Author: Ryan Osentowski

I swore that I would never be one of those writers who always invokes Monty Python to make a point. A lot of those folks think they’re so clever because they get British humor in general, and Monty Python specifically, so they just have to be above all of those ugly Americans who don’t get it. That’s the kind of insufferable snobbery that gave us the great orange deity.

However, The Life of Brian contains a scene that is just too on-the-nose for this moment to let pass. In the movie, a character named Stan has an argument with a character named Reg (John Cleese.) Stan wants to have babies. Reg is like, “Where’s your womb, bloke?” Stan responds, “You’re oppressing me!”

That is our moment right now. I don’t like monocausal explanations, so I won’t say that America voted for Donald Trump because they know they’re living in a Monty Python skit and they resent the hell out of those tea-sippers for inflicting their humor on us. But if that’s not the reason, it’s close.

Yes, I’m not into monocausal explanations as an answer to complex problems, but if you tell me that the answer is relatively simple, that Trump won because the Democrats threw out a shitty candidate and replaced him with an even shittier candidate who couldn’t close the deal, I won’t buck. No matter what gaslighting method the left wants to use to explain Trump’s victory (racism, sexism, fascism), it just won’t do. Kamala was a terrible candidate who couldn’t even make it to Iowa in 2020. Joe Biden saw fit to elevate her to an office for which she was abjectly unqualified and unworthy. She thanked him by replacing him and handing Trump a solid victory, thus ushering Trump 47.

Thanks, Kamala. Hope you and Tim Walz enjoy your life in obscurity from now on, cuz that’s what you’ve earned for yourselves.

Historians will not have to spend a lot of time deconstructing the doomed candidacy of Kamala Harris; the nebulous word salad, the random, kooky laughter, the forced charisma that had about as much appeal as Cheez Whiz, or the apparent mismanagement of campaign funds that is now dogging her. All of this is just window dressing. All historians will need to do is examine Kamala’s interview on The View, which was as friendly of a venue as she could’ve wanted. Sunny Hostin asked her, “Is there anything you would’ve done differently than President Biden?” Harris answered, “Nothing comes to mind.”

That giant “whoosh!” sound you heard was the air going out of the Harris-Walz balloon. At that point, Kamala transformed from a promising change agent to an incumbent, and the world is in an anti-incumbent mood right now.

Will the left learn anything from their staggering defeat? Judging by how Seth Moulton has been treated, the obvious answer is, of course not! It appears that many of them are content to deactivate their Twitter accounts and migrate over to Bluesky, where they can further imbed themselves in their own socio/political silo. I know that Elon is a royal pain in the ass, but I predict that Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads will all fold faster than a pillar of Saltines.

Sidebar: I love the way that Voiceover pronounces the name, Bluesky. It gives the name a Communist Russia kind of feel.

As for Trump, anyone who is surprised by his erratic cabinet picks hasn’t been paying attention for the past nine years. For every Marco Rubio, we get an RFK Jr. For every Tom Homan, we get a Tulsi Gabbard. For every Matt Gaetz nomination, we’ll get a crazy Matt Gaetz exit. That is the pig in the poke that roughly half of America bought itself by voting for Trump. For the next four years, Trump will say and do all kinds of outrageous things. All of his apologists will spin, explain and reinterpret what he said. The media will chase every bright, shiny object that leaks from the White House and on Truth Social. They won’t be able to help themselves. The left will scream and throw tantrums and secretly love the latest shit nugget that Trump throws at them. And maybe…just maybe…some good things will happen in the process.

For the first time in nine years, it feels like I’m the guy in the catbird seat. Either way the election turned out, I was going to be disappointed. Both candidates were manifestly unfit for office. Either way it went, half the country would be celebrating, while the other half had an epic meltdown. Now, I get to spend the next four years saying ‘I told you so’ every time Trump is predictable in his own lizard brain fashion. Eventually, he’ll go too far, piss off too many people and the country will course-correct with an election that alters the balance of power.

Will the right learn anything from it? Probably not. I am genuinely curious to see how Republicans behave now that they hold power in Congress. Trump’s predictably crazy nominations, topped off by Kash Patel for FBI Director, will test the resolve and sagacity of the GOP majority. In order to protect and defend the Constitution, they will have to do something wildly unpopular on the right of today. They’ll have to tell Trump, “No.”

Can they do it? We’ll see. Mike Pence looked like a Trump marionette, until he wasn’t. Maybe John Thune, Mike Johnson and others will muster the same courage. It is emotionally unhealthy for me to hope for too much, but sometimes, hope is all you have.

Finally, let me tie this back to Monty Python by quickly addressing the trans issue. I’m not sure that the now infamous Trump ad that said, “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you,” was really the nail in her coffin. However, there is no disputing the fact that the ad was effective. The bathroom melee in Congress was just the latest battleground. I fully admit that Nancy Mace is a bad actor, but she did compel Mike Johnson to create women only spaces where none had been created before.

The problem with the trans activist movement is that they overplayed their hand. Maybe corporate HR types can compel lowly employees to put their pronouns in their Email signatures, on social media and announce them at icebreaker events at conferences, but people want to keep their jobs. So what? Forcing someone to play the pronoun game is not winning their heart or their mind. It is merely exercising naked power, which is what the authoritarian progressive left wants. I know nothing for certain, but firmly believe that a lot of America is exhausted with the constant battles over race, sex, gender and now, Palestine. If they are forced to choose, they’ll pick the devil they know over the devil they don’t. And that devil is a great big orange one.

I also am only mildly surprised that the party that championed safetyism for historically marginalized communities won’t acknowledge the basic desire for biological women to inhabit safe spaces of their own, including restrooms, locker rooms, battered women’s shelters and female prisons. Isn’t feeling triggered by a human with a penis in the stall next to you reason enough to request a safe space for a large group that has historically been oppressed? What happened to, “The Party of science?” It seems that they have gone the way of Dumbledore. They will probably now try to convince me that a five-ounce bird can, in fact, carry a one-pound coconut.

You know, the world today seems absolutely crackers. With nuclear bombs to blow us all sky high. There are fools and idiots sitting on the trigger. It’s depressing. It’s senseless. And that’s why…

I can’t even finish the lyric, because someone from Taiwan might get offended.

If you’ve paid the slightest bit of attention over the past nine years, you know that the Republican Party and the conservative movement at large has been in a fierce internal grappling session. The struggle hasn’t let up, and no matter who wins the election in November, I don’t think it will resolve itself anytime soon.

The below clippings are the perfect illustration of the ideological civil war that has consumed the right.

I will paste a column from New York Times columnist David French, followed by a rebuttal from Dan McLaughlin of the National Review. I have shared articles from both men before in this blog, but their diverging opinions exemplify the different paths both men have taken.

DAVID FRENCH
To Save Conservatism From Itself, I Am Voting for Harris
Aug. 11, 2024

I believe life begins at conception. If I lived in Florida, I would support the state’s heartbeat bill and vote against the referendum seeking to liberalize Florida’s abortion laws. I supported the Dobbs decision and I support well-drafted abortion restrictions at the state and federal levels. I was a pro-life lawyer who worked for pro-life legal organizations. While I want prospective parents to be able to use I.V.F. to build their families, I do not believe that unused embryos should simply be discarded — thrown away as no longer useful.
But I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and — ironically enough — I’m doing it in part to try to save conservatism.
Here’s what I mean.
Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as “traitors.”
What allegiance do you owe a party, a movement or a politician when it or they fundamentally change their ideology and ethos?

Let’s take an assertion that should be uncontroversial, especially to a party that often envisions itself as a home for people of faith: Lying is wrong. I’m not naïve; I know that politicians have had poor reputations for honesty since Athens. But I have never seen a human being lie with the intensity and sheer volume of Donald Trump.
Even worse, Trump’s lies are contagious. The legal results speak for themselves. A cascade of successful defamation lawsuits demonstrate the severity and pervasiveness of Republican dishonesty. Fox paid an enormous settlement related to its hosts’ relentless falsehoods during Trump’s effort to steal the election. Rudy Giuliani owes two Georgia election workers $148 million for his gross lies about their conduct while counting votes. Salem Media Group apologized to a Georgia voter who was falsely accused of voter fraud and halted distribution of Dinesh D’Souza’s fantastical “documentary” of election fraud, “2,000 Mules.”

And that’s hardly an exhaustive list. Several additional defamation cases are pending against MAGA networks and MAGA personalities.
Let’s take another assertion that should be relatively uncontroversial: Political violence and threats of violence have no place in the American democratic process. Yet threats and intimidation follow the MAGA movement like night follows day. One of the saddest stories of our time is the way in which even local election officials and local school board members fear for their safety. The level of threat against public officials has escalated in the MAGA era, MAGA Republicans often wield threats as a weapon against Republican dissenters, and every American should remember Jan. 6, when a mob of insurrectionists ransacked the Capitol.
I know that threats and violence aren’t exclusive to the right. We all watched in horror as a man tried to assassinate Trump; another man threatened Brett Kavanaugh’s life; and no one should forget the horrific congressional shooting, when an angry liberal man attempted a mass murder of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field.

But only one party has nominated a man who was indicted for his role in the criminal scheme to steal an American election, a scheme that culminated in a violent political riot. Only one party nominated a man who began the first rally of his 2024 campaign with a song by violent insurrectionists. He played “Justice for All,” a bastardized version of the national anthem by a group called the J6 Prison Choir. The song features the “Star-Spangled Banner” interspersed with excerpts of Trump reading the Pledge of Allegiance.
It’s not just Trump’s lies that are contagious, but his cruelty as well, and that cruelty is embedding itself deeply within one of Trump’s most loyal constituencies, conservative evangelicals. It is difficult to overstate the viciousness and intolerance of MAGA Christians against their political foes. There are many churches and Christian leaders who are now more culturally Trumpian than culturally Christian. Trump is changing the church.
And to what end?
It is fascinating to me that there are voices online who still claim that a person can’t be Christian and vote for Democrats, when the Trump campaign watered down the Republican platform on abortion to such an extent that it’s functionally pro-choice. Earlier generations of the pro-life movement would not have tolerated such a retreat. They would have made it clear that there were some principles Republicans simply can’t abandon without becoming a fundamentally different party.
It becomes even stranger to claim that Christians can’t vote for Democrats when the prime-time lineup at the Republican convention featured an OnlyFans star, a man who publicly slapped his wife, a man who pleaded no contest to an assault charge, and another man who had sex with his friend’s wife while the friend watched — and that’s not even including any reference to Trump himself.
Even if you want to focus on abortion as the single issue that decides your vote, the picture for abortion opponents is grim. Trump should get credit for nominating justices who helped overturn Roe (though the real credit for the decision goes to the justices themselves, including the George W. Bush appointee Samuel Alito, who actually wrote the majority opinion).

But when we’re dealing with a complex social phenomenon, political and legal issues are rarely simple. For the first time in decades, abortion rates and ratios increased under Trump. In addition, the best available evidence indicates that abortion rates are up since the Dobbs decision.
Barack Obama was an unabashedly pro-choice politician, yet there were 338,270 fewer abortions in 2016 than there were in 2008, George W. Bush’s last year in office. Though Trump nominated anti-abortion justices and enacted a number of anti-abortion policies, there were 56,080 more abortions the last year of his term than there were in the last year of Obama’s presidency.
Even worse, after Dobbs the pro-life position is in a state of political collapse. It hasn’t won a single red-state referendum, and it might even lose again in Florida, a state that’s increasingly red yet also looks to have a possible pro-choice supermajority. According to a recent poll, 69 percent of Floridians support the pro-choice abortion referendum, a margin well above the 60 percent threshold required for passage.
If the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement is to reduce the number of abortions, not just to change legal precedent, then these numbers and these electoral outcomes are deeply alarming. If present trends continue, then abortion opponents will have won an important legal battle, but they’ll ultimately lose the more important cultural and political cause.
Reasonable people disagree with me. I have friends and family members who will vote for Trump only because he is more moderate than Harris on abortion. I hate the idea that we should condition friendship or respect based on the way in which a person votes. Time and again we make false assumptions about a person’s character based on his or her political positions. There are truly bad actors in American politics, but we cannot write off millions of our fellow citizens who vote their consciences based on their own knowledge and political understanding.

At the same time, we should make the argument — firmly but respectfully — that this is no ordinary race and that the old political categories no longer apply.
For example, how many Republicans would have predicted that voting for a Democrat would be the best way to confront violent Russian aggression and that the Republican would probably yield to a Russian advance? In many ways, the most concretely conservative action I can take in this election is to vote for the candidate who will stand against Vladimir Putin. By voting for pro-life politicians down ballot, I can help prevent federal liberalization of abortion law. But if a president decides to abandon Ukraine and cripple NATO, there is little anyone can do.
While there are voters who are experiencing a degree of Trump nostalgia, remembering American life pre-Covid as a time of full employment and low inflation, there is a different and darker story to tell about Trump’s first term. Our social fabric frayed. It’s not just that abortions increased: The murder rate skyrocketed; drug overdose deaths hit new highs; marriage rates fell; and birthrates continued their long decline. Americans ended his term more divided than when it began.
I’m often asked by Trump voters if I’m “still conservative,” and I respond that I can’t vote for Trump precisely because I am conservative. I loathe sex abuse, pornography and adultery. Trump has brought those vices into the mainstream of the Republican Party. I want to cultivate a culture that values human life from conception through natural death. Yet America became more brutal and violent during Trump’s term. I want to defend liberal democracy from authoritarian aggression, yet Trump would abandon our allies and risk our most precious alliances.
The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn’t to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life.

That was the David French piece from the New York Times. Now, here is the rebuttal from Dan McLaughlin.

What’s Missing from the ‘Conservative Case for Voting for Harris’
By Dan McLaughlin

Our old friend David French writes in the Sunday New York Times, “To Save Conservatism From Itself, I Am Voting for Harris.”

I am deeply disappointed in the effort. There are two very big omissions from this column that destroy its persuasive force.
A vote reflects two kinds of choices: a selection between alternatives in who will govern us, and a statement (in the case of a columnist or a leader, a public statement) of what we endorse. There are often tensions between the two, and we all have our own views of how to resolve those tensions and what lines we won’t cross.
My own view: I’m a longtime Trump critic who voted third party in 2016, voted write-in in 2020, and planned to write in again in the Trump-vs.-Biden race. I’m also still a conservative Republican. I agree with French that Trump has been a menace to the Republican Party and the conservative movement, that he has acted against our systems of law in ways that cannot easily be absolved or minimized, and that he is a corrosive force in our national life. I’ve supported some very bad people who agreed with me, but it’s harder to write off character and fitness for the job in the presidency, given its vast powers. I’ve always said there were only two things that could make me consider a vote for Trump: a Kamala Harris nomination and a serious push for Court-packing by the Democrats. The past month has brought us both. I’m still not sure if I could pull the Trump lever even against Harris, but that’s another day’s argument.

In any event, I’ve tried very hard for eight years to be charitable towards fellow conservatives who felt compelled to vote Trump in the general elections as the lesser evil, and also towards those of us who opposed Trump so fiercely that they felt it necessary to vote Democrat.
But in justifying such a choice, a columnist has a duty to face the truth, and to confront readers with that truth. French fails at the task.
A columnist also has a duty to stay true to principles, or explain why they have changed — given that the profession of principles and their application to situations is the core of the columnist’s job.
This column fails on both counts. On the first, aside from the title and declaration of intent to vote, French mentions Kamala Harris only twice, saying with vast understatement, “I have friends and family members who will vote for Trump only because he is more moderate than Harris on abortion,” and adding, “if Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin.”
That’s it. Nothing else is mentioned of Harris’s views on domestic or foreign policy, her approach to law and the rule of law, how she uses power, or what sort of people she might appoint to the executive and judicial branches (Tim Walz is not mentioned). I have laid out the case at length that Harris is a dangerous authoritarian with contempt for law and individual rights, even citing French’s own past work; he addresses none of this, either to defend it or to explain why it doesn’t matter. On foreign affairs, no consideration is given to confronting Xi’s China, or Hamas, or Iran. French treats this as an election on only two issues, and even there he must muffle his acknowledgement that the candidate he supports is as bad as bad could be on one of the two, with enormous cost to innocent human life.

This is a dereliction of duty, even understanding the constraints of word counts (this piece runs some 1,600 words, which is long for the Times) and of what the editors of the Times will permit to be printed. Harris is a menace. If one must vote for a menace for the same reasons Churchill would ally with Stalin, one must at least be honest enough to lay out the consequences and why they are worth it — not least to an audience of readers comfortable in their prejudices against noticing those consequences.
Second, as a matter of principle, French has spent years arguing against binary-choice logic and for the view that one morally must not vote for an unfit character to be chief executive no matter how bad the alternative is. This is an intellectually respectable position. Yet, here, he declares himself for Harris without even bothering to make the case that Harris is fit to be our commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and defender of our Constitution. I suspect that he does this because he knows that describing Harris as fit for the office is an indefensible position, or at least one whose defense comes at a much more comprehensive cost of one’s principles. And so the principle falls silent.
There are conservative cases to be made for some very hard choices in this world. But one of the central duties of a conservative is to remember, always, that there are trade-offs for everything. To frame a case for Kamala Harris in the presidency only in the negative sense that it avoids another Trump administration is to pretend away those trade-offs. But they will not go away by ignoring them.

That was Dan McLaughlin’s deconstruction of David French’s argument in favor of voting for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. For the record, I’m with McLaughlin. French made an excellent case for not voting for Trump. He did not make a case for voting for Kamala Harris. You wanna save the GOP by forcing Trump out? Fine… But what about the country?

To paraphrase Dr. Pulaski from Star Trek TNG, French’s vote is very much like curing the disease by killing the patient. My own thoughts can best be summed up in my previous entry, but I felt that the points and counterpoints made by these two professional pundits were worth preserving in these pages.

We are indeed living in remarkable times. I feel that I should write about them just because of their extraordinary nature.

On the evening of July 13, I wrote an impulsive, ill-considered Facebook post that was titled, “The top 10 suspects who are behind the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.” It was a very flippant post that treated the incident with burlesque humor.

The post was hastily written less than an hour after the shots had been fired in Butler. After about 20 minutes, I thought better of it and deleted the post. Aside from the national security implications, the post showed profound disrespect to the firefighter who was killed in the attempt, as well as his surviving family. I’m sorry I ever brought it into reality.

A more sober and serious analysis of the event caused me to get angry. I wasn’t as much angry at the idea that someone had tried to kill Trump. Frankly, I’m surprised that it took as long as it did. I was outraged that the head of the Secret Service refused to resign. As you know from reading these pages, incompetence rewarded with loyalty really causes my quills to stand up. The Secret Service had one fucking job, to keep a presidential candidate safe from harm, and they were derelict in their duty. If Trump had not turned his head when he did, we’d be seeing blood in the streets now.

Well, Kimberly Cheatle did finally step down, but not because she was incompetent. She stepped down because she saw the writing on the wall. The Democrats, as well as Republicans, were not going to throw her a life line. But the travesty still exists. Cheatle should’ve stepped down within 24 hours of the attack, not 10 days.

Six days after Trump was shot on a stage in Butler, PA, Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race. Contrary to the hollow platitudes floated by the Dems, he didn’t do it out of any sense of patriotism for his country or his party. According to reliable reports, he stepped down because too many DNC heavy-hitters ganged up on him and forced his hand.

Biden had no choice. His disastrous debate performance was the pivot point. His petulant, back foot defensiveness in subsequent interviews did not allay the growing fears of the Democrats that his advanced age would prove to be an embarrassment of riches for a sniping Trump.

We may never know all of the behind-the-scenes drama that went into Biden’s withdrawal, but we do know that he’s still maintaining a tenuous grasp on the presidency.

48 hours after Biden withdrew, all of the chattering classes were speaking of Kamala Harris as the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. She won no primaries. She won no hearts in debates or interviews. She scored no points with Democrats during her tenure as vice-president. In fact, she came to be the butt of many jokes during her less than stellar tenure as veep. If you doubt me, just go look up Kamala Harris on The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live on YouTube. She was even the subject of several unflattering pieces from credible media outlets such as CNN, The Atlantic and Politico; none of which are right-wing outfits.

Kamala Harris simply inherited the nomination because of her race, her gender, her geographical location and her Trumpian luck. She is a
Remarkable study in how to fail upward, as was Kimberly Cheatle. As, frankly, is Donald Trump. That is one of the unfortunate hallmarks of our country today. Institutional momentum drives people who don’t deserve success into the limelight.

Here’s the part of this entry that will be as weird for you to read as it is for me to write. Ever since Kamala ascended to the status of heir apparent, I’ve been seriously tempted to vote for Trump in November. Now, don’t any of you get your shorties in a twist. I have made no final decision. I’m just saying that the temptation to vote for Trump is as strong in my heart as it has ever been.

Lest you think that Trump broke me, let me provide a laundry list of just some of Trump’s misdeeds.

Trump is a serial liar who always doubles down when called on his deception. He is a serial adulterer who paid hush money to a porn star to gain political advantage. He is an admitted sexual predator who uses his celebrity status as leverage over his victims. Trump plays fast and loose with state secrets. He speaks well of men like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, while openly trashing our NATO allies. He protests when his enemies use “lawfare,” against him, but he will certainly use the same tactics against his enemies if given the chance. Trump is impulsive, erratic, narcissistic, unstable, vain and professionally and personally abusive to those in his orbit. He is incapable of managing a real crisis, such as the pandemic, showing a decided lack of leadership when it matters most. Despite his outward bluster, he can be strikingly indecisive, such as was the case during the 2020 racial riots in America.

Worst of all, Trump is a conspiracy theorist who traffics in election denial and instigated an attempt to overthrow the peaceful transition of power for his own ego-driven ends. I cannot stress enough that this is an absolute threat to the order and stability of our republic.

And yet, with all of that on the record, is Donald Trump the worst threat to our democracy that we face in these trying times?

Consider what I’ve already written about Kamala Harris. Then consider this.

Joe Biden came into office promising to unify the country. He has utterly failed. His abominable withdrawal from Afghanistan, his refusal to control our southern border, his steadfast delusion in the face of mounting inflation, his flip-flopping on Israel, his empty threats in the face of the invasion of Ukraine and, worst of all, his naked race baiting in Georgia when they passed voting reforms, all indicate a divisive presidency that is mediocre at best. As the vice-president, Kamala must share in that record.

What really gives me pause is Harris’s approach to crime. She has vocally supported those who have engaged in political violence under the banner of Black Lives Matter, while openly scorning those who stormed the U.S. Capital on January 6. I have no patience for those who condemned the BLM riots of 2020 but defended the January 6 marauders. But the reverse is also true. I have been and will continue to be consistent on this point. I am unalterably opposed to political violence in a free and open society such as ours for any reason.

I wish Kamala could say the same, but she can’t. Does anyone remember when she visited Jacob Blake in Kenosha? Does anyone remember when Kamala supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund, who bailed out violent offenders regardless of the severity of the charges? Does anyone remember when Kamala very vocally supported defunding the police? Does anyone remember when Senator Harris co-sponsored the resolution to create the Green New Deal? Does anyone remember when Harris called for the elimination of private health insurance? Does anyone remember when Vice-President Harris was put in charge of the crisis at the southern border and never visited the border? Instead, she went to Guatemala to explore, “root causes of migration.” If you don’t remember these things, you better google it soon before the media permanently memory holes them.

Yes, the media has had its own role to play as the country has made the light speed jump from Biden to Harris. I must admit that I reveled in the discomfort of Democrat talking heads when the media went on attack mode after the debate. It gave me the cleanest of pleasure to watch them do their jobs for a change. This was the same bulldog press that relentlessly hounded Trump during his term in office. And you know what…I’m fine with that. The Fourth Estate is in top form when it is skeptical at best, adversarial at worst. They are in the dregs when they run cover for the government. Their jumping on the Harris band wagon, including the attempt to erase the idea that she was ever the Border Czar, is nothing less than Orwellian.

The only thing more pathetic than an obeisant mainstream media are the rabid ‘Never Trumpers.’ I’m talking about the Lincoln Project, Nick Catoggio, Mike Murphy and the crew at The Bulwark. Their anger toward Trump has driven them to the point where they honestly believe that supporting Democrats is preferable to the alternative. I’m not just talking about reluctantly pulling the lever in the privacy of the voting booth, but a full-throated support of Joe Biden, followed by the instantaneous transfer of loyalty to Harris. These defenses include the sad, transparent rationalizations of all of Kamala’s convenient policy reversals, all uttered by her surrogates.

This warped mentality is demonstrated most clearly by a recent column by Bulwark founder Charlie Sykes, in which he wrote:

“For Never Trumpers who have been in the political wilderness for nearly a decade now, this is not the time to quibble over tax rates, the Green New Deal, fracking, or pronouns. Harris is far from their first choice, but when your kitchen is in flames, you reach for whatever extinguisher is at hand. You can worry later about washing the dishes or whether you need a new garbage disposal. Put the fire out now.”

I love people who use fire analogies, because they are always so reckless. Fire is an energy that is nearly impossible to contain, and it always exacts collateral damage. So, question for Charlie. What if, in your blind panic, you grab a can of gasoline instead of the fire extinguisher? Forget the friggin’ garbage disposal. What if, despite your best efforts, the whole goddamn house burns down?

Because that’s what this whole Kamala fever smacks of. Just beneath the hype and the gloss and the heaps of abrupt, saccharin praise, wafts the pungent odor of desperation. Your desperation to stop Trump at any cost has caused you to mill about in a frantic frenzy, like a scared kid trying to find that fire extinguisher. And by the way, when exactly is the right time to quibble over tax rates, border security and pronouns? Is it before or after the electoral prize is won? Grab a fucking clue, Charlie!

President Biden has just released a laundry list of changes he wants to make to the Supreme Court, which is one of those institutional checks that is meant to prevent government from running amuck. Is Biden so feeble that he doesn’t know that his proposals are dead on arrival? I suspect that his real intent is to plant a seed that will eventually be harvested by President Harris. These recommendations have all been made in bad faith. The Democrats aren’t interested in the ethics of the Supreme Court. They want to change its compositional makeup because they don’t like the court’s rulings of late.

Do we really believe that Harris won’t take the SCOTUS ball and run with it? Do we really believe that Harris, who has been openly hostile to law enforcement, will do anything to quell the surge of anti-Semitic mob activity that has been growing on our streets since October 7? Do we seriously believe that Harris will take a strong stand in support of Israel, or against Russia and China? Do we really believe that a President Harris won’t use and abuse her pen and her phone to move on guns, illegal immigration, healthcare, so-called trans rights and the economy?

If you really believe those things, then you are as cuckoo as Bill Kristol and Tim Miller. In no universe does aiding the Democrat Party, who is steadily moving leftward, make any kind of sense. Maybe the dickheads at the Bulwark think that they can influence the Harris administration if they just display the correct amount of felicity on her behalf. All due respect…how has that worked out during Biden’s term? How is that any different than Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley capitulating to Trump?

Here’s another angle to consider. Are we better off with a media that is every bit as sycophantic toward President Harris as they were toward President Obama in the name of identity justice, or are we better off with an antagonistic, bulldog press that is doing its job and reporting on the actions of the president? If the press had done their jobs a year or two ago, perhaps the Democrats could have had a genuine primary. But they didn’t, the train wreck of a debate happened and only then, when the truth about Biden’s deterioration became too obvious to ignore, did they turn on the pressure.

How many major interviews has Kamala done since Biden withdrew from the race? How many press conferences has she held? How many spontaneous Q&As has she done? The answer…zero. She knows she doesn’t have to, because the press loves her. All she has to do is stay on script and avoid potentially awkward situations for the next three months, let Trump be Trump, and she may win the prize.

Conversely, Trump just did an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists yesterday. He did himself some damage, but the dude showed up. Kamala begged off.

And are we sure that Trump will run wild in his second term? How is Project 2025 working out these days? How about the handmaid post-Ro nightmare of forced births? How’s Trump doing on abortion?

Say what you will about Trump, but he is proving to be the more authentic expression of democracy during this election cycle. Love him or hate him, and there is no middle ground on this point, he was chosen by primary voters in a valid contest with well-qualified candidates. Kamala Harris cannot make that claim. She was chosen by Biden because of her identity. This is not a slur or a smear. It is fact. Her position as vice-president placed her in orbit to be chosen when Biden proved incapable of running for a second term. If she wins in November, she will have done nothing to earn the office. The Democrats mouse trapped themselves into the position they are in now. Why should we allow them to mouse trap the entire nation?

Speaking of identity politics, I find the idea of these segregated Zoom calls for Kamala to be super gross. “White dudes for Harris,” “Win with black women,” “Win with black men,” “Latinas for Harris,” “White women, answer the call.” I was raised to believe that segregation was evil. How is positive segregation any better than negative segregation? I am unalterably opposed to segregation of any kind, for any reason, in the professional or political sphere. I believe that nothing good can ultimately come from such practices. I would honestly welcome a candid discussion with an African-American man or woman who would give me a good faith explanation of how and why this sort of thing is helpful.

Over in the Trump camp, I’ve been hearing more and more about African-American men and Latinos drifting toward the GOP. I’m not sure if this is a real phenomenon, or just wishcasting on the part of pundits, but I guess we’ll find out in November. If it is really happening, it would be the sort of organic diversity long touted by the left.

Either way we wind up after November 4, the outcome is sure to be grim. When I run the various scenarios in my brain, I keep coming back to the notion that I first expressed in my last entry. Maybe America, and the world at large, is better off with the devil we know, rather than the devil we don’t.

I can guess what’s coming. Some will accuse me of latent racism or sexism because of my antipathy toward Kamala Harris. All I can say is, I can’t wait to watch the career of Winsome Sears continue to unfold.

I am fully aware of the contradictions in my position here. I am at risk of becoming the very thing that I’ve hated for the last eight years. If I vote for Trump, I have to own it, including all of the consequences that result. My only remaining questions are, which fall-out will hurt America the least. If Trump wins, we’ll have street violence. If Harris wins, we’ll have street violence. Which violence is the least worst outcome?

What an absurd and wretched question. Right now, I have no fucking idea. I am sure of one thing. No matter who wins the election, one group of violent offenders will be punished, while another will be pardoned.

I am cognizant of the ‘Burn it Down’ entry I wrote a few months ago. There’s your fire analogy again, folks. Everything I wrote in there is still valid today. In a world rife with irony, wouldn’t it be ironic if Trump lost to Kamala, despite his best efforts? Hillary looks pretty good next to Harris, doesn’t she? This would make the fourth straight electoral loss that Republicans suffered under Trump’s reign. I wrote previously that the GOP would have to keep losing and losing at the ballot box until they get the point that Trump is no longer effective. A Harris victory would prove me right. But how much damage would the country have to suffer before they change course?

Let me circle back to my starting point; the assassination attempt. When Donald Trump was struck by a bullet and thrown to the ground, then immediately stood up, blood on his face, and raised his fist in the air and yelled, “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!” it was the perfect American symbol. Wouldn’t it be ironic if that proved to be his crowning political achievement? If he keeps going the way he’s going, it will be his political finale.

Two days after he was shot, Trump selected J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential nominee. It was an act of extreme hubris which is backfiring on him. During his acceptance speech, Trump reflected on his brush with death for about 20 minutes. Then, he reverted to type, riffing and wandering his way through the remainder of his bloated speech.

As I’ve always said, there’s nothing that Donald Trump can’t fuck up.

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for Kamala to choose her veep nominee. If she picks Jewish Josh Shapiro, she’s screwed. If she doesn’t pick Jewish Josh Shapiro, she’s screwed.

Mouse trap, indeed.

Trump had his cocaine high after the debate. I think Kamala is now having hers. But external events have a way of drastically and rapidly altering the political landscape. In the past 72 hours, two high-level terrorists were assassinated by the IDF in retaliation for a rocket attack by Hezbollah that killed 12 children on a soccer field in North Israel. Three of the masterminds behind 9/11 will avoid the death penalty by agreeing to a plea bargain, courtesy of the Biden Justice Department. A female Olympic boxer surrendered to her biologically male opponent after just 46 seconds of combat. Venezuela has erupted in chaos after President Maduro tried to steal the election. Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan are returning home after being falsely imprisoned in Russia, thanks to a prisoner swap engineered by Biden.

If you think you know how the election will turn out, you’re full of shit. Me…I haven’t been sure of anything since Biden dropped out.

Someone wake me up when this nightmare is over. I’ll be taking a catnap with Kylie.

Addendum: August 4

Thank you, Mr. Trump, for reminding me of why I just can’t vote for your stupid orange ass. As if things weren’t going bad enough in your camp, you spent valuable time attacking Governor Brian Kemp last night during your Atlanta rally. Georgia is a swing state, you stupid fuck! I wonder if the shift in polls will get your attention.

I guess the whole bloody mess really is in God’s hands.

I’d like to have a good laugh over the latest lament of the Columbia student protesters. They’ve occupied Hamilton Hall and now they are outraged that no one is bringing them food and water. They think they have a right to burritos, Red Bull and melatonin gummies on…like…humanitarian grounds or whatever. This is the height of white, entitled, western arrogance (everything the students think they are decrying) and they are incapable of absorbing the irony.

Yes, I’d like to laugh, but it’s really not funny. When the University of Florida arrested protesters and released a statement saying, in part, “The University of Florida is not a daycare,” I let out a silent cheer. Hell! Yeah! Bounce these snot-nosed brats out into the street and show them that their actions have consequences.

The sad truth is, while these students must accept responsibility for what they are doing, the adults are the ones who have failed. We have failed the children, we have failed our institutions of higher learning and, in many ways, we are failing society.

About 20 years ago, I was listening to the Sean Hannity Show on radio when a college kid phoned in. He said something like, “I’m a conservative student in college. How do I deal with my professors who are way left?”

Hannity’s response was, “I feel ya, kid. My best advice to you is to just go along, take the good grade and make your way in the real world after you graduate.” I’m pretty sure I heard similar conversations play out on the Rush Limbaugh Show in the ‘90’s.

I think this is what a lot of moms and dads across America have been doing since the 1960’s when widespread campus activism first appeared. They simply looked at Junior’s grades at the end of each semester and said, “Good job, sons and daughters. Keep it up.” They never really bothered to ask what the students were learning. They never pushed back when Junior started spewing nonsense about anti-colonialism, decadent western capitalism, or the theory of intersectionality. Mom and dad would just smile and nod when the grades came home and would happily write another check for the college when the tuition bill came due.

Well, the bill is really coming due now.

The first evidence of it came during the pandemic when students had to learn remotely while schools and campuses were closed and mom and dad started to figure out what their high school and college brats were being fed. Then, they really started to wake up when the race riots broke loose in the summer of 2020. Remember the kerfuffle over Critical Race Theory? It feels like ages ago. Then came the firestorm of trans rights, men on girls’ sports teams and shared bathrooms between all genders. Yeah…the good old days.

Parents started forming committees to protest at schoolboards. Conservatives started trying to make more serious runs for public office in hope of beating back the forces of anti-Americanism. Donors began to hesitate before cutting their university of choice another check. A lot of parents started saying, “Where is my kid and what have you done with him/her/then/it?”

Now, with the explosion of antisemitism and flagrant lawlessness that has erupted at colleges across the country, Mr. and Mrs. Mom and Dad are really awake. But…too little, too late. We’ve now raised a generation of anxiety-ridden children who have been indoctrinated to the idea that traditional learning with an eye toward critical thinking pales in comparison to so-called lived experiences and education through activism; said activism being of the leftist persuasion.

But it’s not just the parents who have failed. Gutless cowards who sit in the administrative offices at these elite colleges have also failed.

I spent some time with a headshrinker about eight years ago. The most important thing she taught me was that personal boundaries matter. If you don’t construct both internal and external boundaries in your life, you will always be adrift in some way. This was one of the most valuable life lessons I ever learned. I wish I’d learned it earlier.

By not demonstrating to these kids that their actions have consequences, these administrators are proving that boundaries don’t matter. This is why the Columbia kids who have now occupied a campus building are demanding amnesty for their actions. They don’t want the evidence of what they’ve done to dog them for the rest of their lives. “But they have a point, squishy adults cry in response. Didn’t we all do dumb things when we were young?” Of course we did, but we didn’t break windows, harass students based on their ethnicity or religion and occupy a building in the name of a conflict happening thousands of miles away.

And who do these students have to look to? Radical professors who have indoctrinated them with a one-sided ideology without the benefit of balance. Administrators who ignore one deadline after another for the sake of supposed empathy. Politicians who will use these protests for their own ends. And, of course, the ultimate failures in adulthood, two presidential candidates, neither of whom are worthy of holding the highest office in the land.

Sidebar: One aspect of the current campus drama that I really love is the cherry picking of constitutional rights. These kids are protesting in the name of their First Amendment rights as guaranteed by a document authored by a bunch of imperialist, slave-owning white men. I believe they are standing on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Yet, when it comes to freedom of the press, they are far less tolerant. Check out all of the videos on YouTube and see what happens to journalists (professional, student and civilian) who try to interview standard protesters or video the activities of the protesters. You will find it very instructive.

I never thought I would live to see the day when the word adult would be used in the noun, adjective and verb form, but here we are. Well, no matter how you implement the word, America has failed the adult test. And who will answer for these failures when Jewish students end up dead? Because that’s where I think this is heading. Who will pay the bill when there’s life blood on the ground?

Finally, on a separate but related note, I mentioned that today’s youth seem incapable of absorbing irony. Well, here’s the ultimate irony in all of this. Every time pro-Hamas students block Jewish students from entering a building in the name of so-called antizionism, they reinforce why Israel must exist. Every time people tear down hostage posters, they remind Jews of why they really aren’t welcome or equal in western society. Every time politicians employ anti-Semitic slogans, or deliberately misuse inflammatory words like, “genocide,” or “apartheid,” they remind Jews that there is only one government in the world that will really defend them. Every time they deny or downplay the mass rape and slaughter of Israeli citizens in the name of so-called, “resistance,” they show their true evil. There will always be Jews who will stand with the anti-Semites, for both good and bad faith reasons, they too will soon learn how things really are.

Will they learn too late? God only knows. But sooner or later, their bill will come due and they will have no choice but to pay it.

This is a very adult concept, isn’t it?

It is 7:48 Pm Central Standard Time as my fingers type these words. I see tweets indicating that the NYPD may be about to raid Columbia. Good luck, kids. You won’t like jail food, but at least you’ll be hydrated and won’t starve to death.

Faugh! Go tell it to Nika Shakarami.

On July 23, 2020, David French wrote a column for The Dispatch titled, “Dump Trump, But Don’t Burn Down the GOP.” His premise was simple. The GOP should eject Donald Trump, but many who were carrying his banner should be given grace and space to mend their ways. After all, how do you fight the president of the United States when he’s your party’s standard bearer?

I was in earnest agreement with David French. Remember that, at the time that he wrote those words, America was still in the grips of the pandemic, as well as a summer of rage in which ravenous mobs were burning, looting and toppling statues in the name of the slain George Floyd. Sure, Trump had to go, but the GOP was still the best alternative to the Democrats and their tacit approval to the marauders.

French’s column was written before the 2020 election, before the COVID vaccines became available, before January 6, before the FBI raided Maralago, before Russia invaded Ukraine, before Trump’s many indictments and legal losses, before Fox News settled a massive lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, before the Israeli-Hamas war and, most important, before Joe Biden’s advanced age became a glaring liability.

Now, here we are in March of 2024. After a lot of quiet desperation in many quarters of the right, the primaries have come to not. Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswami and Mike Pence all proved to be paper tigers in the face of Trump and what he represents. I have never seen a primary season that was so full of hope and promise early on, only to crumble into utter futility before it had ever got started.

We are now left with the choice between a doddering old man who can barely walk and talk, and a narcissistic man-child criminal who, if he should be re-elected, will enter his second term with a vengeful hit list.

Who’s responsible for this predicament? Sure, you can blame the primary voters. It’s no small matter that Trump had been given up for dead before he was indicted. The other candidates gave it their best shot in the debates and their various campaigns, but the politics of normality proved to be a grand exercise in futility. The voters merely responded to the choices before them and they chose.

Sure, the voters gave us Trump for a third time, but here’s the real question. Why was Trump in a position to run again? Why was he not impeached and convicted after January 6? The evidence was ample that he was complicit on some level. If there doesn’t turn out to be enough evidence to convict him in a court of law, so be it. But impeachment is not a legal process. It is a political process designed for the exact crisis that Trump sparked when he sicked the mob on the U.S. Capital.

If Trump had been impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate, he would have no longer been eligible to run for office again. We would not now be facing the beggar’s choice that has been forced upon us by the two parties.

Mitch McConnell, who is leaving at the end of this year, is chiefly to blame. He could’ve picked up the ball and run with it while the fence was still being rebuilt and feelings were raw in the days after the siege on the capital, McConnell is a master political chessman and should have foreseen what would happen. But, he didn’t. Instead, he is rumored to have said, “We’ll just let the Democrats take care of the son of a bitch.” Now, with the end of his long political career in sight, did McConnell finally unload on Trump? Nope. He endorsed him once again.

Shortly after Trump left Washington, Kevin McCarthy went to Maralago and kissed the ring. He didn’t have to go. He could’ve turned his back on Trump once and for all. By going to Maralago and bending the knee to Trump once again, McCarthy re-legitimized the man who, to this day, traffics in wild conspiracy theories about stolen elections. Theories which, not inconsequentially, have been shot down in courts of law again…and again…and again. As for Kevin McCarthy, Trump’s loyal fan base rewarded him by granting him the shortest gig as Speaker of the House in history.

The GOP didn’t have to run Liz Cheney out of town on a rail. If they truly believed she was a threat, they could’ve kept her close and tried to manage her, even as she sat on the January 6th Committee. But they didn’t. Liz Cheney is out of office and is on a book tour peddling her memoirs. The only other vocal Trump critic, Senator Mitt Romney, will be gone next year.

So, here we are. The GOP controls the House, but only by a razor-thin majority that keeps getting thinner as more and more decent and honorable congressmen head for the door after wearying of a toxic, dysfunctional climate that has been hijacked by MAGA sycophants that care more about performance than policy. After bargaining and clawing his way to the speakership, Kevin McCarthy lasted eight months before he was ousted by the nutjob Freedom Caucus. His successor, Mike Johnson, doesn’t look like he’ll fare any better. No major policy achievements can be had in the House while chaos holds sway at the top.

It looks as if the only functional branch of government is the judicial. The Supreme Court is doing its job. The current conservative majority was a win for President Trump 1.0, but now he has promised to cast aside the Federalist Society and go with more MAGA judges should he be returned to office. Wow. I sure am heartened by this.

Some have argued that many Republicans were scared to impeach Trump because they were in fear for their lives. This is a reasonable concern. Threats of violence leveled against those in political office are well documented. But here’s the problem. In our current scenario, we’re going to get violence no matter who wins in November.

If Trump wins, as many polls suggest that he might, the radical left will take to the streets and resurrect their rage-fueled tactics in Washington. The Democrats have long established a permission structure for leftist street justice. November, 2024 will be no exception. In fact, I think the summer of rage will be a picnic compared to the violence we’ll see if Trump wins again.

If Trump loses, he sure as hell won’t go gently into that dark night. He’ll scream about rigged elections again and his rabid followers will mount another siege on institutions of power. By not impeaching Trump and downplaying the seriousness of the January 6th riot, the GOP has negated its credibility as the party of law and order.

Either way this country goes, we’re screwed.

And I have barely touched on the various shit shows going on outside of our borders. If Russia, China, Iran or Canada decides to escalate, America is ill-equipped to defend itself. Our military recruitment is down. Our education system is in tatters. Our happiness index is now outside the top 20 countries. Social media has infected our discourse with a noxious blend of simplistic and juvenile banter. It really is a dark time for the rebellion.

What is the solution? I have no freakin’ idea. We’ve painted ourselves into a very, very dark corner and I don’t see a way out that doesn’t involve blood, fire and death. Think I’m being melodramatic? Replay the last decade in your mind and tell me I’m being a fear monger. I only have one immediate answer for all of this. BURN DOWN THE GOP!

They have faced their moment of truth and they have utterly failed the test. The first time around, Trump was an unknown quantity who took the country and the GOP by storm. No one was prepared for him. No one knew how to deal with him. No one could manage him. Any accomplishments of Trump 1.0 were overshadowed by his shoddy leadership during the pandemic, let alone his unforgiveable conduct after he lost the 2020 election. But now, every single GOP politician, operative, pundit and voter knows exactly who and what they’re getting if they pull the lever for him again. They can lie to themselves and those around them, but they know.

Sadly, this won’t stop anyone from engaging in rampant self-delusion. I have a dear friend (I won’t say her name because I love and respect her), but she has watched her local GOP party be hijacked and taken over by MAGA thugs who don’t give a damn about political pragmatism. Mouth-breathers like Matt Innis, who take their marching orders from Steve Bannon, only want to stand atop the battlements in all of their tumescent glory and watch good men like Congressman Don Bacon and Governor Jim Pillen fall. She has witnessed their strong-arm tactics first hand and she is disgusted. When I tell her that these people are a result of unchecked Trumpism, she doesn’t argue. “I know,” she says with a sigh. Yet, she is bound and determined to vote for Trump in November because, “Biden is worse.”

Is Biden really worse? I think he’s a disaster, just as President Kamala Harris would be a disaster. President Harris is who we’ll likely end up with if Biden is re-elected. There’s no way he makes it through another four years. He didn’t have the brains or balls to carry us through these times of tumult 20 or 30 years ago, let alone now. Biden is a windy scumbag who only got where he is because he rode Obama’s coat tails. So, thank you, President Obama, for giving us President Biden and very likely President Harris at some point.

I’m sure as hell not going to vote for Biden. Unlike those idiots at The Bulwark, I don’t see Democrats as the reasonable alternative to Trump. They have their own internal strife and authoritarian tendencies that will only become more apparent as they continue to hold on to power. My solution is more conservative candidates. No conservative Democrat has a prayer right now.

This, barring any legal or medical intervening event, is the choice that awaits us in seven months. It’s like going into a restaurant and being handed a menu with only two choices; a cat shit sandwich, or doggy diarrhea stew. Either way we go, we’re gonna wake up with brown teeth.

Sidebar: RFK Jr. is a crackpot. He is not going to be the next president of the United States. Any support for him is wasted. No Labels can’t get it up. Cornel West isn’t even worth a conversation.

Still, at least Biden is a remnant of the institution. If the psycho left wants to burn them down, that’s on them. The revolution always eats its own in the end. Just ask AOC, who can’t even go to the movies without being harassed by pro-Hamas goons. That’s not within my purview. I was once a loyal GOP member and it is no longer a party that I recognize or respect. There are still many good people in it, but they are quickly becoming a minority.

While many state parties across the country like Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nebraska descend into turmoil and financial ruin, Trump has driven Ronna McDaniel out of leadership of the Republican National Committee. You see how her loyalty was rewarded after she stuck by him during his presidency and the aftermath? In her place, we now have Lara Trump, who got the job as co-chair because she is Donald’s daughter-in-law. Yeah…nepotism always works out so well. Observers have noted that a resolution demanding that the RNC not use its coughers to pay for Trump’s mounting legal bills was dead in the water. A dollar given to the RNC will now likely pay Trump’s lawyers, not any struggling state party. It’s also noteworthy that almost none of the people who served in Trump’s first administration have endorsed him this time around. And yet, Trump prevails with a growing list of endorsements from full-throated supporters to reluctant hangers-on.

So, burn it down. Burn it all down. Not literally, of course. I am unalterably opposed to political violence in a free society. But the GOP must be decimated in its current form. Starve it of all oxygen by withholding your time, your money and your public support. Cast your votes for individual candidates based on character and policy, not slogans and shit talk. Don’t volunteer for your local parties anymore. Spend your time and energy in other ways that feed your soul with productivity and happiness. Let the GOP die the death by immolation that it deserves. The only way they will die is if they lose…and lose…and lose…until they become tired of losing and throw themselves upon the mercy of the bankruptcy court.

This brings up an interesting point. Sometimes, you can find glory In losing. Just ask the left, who loves to revel in victimhood. It’s possible that figures like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Green enjoy losing. But do we really want to lose a possible war with China? Do we really want to see abortion become national law? Do we really want to see the national debt continue to skyrocket? Do we really want to continue with a flood of unchecked immigrants pouring over our southern border? Maybe psychos like Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert do, but I sure as hell don’t. But if we stick with Trump, we will pay a price that America just can’t afford.

What does David French think now? Who knows. He left The Dispatch a few years ago and now writes a column for the New York Times. I like David, but I’m not giving the NYT a dime. Best of luck to him as he will inevitably write something that will displease the leftist jackals who now run the paper. This is where the media should be a comfort, but sadly, they’ve de-evolved into megaphones for their various echo chambers. Outlets like The Dispatch, where my pal Rachel Carver now freelances, are about as effective as a wet candle in a black-out.

My only further advice is that everyone reading this should buy a gun and put it under lock and key for a few months. This is not a joke. It is not my characteristic flippancy. It’s not a call to violence. November is going to be very bloody and all good people should be prepared to defend themselves against shitbirds who will take advantage of the coming chaos to line their own pockets and settle scores. If you’re Jewish, sleep with one gun under your pillow and another one strapped to your ankle. When shit hits the fan, y’all will be catching flak from both sides.

Finally, my apologies that Jeffrey Donovan and Bruce Campbell did not appear in this entry. Sorry for the false hope. It’s 2024. You all should be used to false hope by now. Sam Axe for president!