.S. given the statistics.

The second thing I saw was this now iconic photo from AP photographer Joshua A Bickel showing angry people protesting stay-at-home mandates and social distancing rules at the state house in Columbus, Ohio.DFF2097B-7D1E-4DCD-9C12-F5B7E0B05878They were crowding in and pressing up against glass windows, with expressions on their faces that, to me, made it look like we are in the midst of a real life zombie apocalypse.

According to the American Dictionary, a zombie is someone who moves around as if unconscious while being controlled by someone else.

Hmm, that sounds about right. These rabid Trump supportes do seem to be brainless, semi-conscious, and are being controlled by someone else.

Delusional

Fandango28 Comments

Supporting TrumpI just read an article that showed up on my iPhone’s newsfeed this morning. CNN’s Alisyn Camerota held a panel discussion with six voters from swing districts in Pennsylvania. When the group was asked by Camerota if they were “tired of the divisiveness,” they all agreed that they were. But they were split down the middle over whether Donald Trump was responsible for that divisiveness.

“Do you think that President Trump plays any role in that divisiveness?” Camerota asked.

“No,” several voters responded. When Camerota asked the group if they think the President is “being helpful,” one Trump supporter replied: “I think he’s being helpful, yes.”

Camerota asked that same person if there was anything Trump could do that would make her not vote for him. “No.”

“If he shot someone on 5th Avenue, would you vote for him?” Camerota asked, referring to Trump’s infamous comment during his 2016 campaign that he could shoot someone on the busy New York City street and still get elected.

“You’d have to know why he shot him,” another Trump supporter, said.

“Yeah, why did he shoot him?” yet another supporter echoed.

Are you fucking kidding me? These people are the very definition of delusional. If this is the way half of American voters think, the American republic is doomed.

Stand Up and Be Counted

Fandango7 Comments

095367B1-7B2B-48F9-A71A-CC25BB07E032“It doesn’t take having a college education to see the danger that this brood of naive and gullible Trump supporters is having on our society,” Edward lamented.

“You’re a highly educated, sapient man,” Carla said. “There must be a way to get them to see what a con man Trump is.”

“You know,” Edward said, “I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of getting his rabid fans to change their almost fanatical support for him. They think he’s the second coming of Jesus, for crissake.”

“But don’t you feel,” Carla said, “that the racist things he’s been saying over the past month are starting to snip away some of his support?”

“Well,” Edward said, “we are seeing a few random Republican Congresspersons making a tentative transition away from blind, unequivocal support for him. But we’re going to need more than a handful of Republicans to be willing to stand up and be counted.”

“And were going to need the Democrats to start a formal impeachment inquiry,” Carla added.

Written for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (education), Word of the Day Challenge (brood), Nova’s Daily Random Word (sapient), Daily Addictions (chance), Your Daily Word Prompt (snip), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (random), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (transition).