In celebration of his 100th birthday (On August 2, coincidentally the same day my wife and I went on our first date), I recently found myself channeling my inner James Baldwin.
“Why would I want to be accepted by this world culture?” Baldwin famously asked in 1964. I, like him, disapprove of our politics, inherent racism and misogyny and I remember, “Where all human connections are distrusted, the human being is very quickly lost.”:
And thus, there we are at the nexus of 2024 politics: Two extremes of our major political parties sometimes hate the same people and also hate each other because the extremists don’t hate the same people for the same reasons. Human beings are quickly consumed by the hate – particularly that which is generated on social media. Some of us are unable to decipher fact from fiction and have taken to shouting at each other behind anonymous handles. Of course, some of us are just, as George Carlin once famously said, either stupid, full of shit or f**king nuts. Sometimes they are all three.
That brings us to Donald Trump. In what passes for wisdom in that void between his ears, Trump found himself visiting the National Black Journalists Association’s gathering in Chicago Wednesday where he offered his keen insight on the current presidential race. Trump falsely claimed in an interview with three Black women reporters that Vice President Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black” a few years ago, saying that “all of a sudden, she made a turn” in her identity.
You can imagine how well that went over. Of course, Trump began the interview with the reporters at the NABJ by insulting co-moderator Rachel Scott of ABC News because the event was delayed about 30 minutes for technical reasons. For those of us who covered the Trump presidency for any length of time, that was not only hypocritical but hilarious. We routinely used to bet on just how late Trump or any of his staff would be at any event it hosted. After a while we automatically assumed that when the Trump administration announced a set time for an event we would have at least 45 minutes after that announced time before the event actually occurred.
After the NABJ debacle, April Ryan, a dear friend and experienced reporter, tweeted, “Trump came into our home a Black Press advocacy convention and insulted us in our face. What is worse he was invited to do this by NABJ leadership. Shame!”
Then again, maybe it was a stroke of genius to invite him — just to watch him make a complete ass of himself on stage.
Meanwhile, the GOP vice presidential candidate, JD “The Human Shape Shifter” Vance, was adhering to his barefoot and pregnant theme for American women on the homestead and his “childless cat ladies” dig that sounds more like he’s insulting Lindsey Graham than anyone else I know.
Harris hasn’t even picked a running mate yet and there are even Republicans who are telling me, “As long as they aren’t drooling or actively engaged in cannibalism I’ll consider voting for that ticket.” You almost wonder if the best Harris campaign strategy is to just play videos of Donald Trump and JD Vance making fools of themselves during the next three months. You know it’s coming.
What a difference 10 days makes on the campaign trail. Simply naming Harris as the Democratic candidate for president instead of incumbent President Joe Biden has caused the Republicans to engage in a circular firing squad that’s more reminiscent of the Democratic Party than the GOP. Suddenly the MAGA party looks like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
That has prompted a response from Democrats about the MAGA party’s weird behavior, to which I personally take exception because I’ve enjoyed the moniker of “weird” for a lifetime. I’ve even seen signs that say things like “Keep the Bronx Weird” or some other locale. I’ve always considered it cool to be weird. But, then again, as Mary Trump said on Tuesday, “There’s weird and then there’s MAGA weird.”
No one wants to be MAGA weird. It ain’t cool. We also don’t want to get lost laughing or dismissing the weirdness and forget the true danger of what we’re dealing with either; the destruction of our democracy.
Besides, they’re not just weird. MAGA politicians are Creepy Corporate Criminal Politicians. That’s right, just start calling them the CCCP and see how they like that. I’d love to see Harris and the Democrats start saying they have to “Drain the Swamp!” of this slimy pestilence. Trump and his ilk are nothing but bottom-feeding swamp and sewer rats.
But, chaos in a blender rules in this country. Rational thought has apparently left the building – and probably did so right after Elvis did.
As Baldwin reminded us; “Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people.”
The path ahead in the election will illuminate this difference unlike any presidential race in my lifetime. Trump seems comfortable on the same rocky road he’s left skid marks on for his lifetime; flying by the seat of his pants engaging those who feel left out and sidelined by promising a reign of terror and never having to vote again.
Comedian Hal Sparks, of the “Sexy Liberal” comedy tour, said on my “Just Ask the Question” podcast recently that he won’t give into Trump’s pleas of victimhood, anger and despair and that Trump “always screws up.” Others have said Trump always manages to step on his manhood, no matter how small it may be, but I leave that for the reader to decide which is more accurate.
For me, I am the pragmatist trying to figure out how Harris can convert the Democratic Party’s newfound energy and verve into votes in those swing states which may be the deciding factor in the fall election – and I naively cling to hope that as Baldwin pointed out, hate isn’t the answer. All I’m sure of is that it’s going to take more than calling Trump weird.
Harris tells us she knows how. At a Tuesday speaking event in Atlanta at the Georgia State Convocation Center, the vice president said she would bring her experience as a prosecutor, district attorney and attorney general of California to bear in the race. “In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds, predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain so hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
She said she’d been dealing with people like Trump her whole life. Afterward, the crowd chanted “Lock Him Up!” I didn’t like that when Trump used it and I like it less that some Democrats have begun to use it – though Trump, as a convicted felon, certainly deserves to sit in a cell, dressed in orange with nothing more than three hots and a cot for the remainder of his natural life. But I’m not sure Harris reaches across the aisle with the same rhetoric Trump used to divide us. His own words have always been best used against him. I questioned him six weeks before the 2020 election and he was unwilling to concede to a peaceful transfer of power unless he won. His own words in that case were used to bring criminal charges against him.
Now, in embracing right-wing Christians Trump tells them to get out and vote and they’ll never have to vote again. As Maya Angelou told us, when someone tells you who they are, believe them. Trump told us six weeks before the last election and he’s telling us 12 weeks before this election who he is: He won’t accept defeat and he is willing to erase your right to vote. That might just reach a few undecided voters.
The Supreme Court has already sided with him, giving him cover for any action they believe is an “official action” of the executive. They’ve destroyed Democracy and Trump is ready, willing and able to step in and exploit that for his own purposes, and after he passes, his minions will fight over the best way to screw the rest of us while exerting their power over us.
Meanwhile, those “marvelous” evangelical Christians supporting Trump admit his weaknesses but claim God can use anybody in his grand plan. On this point, we may agree. The question remains how does God use Trump? Maybe he isn’t the second coming, but a test to see if we’ll fall for a fool - or in their words - the antichrist.
Just a thought to consider. And while we’re considering thoughts, if we still can, we should be thinking about how Trump continues to manipulate the issues, particularly immigration. He fought against bipartisan legislation to deal with the problem – just so he could run against Joe Biden for being weak on immigration – though Biden took executive action that has effectively lowered the number of illegal detainees in the country during the last year.
But, now, Trump faces Harris. When it comes to immigration, Harris used her prosecutorial background and tried to flip the script on Trump. “I was the attorney general of a border state. In that job I walked underground tunnels on that border” she told the Atlanta audience Wednesday. ” I went after drug cartels, human traffickers … I prosecuted them in case after case and I won. Donald Trump on the other hand talked a big game about securing our border but he’s not walking the talk. . . he’s not walking it like he talks it.”
Harris noted Trump “tanked” the bipartisan deal on border funding “because he thought it would help him win the election. Which goes to show Donald Trump doesn’t care about your security, he only cares about himself.”
The key for Harris is sticking the landing among those who are still, for who knows what reason, on the fence about a race that shouldn’t even be close. When a Republican leader concedes that their running mate choice is weaker than expected and they fear that Harris could “Nominate a turnip as Vice President and do better than we did,” you know there’s a Grateful Dead song in there somewhere; “Trouble ahead and trouble behind.”
So, giving into despair isn’t an option, and as Baldwin told us, we must find the things we have in common that bind us all together – as we move forward.
“Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be,” he said.
We will decide, definitively, in November in which path we walk.
