Healing In The Time of Trump
January 14, 2021
It was the first time I’d ever passed out from pain. Strangely it happened in the hospital cafeteria 10 minutes after the surgeon inserted that fucking needle. When he returned and assessed the situation, he stood back. Everyone else was moving and on task, but he paused. Then he got my attention and said, “Anthony, I just want you to know you’re going to get better. You’re going to be alright.”
It seemed strange, how right then as I was expecting him to stop the pain he would say something like that. 'Of course I’m going to get better, I’m here and you’re going to fix this right now.’
He paused and thought a moment because he knew what was going to happen. He knew he was going to cut into me and rip it out, tear out what Swedish had done to me years before, botching the surgery technique he invented, named after him. He knew that maybe a week later, I'd come to that moment, a moment I'd stand in my kitchen, weak, erupting with drainage tubes and open wounds, alone as it turned out, and for a moment I wouldn't recognize what hope is. I thought I’d never ski again, surf or paddle. I thought I’d be vulnerable for the rest of my life right then, never able to quickly move, taking single stairs two feet at a time, fearing any time anyone got close enough to bump into me.
I'm 100% now, and after going through what I did, that moment stands out in my mind, when he looked at me and said, “You’re going to get better.” He was telling me I was going to heal. Eventually. And he knew I wasn’t going to like the healing. Not one bit.
Watching the impeachment hearings, it hit me every time a Booger representative would start talking about healing. I imagined a festering disease trying to set the terms of the treatment, one that would allow for the disease to live on in comfort with just enough placation to pacify the patient to accept the disease as a new partner in life. I see them positioning themselves to write history the way the Confederacy did after it lost the Civil War, in a way that glorifies the trump era and the Booger movement, wrapping it in a false mythology to live on in some kind of martyred glory. I suspect someone is already planning to mass produce flimsy bronze trump statues to put up in little Booger town squares across the Booger Belt.
We’re a long way from healing. Right now the patient, the country, is ripped open on the table, blood is gushing, bones are snapped and jagged, guts are twisted and confused, and everywhere are exposed tumors and growths that shouldn't be there, smiling smugly in the light. “Let’s just heal and get past this, can we?” say the splinters and the gangrene and the cancer. "Let’s just walk away and figure this out, alright?”
The Booger has created a world where the notion of such a disease in our country is somehow alluring. I’d written here in the past how Jeff Foxworthy and Larry The Cable Guy had made salt-of-the-earth ignorance cute and endearing, and now trump and QAnon has gone full blown by making incredibly putrid and terrifying and fictitious scenarios some kind of guiding light that unbelievably stupid Americans flock to like moths to a bulb. It’s an Alternate Intellect. It’s a disease.
I remember what must have been my pause moment, when my son dropped out of college and told me he didn’t need to know the stupid things college would try to teach him. He mentioned how Dirty Job’s Mike Rowe said an education isn’t necessary to work a trade. Then he started posting memes depicting higher education as a Liberal plot to brainwash people. I paused, and I thought, “You’re fucked.”
I’m no doctor. No surgeon. I can work a band aid like a pro but when I see someone pouring dirt on an open wound, I’m one to locate a more bacteria-filled soil to use than to try to stop them. “If you want to fuck yourself up, here’s my advice. Rub the dirt in, here, like this..."
I’ve never seen healing in our future. I recognized what was up the second trump started, and hammered away at it here on the Bastard Box. There’s no healing this. Knowing that the GOP has been draining the life out of its supporters and convincing them it’s the fault of Liberals, I’ve been all for letting the Booger continue its downward spiral to rock bottom. QAnon just seems like the signs of end stage disease.
A sign of any “healing” was the donkey’s breakfast that showed up to trump’s revolt parade. It wasn’t a controlled and practiced drill one would expect from even a marginally-regulated Duck Dynasty style swamp-brigade militia. It was the burnt scrapings from the bottom of a pan that had cooked too long. Absolute idiots who seriously missed the opportunity to claim their place in history.
I’ve actually had misgivings using words like “insurrection,” or “coup,” the way it went down. The Capitol was free for the taking. 12 dudes with rifles and chewing gum could have laid a serious crippling siege on our government. Instead, a bunch of "elite" Boogers shit in the Capitol halls. Nice. That must have seriously hurt trump, as it revealed the weakened condition of trumpism. They couldn’t even hold a building marked FREE on OfferUp.
If trump is lucky, some kind of Booger-style Al Qaeda-level event will take place to keep his cause from the trash altogether, and may bolster a kind of indelibility based on a supreme patheticness, the way Mel Gibson did when he removed Blaster's helmet. If not, trump will have been just some flair up of a venereal disease given to this country by racist elites a long time ago, and maintained by the corporate inbreeding driven by money in government, and the way it holds on to power by manipulating the willfully grotesque.
If this country heals, it’s going to take a surgeon, an impartial one with sharp and unrelenting tools to carve out the disease, to remove the corrupt tumors, and to rid the dead and dying flesh through powerful medicines. It’s our moment to take pause and decide if we can handle healing. Otherwise, we’ll continue to stand at the freeway offramp holding a sign that says, “help me,” while people roll up their windows and think, “Ich erinnere mich, als du beschlossen hast, dein gutes Leben dafür zu verlassen."
Far, Far From Home
February 17, 2017
Madrid, 2001. It was just a couple days after meeting my someday wife, and I was drinking off the bummer of her having left to Italy at a sidewalk cafe when I saw them blocks away. Boogers. I could tell from the bent-billed hats and trailing mullets.
Bass fishing. That's what their hats said.
They sat down at one of the small tables, awkwardly, as they were no doubt used to either bars or booths more designed for elbows and the American style of tackle eating. A fast-moving waiter dropped menus in front of them and they flinched. Like monkeys they flipped the menus from side to side looking for the familiar banana.
"Maybe sumthin' in American?" one of them grunted.
It was such a cartoon I thought for sure it was a set up. I looked around for hidden cameras, thinking this was a test. But no, these were two actual Boogers who had somehow wound up in Spain.
I watched them for maybe fifteen minutes. It became clearer to me that not only had these two somehow ended up in a strange land, but that they hated something. They didn't seem to talk much between themselves, so I thought maybe they actually didn't like each other. The waiter was throwing his speedy slippery English at them, and so I knew they definitely didn't like him. They kept looking at the menu which had no burgers or waffles and it was obvious they didn't like that.
They must have just gotten off the plane, because they sat there dumbfounded, shell shocked at their situation, like Leon staring at the Voight-Kampff machine as Holden starts with the questions.
"You're in a foreign land, and people are looking at you, rolling their eyes. You stare at the menu and don't understand anything. The waiter is tapping his foot but you don't ask for anything. Why is that, Booger? Why? Why can't you respond?"
Here it is some years later and watching the Booger in action over the last year, and having watched the two there in Madrid, I realize what, or who they hate. They hate themselves. They dislike not knowing. They dislike being confused in the din of information, in the cacophony of accents and languages, in the deluge of people and cultures they just don't understand. And through the dislike of all the external things they feel alienated from, they really hate themselves for being, "that person."
Instead of unraveling that hate and improving their situation, they simply celebrate the ignorance. And in Donald Trump they recognized that confusion and detachment, and reveled in Trump's willingness to turn that anger and embarrassment into the offensive that he has. Trump is unapologetic for his ignorance, as it doesn't matter, he'll eat caviar and fuck bitches no matter the turn.
The Booger is riding that bravado. "We'll get some of that!" they proclaim. But slowly they're realizing that as Trump enters the club, the doorman is turning them away. "But we're with him!" they're saying.
The doorman snorts, and checks his clipboard list again.
The Writing Was On The Wall
January 27, 2020
I've been hard on the Booger. Trump voters. But you can’t blame me. You see, Trump is a verified moron. A real shit head, as displayed long before he ever considered the presidency. There’s the pussy-grabbing thing, the Obama birther thing, the numerous bankruptcies and the unknowable financial fraud thing, the business failures and his rapey proclivities. And now on the world stage since the election, you know, his gross incompetency. And in the face of all of this, what is the Trump voter’s stance? "He’s one of us!” Seriously, who brags about being one of that? Boogers do, so don’t go wagging your finger at me about being judgy.
The hits keeps rolling in. Since the whistleblower, Trump apologists have had to put themselves out there, like GOP guard-tower sandbags to shore up the appearance of Trump innocence. Compared to the gathered and intellectually composed Democrats, GOP reps are blithering idiots. While Dems lay out the obvious case with a consistent arc, Boogers keep stumbling over themselves barking denials.
First, every time a Booger points out that 63 million American voters are somehow indicative of Trump’s innocences, they keep reminding us that 65 million American's voted against him, warning of the impending catastrophe to come. That’s all I hear now, is that 65,000,000 people, the majority, warned you. And they were right.
Second, they chant that Dems have been aiming for impeachment from day one since the election. I feel it started, and for good reason, long before that. And every time a Booger points that out, what they’re really saying is that Dems knew that the GOP was bringing a likely impeachment into the White House. Even the GOP knew it. The warning bells were loud, the probability Trump would do something impeachable was high, and Trump didn’t disappoint. Dems were readying impeachment from the gate because Trump was a sure bet. He was going to fuck up, and he did. Repeatedly. Dems were simply preparing for when and where the shit was going to splatter.
And here’s the kicker. The GOP loves to brag that Ukranian President Zelinsky said he never felt pressure. First, have you ever met a Ukrainian? Have you ever met an Eastern European? One could walk into the room severely hemorrhaging from the head and deny any problem whatsoever. They’re hard as engine blocks. The last thing Zelinsky would do publicly is give Trump any credit whatsoever for what Zelinsky probably saw as Trump’s weak game. It’s likely that Zelinsky knew that things would end badly for Trump. Yes, even Zelinsky saw that coming, and steered things to his own advantage.
Boogers claim that Ukraine got the aid in question without delivering on what Trump wanted - the optics of an investigation into Biden, and that it somehow proves Trump did nothing wrong. Think about that. What does that say? It says, now that the fuller story is clear, that Trump went through quite a bit of trouble to put Zelinsky in some position to bow to him. Over months there were many players, many maneuvers, many cards being tossed around. And in the end? Trump got his ass handed to him. Mr. Art Of The Deal got played, by a comedian, in front of the gods and everybody.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that in a stroke of genius, Zelinsky IS the whistleblower. He’ll be getting the money, he’ll be seen as a baller among leaders for paddling Putin’s bitch. And for trying to manipulate him? Zelinsky threw Trump into the gears of an impeachment by Trump’s own balls. In all of this, Zelinsky is the hero here.
I watch as the Booger reps scream and stutter and twitch their way through desperate allegory. Much of the time I have no idea what they’re trying to say. But the above talking points are simply glaring. "Trump’s an idiot just like us.” "65,000,000 Americans warned 63,000,000 Americans that Trump was a sure fire impeachment (not to mention failures like the wall, coal jobs, lowering deficit, health care, etc)." And that "the Republican president of the greatest country on earth got owned on the world stage by a comedian neophyte politician."
Government Boogers don’t have to make sense. Like Jim Jordan, they just have to scream and pound the table to get the dogs barking. The Blue Collar Booger doesn't know what he's barking at, and he doesn't have to know. It’s the noise that makes the noise in a circle of ignorant noise, and it’s in that noise that Trump feels he has a chance.
Told You So
April1, 2020
This isn’t really about ’I told you so.’
That’s a total lie, an alternate fact, if you will. This is in fact another in a long line of 'told you so's.’
This one is unique, though. It isn’t a mud-slinging debate in a Facebook group, or a vicious meme making the rounds highlighting more trump-voter consequences, though there’s plenty of that. This is the "Bird Box Edition" told you so, where you, trump voter, now inside facing out, eyes wide shut, throwing prayers at something you don’t understand by squirting doubt and disbelief through clinched teeth like mud squeezing through tightening fingers.
This is you, trump voter, trying to put on a seat belt when you’re already 5,000 rolls into a potentially 200,000 roll car wreck. This is you after reaching over, grabbing the wheel, and giving it a swift, sharp push into oncoming traffic. This, is you.
This will no doubt further widen the gap between us, between they who warned of catastrophic results should trump drive his dirty pig fingers into the sensitive folds of history, and you, who brought him into our lives. Alerted to the coming threat, you, trump voters, spread your thighs anyway, licked your lips in anticipation, and bragged as trump went for it.
When trump is through with you, you will sit up and look around, dazed and bleeding, and start pointing fingers at anyone but yourselves while carrying his child. You will likely ignore what brought you to that point, opting instead to cry about the widening divide between Liberals who circled the wagons in time, and #Boogers who shunned science, again, and are unable to recover in the same manner.
Liberals will be called elite and accused of various crimes such as intellectualism, snobbery, divisiveness, faithlessness, godlessness, I could go on. Blue states with flattened curves will come under suspicion for contributing to red states' floundering with reoccurring virus peaks and economic potholes that can’t be fixed.
It will be liberals' fault. It will be The Great Chinese Fault. It will be the CNN fault, the Obama fault, the Pelosi and the Schumer fault. It will be anybody’s fault but your own, you, who against all logic voted for “IT,” the real virus.
You will point at me as being divisive. To you I say, “Six Feet Motherfucker.”
Six Feet.
Turnabout Is Fair Play
April 19, 2020
One thing I remember most about being thrust into the Mexican side of my family at age 14 was the smell of bleach. It was everywhere, in clothes, the bathroom, the kitchen, everything was routinely cleaned with it. It immediately edged out gasoline as one of my favorite smells, and is a treat to his day. I don’t care if I ruin colors. I bleach stuff.
It was also something that severely altered my relationship with my mother. For over 10 years the Mexicans were some kind of threat she used against me, almost exclusively when she was drunk, that if I didn’t this or that, I would be sent to my father’s family and it would be terrible. The Mexicans. It wasn’t her talking. Her asshole new husband injected that into her life, our lives. In the end he proved to be the greatest threat to have ever entered our world.
Years later she, or they made good on that threat and to the Mexicans I went. Quickly any perceived notions of substandard living conditions went right out the window. I don’t remember my mother ever having bleached clothes. I don’t remember her cleaning anything with bleach. Or even owning bleach. The words “dirty” and “Mexican” put together in the same sentence turned into an oxymoron for me.
Being immersed in the Mexican side of my family dispelled many myths I’d had stapled to me. It also opened my eyes to the slights offered to me by whites when they drop little racist gems in what they assume is kin company. Sometimes I'll wait to mention that I’m Mexican to people, and watch as they first say, "Naaaaaw," and then I can seee in their eyes as they mentally run through anything off color they may have said in my presence.
Recently we’ve seen armed Boogers storm streets decrying stay-at-home restrictions, shouting bullshit about rights and the Constitution and amendments. I see it as trump continuing to test what he can stir up with his base so that when the vote starts looking bad, he has some idea what he can get his people to do to really mess shit up.
Yesterday I went heads up with someone who memed, “Quarenteen is when you restrict the movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.” I started with the obvious, that even he couldn’t say if he is actually “healthy” or "sick," and it went where you can imagine from there.
I didn’t really go full Godoy on him. He’s a friend somehow and so I kept it tame.
Later while at a store, I saw a guy walking the isle. On first contact I saw he was really digging in his mouth with a finger, a molar and like really going at it. Later in a different isle he was seriously digging at his face, like he was digging out a bad splinter. I studied him closer and came to the conclusion that he was handicapped in some way. He was Chinese.
Walking to the car it hit me.
I wanted to go back to the conversation with this guy and tell him that while they’re trying to downplay Coronavirus by regurgitation FOX BS on inflated death numbers and overreacting with social distancing when the flu and ladder falls kill more people, it was very different when trump spread the fear of the dirty disease-carrying immigrant in order to whip up hysteria over his wall. Then disease was something to get worried about, and not any disease per se, but the people supposedly carrying them. It was enough to raise concern over the dirty immigrant, where there were little data on disease-carrying minorities crossing any border.
Would it be wrong to pull a Booger aside, a white, science-denying, poorly or diseducated murderous lazy and disease-carrying government-sucking mucus wad, look him or her in the eye and say, “You’re the dirty immigrant now.”
Imagine it. Say it softly if you must.
“You’re the dirty immigrant now.”
See, it rolls off my tongue so easily and without issue because the filthiest people I’ve ever seen in this country have been white people. And I believe that in my heart of hearts that dirty and ignorant whites from the #Booger belt are the real danger anymore.
“You’re the dirty immigrant now.”
Armed radical whites are massing. They are purposely cultivating a disease in the shithole recesses of their states, wanting to circumvent a government and virological experts to spread a disease over liberal and educated and informed borders. They are the threat worthy of a wall, of some physical separation, of some kind of force so that our families and children are safe.
Say it however you can sleep with it. I know what I’m thinking.
You, Booger, are the dirty immigrant now.
The Red Tide
September 28, 2019
You know what a "red tide" is? I used to deal with it on California beaches. It's when a massive amount of algae grows, quickly eats up its food supply, and then left without more food, dies en mass. It turns a dead red color, smells really bad, and makes the water toxic.
By now you should be well aware of my thoughts on trump supporters. trump exploded on to the scene, and fed a then dormant population with a nutritious thick slurry of hatehope, causing a massive outbreak of #Booger. trump then continued feeding it, goading it, and riling up its hunger.
And its anger.
What trump didn't do on purpose, he did on accident as the #Booger, once flying down the trump highway, became faced with traffic, then road construction, and then detours. Off the highway the #Booger started realizing that it was lost, unable to get back to the trump highway, or to even find itself on any map. The promised landmarks seemed further away.
What happens when we're lost? Some stop and ask for directions. But to the rest, a vast majority in the #Booger's case, even suggesting pulling over and asking for directions induces such a rage, that the #Booger hits the gas, starts fishtailing around neighborhoods it's unfamiliar with and screaming obscenities.
"I know where I am KAREN!"
Now that trump is burning, what will happen to the #Booger when he's gone? A #Boogertide.
It'll be different than when the Bushes died out. I don't remember either of them setting up their bases with such inconceivable and outlandish promises. Their bases rolled along with just-good-enough plans that turned sour, but nothing like trump's vision of carnage collapsing the way it is.
A #Boogertide.
It's easy to think, 'They'll just find another food source,' right? I'm not so sure. You stuff a kid's face with McDonalds and Cap'n Crunch for four years, then suddenly give it salad, and watch what happens. #Boogers, fattened up with trump's gooey, sweet and salty entertaining Soylent Shit, could either take a long look in the mirror at the fat rolls of disaster hanging from their bodies, or they could go into a serious rage and start recklessly careening through the streets sure that trump's MAGA interstate is just up ahead.
"I SAW A SIGN, PHYLLIS!!!"
When trump won, some writers chickened out and swerved, claiming that it's time to see things from the trump-voters' perspective, that they are somehow the forgotten downtrodden people who feel left out. I called bullshit. I still call bullshit. You don't see that much anymore, when after exposed to the obvious mistake trump is, the #Booger just keeps yeeeehawing and clapping, louder than ever.
The attached article is interesting, and I think is a great look into the looming postmortem to come. Hopefully it's a postmortem, but I fear it'll going to be something closer to a vivisection.
http://nymag.com/.../what-if-trump-supporters-love-chaos...