Would like to say that in another timeline where Joe Biden hadn’t dropped out yet – or at all – that I would have still printed a retrospective with the same headline (up to you whether it’s the Bananarama or Taylor Swift track of that name playing in your head right now) a month from the day after the night that ended his long and storied career in politics. Truth be told I almost certainly would have just tried in my own way to continue to walk the line between gallows humor and hollow attempts at boosting morale, not even acknowledging the milestone. What would have been gained by being honest that American democracy was sliding towards another very dark period which it wasn’t terribly likely to survive? How does one ever truly process a trauma like that?
Those interminable days of the mainstream media grinning happily while banging out scorching hot takes like “Trump on glide path back to White House: Top 10 picks for cabinet posts,” their best at preemptively currying favor with a regime that is far more likely to imprison them for sedition than the current one ever would. The agony of waiting on something, anything else to happen that would change the subject. And the even worse agony of those other news cycles – the Supreme Court throttling the conspiracy case against the fat fuck and giving him a blank check to create a permanent dictatorship, that stupid incel bringing an AR-15 to a sniper rifle fight, Aileen Cannon doing what she was hired to do – just increasing the torment. That Biden was doomed and then he wasn’t because of a middling performance at this or that and then he was again.
Man this past week has been the worst for Democrats since Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.
— 4-7-1 Bravo, no neither 🇺🇸🇳🇮 (@notever4747) July 1, 2024
Maybe right here is where a normal and more well-adjusted adult would write: “Sorry New York Times, you were right to say Biden should step aside weeks before he ultimately did. We were wrong to doubt the wisdom and collective experience of your editorial board.”
But nah, my message remains “Fuck you.” If they want credit they can disband their editorial board and encourage each of them to reapply to openings in the real estate section. The fucking monumentally insufferable arrogance of these mortals that fancy themselves gods, their idea of “balance” being a deep feature outlining why Trump is a danger to democracy AFTER the blowback.
The actual living gods, the ones who moved heaven and earth here are Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries. Whatever you thought before last Sunday and whatever November brings there now is zero, and I mean ZERO, question of whether their actions stemmed the tide in a positive way. Anyone who thinks this is a fucking episode of Game of Thrones where the scheming council of elders plot against the king to install a more pliable regent princess is more than welcome to argue that the deposed king is more feared and formidable.
I trusted them. When the reporting started coming in that they were trying to talk Joe into stepping aside is when I began to believe it was the right thing to do. If anything it was the New York Times and – great actor, cool guy, but shut the fuck up – George Clooney who’d been turning me off.
And this:
A month ago was when I was talking myself – and National Zero readers – into believing that Biden’s trainwreck at the debate was just a momentary blip, a missed opportunity more than a setback, that he would rally himself and his whole coalition from 2020 into defeating Trump again.
And the spiral from there into Pax MAGAmericana, the invincible Orange Messiah saved by the divine hand of providence, how close we came to the scourge of him removed* forever… it just didn’t feel real. Maybe the numbness of it all in a weird way made it kind of easier to soldier on.
When Axios prints “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency,” in an a story about how the failed attempt on Trump had killed the momentum to get Biden to step aside – and that was day 17 of this self-inflicted crisis – what else are we supposed to do than just try to lighten things up a bit with a story like “German prostitute registrations inch back to pre-COVID levels“?
This wasn’t supposed to be so dark and filled with recrimination and sadness. I definitely meant to wrap up on a hopeful note… Hell that’s the “symbolism” of the image. But what else am I going to say that hasn’t already been reported here as hard news in the past week? Endless hours and days of accelerating insult and misery being reversed so suddenly and far beyond even some of the most wildest expectations of anyone – and I mean ANYONE – who shares their thoughts on this site, be it myself, Jack, or any of our commenters. Seriously… What the fuck just happened?
Why is all this so much fun again all of a sudden? Why is this summer so cruel for couch fuckers and dolphin fetishists and angry men who love their wife even though she’s brown and got into politics because their biopic starring Glenn Close as mawmaw got terrible reviews on Netflix?
* The world would be a better place if Trump was dead. Full stop. It does not matter whether if a Republican incel with no business owning an AR-15 or a blood clot in his brain was the cause. That said, I do not advocate for a violent means to that end, especially when a man like Corey Comperatore becomes collateral damage. His politics were horrible and he wrote some not-very-coded racist stuff on Twitter, but he was otherwise by all accounts a decent man: a father, a husband, a fire chief, and an American. The world is not better off without him.