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Trump doesn’t matter

By Kirsten Tona  

What’s happening in America has already happened and there’s no going back.

Donald Trump is one fucked-up individual. And he’s a problem. But he is not the problem.

He’s a symptom.

What’s the US going to do when they wake up after the election to find they’re still about to crash into the moon, even if that particular piece of trash is in jail?

All those good souls whose eyes have been opened and are still hoping you can close them again if you get rid of this particular Buffoon-In-Chief: you can’t finesse your way out of it this time by signing pro-choice petitions and saying you marched with Dr King. There are too many elements at play and too many lost souls in charge.

You should have listened when revolutionaries warned you against liberals, but you wanted a quiet life and it was too easy to not live in the dark ghettos.

It’s hard to see how Trump can win on the day. Even 21st century democratic republican elections require some degree of input from the voting public, and who will vote for him? His base, of course, but they’re insane, they’d vote for the Cookie Monster if he offered them cookies. Literally. I mean they literally would. They already have. They did with him. And they’re still saying the cookies are tasty even though they’re yet to bite a single one. They’re insane.

The working class vote he captured last time with his “I’m not a politician” spiel have been disillusioned, they know if they have jobs or not and they don’t.

The silence from the nasty evangelists with their nasty Shining City on the Hill agenda has been deafening; maybe they’re all too busy deleting videos they took of them themselves, Mrs Nasty Evangelist, and the 3 Mexican pool boys?

Mind you, the Democratic Party are so far up their own arseholes they are entirely capable of losing; they listen to each other on MSNBC and genuinely seem to believe it matters what is said, but they have no strategists capable of telling them what they need to hear about where the “flyover states”* get their news and information from.

*(What a disgusting term. No wonder the “coastal elites” are hated, they really are vile, arrogant little pos. Second up against the wall.)

Nobody who isn’t being paid comes to the Trump rallies anymore (because COVID-19? Really? The Trump base believe in COVID-19? Do me a favour…) except the absolute die-hard base and there’s not enough of them.

But the ones who jumped off the Trump bandwagon when they realised the ride was too expensive and it was heading for the cliff really, really don’t want to vote Dem. And I don’t blame them.

Some disillusioned ex-Trumpers will vote Dem anyway, they’ll hold their noses and do it. Some of them will hold their noses and vote Trump even though they know what he is now, because change is change and change is needed. It largely depends on what they believe about Portland and Kenosha, which largely depends on where they, their friends, their family and their church folk get their news.

How much longer he can keep the Megachurches, is an issue. They got their payoff for bringing him the numbers last time — the payoff being Mike Pence — but what good did it do them? Tax breaks can’t help you if you don’t pay taxes in the first place, they haven’t had any really major wins in the Supreme Court, a lot of them may be of the opinion that Ted Cruz would have been far better at pretending he’d read the Bible — Cruz probably has read it, the VeggiTales version of it.

And even the religious extremists must be thinking: if Trump-Pence win again Mike Pence may have to move his neck and I don’t know if the Earth’s gravitational field could cope.

For them it’s all about the Supreme Court. If Trump is the Promised One he has to deliver on that, and frankly, he hasn’t. Last month’s decision that Civil RIghts Act covered LQBTQI was a loss for conservatives, and the majority opinion was written by Neil Gorsuch—Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee! The evangelists want their rigid worldview supported by the people they backed into power if they’re expected to support them again. Last week’s decision supporting employers’ rights to religious exemptions from paying for contraception in health care plans was the result they wanted, but don’t even mention June Medical Services v. Russo to them, their narrow little hearts can’t take it. It means no movement on Roe v Wade, the white whale of the anti-choicers… And Ruth Bader Ginsberg keeps refusing to die. Trump has not really delivered.

Big Oil are haemorrhaging money. There’s a hole in their back pocket through which they’re losing a lot of the spare Senators they usually keep there, and Russia with its well-oiled Kompromat machine has been hoovering them up instead. So Big Dirty Energy is not going to be able to sway as much influence as it’s used to. Rats deserting sinking ships over in that quarter, the writings on the wall for US gas and oil companies. Look for a coming influx of female CEOs… it’s called the Glass Cliff.

The cat-and-mouse game between Russian and Chinese social media engineering and those Americans still left in the FBI who are smart and motivated enough to stop them (about 3) will be interesting to watch.

Zuckerberg almost broke a sweat last time he was congressional-hearing-questioned by AOC, and that’s pretty amazing for an actual android.

But however well foreign influencers can use Zuke’s Kompromat, kidnap people’s Chinese relatives, and cook vote-counting machines, they can only move a certain number of percentage points. It may not be enough to counter the anti-Trump feel. Which is pretty fervent. For good reason. The man’s a Russian asset for a start. You’d think that alone would be a fair reason to disqualify him.

I’m not suggesting evangelicals and conservatives will vote for Biden, who despite his Catholicism has firmed as pro-choice. Just that more of them may stay at home. Anti-Trumpers won’t stay at home, believe it.

There will be other factors, of course, but none of them on their own will be enough to control this particular election: the element of surprise has been lost. Now all the players are bunkered down spying on each other and launching counter-offensives to prevent the other side’s counter-offensives from being launched… it’s like a really boring game of chess where people don’t care about winning so much as they just really, really, really don’t want you to win. It makes one nostalgic for the Cold War.

From here, I can’t see the Trump ship people controlling enough of the game for a win, but strange things happen at the one-two point, as they say in the game Go. Nobody really believes Trump will lose, it just hasn’t been that kind of a year, decade, century. And nobody thinks he will go even if the poll numbers are clear. He knows he’s going to jail as soon as he does. He’ll play war games from the underground bunker before he’ll do that willingly.

But Trump doesn’t matter. What’s happening in America was built into its foundation. Genocide and the rape of an entire continent will never and should never end well for the rapist. The Declaration of Independence was a lot of pretty words, from wealthy white men. Hint: fellas, if you want a Constitution and a Declaration of Rights that will last, hand it over to old black women: they’ve got nothing to lose and they care more about their grandchildren’s futures. And they won’t be writing pretty words in pretty libraries while females and slaves cook, clean, and take out the trash. So they’ll remember to include who does those things as a core component. Because that’s what a society boils down to, in the end: who does the work no one wants?

* * * * *

What’s happening in America has already happened.

It happened when Isabella of Castile and her imbecile husband funded Columbus; it happened when that authoritarian compact was signed on the Mayflower, strangling the hope of an inclusive democracy before its birth; it happened when the Puritans massacred the Wampanoag and barbarously called their victory feast “Thanksgiving”; and it happened when Thomas Jefferson took Sally Hemings to France to wash his socks and warm up his bed while he sat in coffee bars planning the writing of the words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

It happened when slave-owners, hypocrites and control freaks ignored their own Bible and tried to build a lasting edifice on genocide and sand.

And it’ll keep happening until the world ends or power-hungry white men get the fuck out of the way, whichever comes first, and this year the smart money is on the former.

* * * * *

I admit I’ll enjoy my schadenfreude moments as much as the next sad, tired, person. I’ll enjoy seeing the Bad Orange Man in a good orange jumpsuit. I’ll especially enjoy seeing Incest Porn Barbie and the Overbite Twins go to jail, they are just horrible. Maybe they’ll finally let Tiffany talk to them then.

But I’m beyond thinking it will help.

If America wants to avoid utter catastrophe it is going to have to do a lot more than throw the First Family Lumpen-Trash in jail. It’s going to have to get rid of the jails, too, and the systems for keeping them full.

It’s going to have to not just re-fund the education system but completely reform it so their children learn not what to think but how.

It’s going to have to jail, exile, or guillotine a lot of billionaires and a lot of their running dogs with them, and those feckers will be slippery to catch.

And it’s going to have to do all that without simply setting up another system of power bases with a new set of tyrants at the top table, a new class of the-animals-that-are-more-equal-than-others.

It could be done, but it would require a lot of humility and I just don’t think there’s enough to go around, in that place.

Good luck, though. We’ll watch the American collapse from Australia with our hearts in our mouths, because it will be our turn next.

© Kirsten Tona

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34 comments

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  1. Kate Ahearne

    Very disappointing to see this on AIMN.

  2. Stephengb

    Our turn next ? Yes and also the UK.

    I found this really good article saying the end of America – makes one think !

    The Unraveling of America  

  3. Harry Lime

    I loved it.

  4. Joseph Carli

    ” What’s happening in America has already happened.”….I happened when the Emperor Augustus handed over administration of Egypt ( the granary of Rome) to the Equestrian Order (the middle-class of that day) to manage and did then give power to that class to control the food of Rome…Whenever the entrepreneurial / speculative middle class gains control of the economics and political base of a nation, it is the beginning of the end for that nation..and if the slide is not stopped through some sort of physical uprising and the deposing of those vandals, then you can kiss your own arse goodbye!
    Accurate if a tad cynical article.

  5. totaram

    Kate Ahearne: What did you find disappointing? You need to give a few examples. Just expressing disappointment doesn’t tell us anything at all.

    I could just as well say “Fantastic piece. Well-done!”. But I can give examples, too. I didn’t know that Isabella of Spain had a husband who was an imbecile. How very informative! And the little bit about Jefferson and Sally Hemings too. With a link and all that. Nice job!
    Incest Porn Barbie? Had to Google that. Can’t figure it out for the life of me. Why would she go to jail? And the Overbite twins? Google to the rescue! Seems to be a dental affliction. What ? I have clearly missed something. Not informed enough, but I will catch up I am sure. Same with Tiffany who?

    But I do know about the privatised jails and the systems for keeping them full. We have them here in Australia too. What a wonderful way to grow a business! Have more “criminals”, make sure they re-offend and you are laughing. Growing? It’s all “law and order” donch’ya know? Tough on crime. Works a treat if you have shares in G4S or suchlike.

    The rest of the article is just wishful thinking. Guillotines and all that. Pie in the sky. Will never happen. Not before I die anyway.

    I broadly agree that Trump is just the symptom of the disease. No doubt about it. I rather fear he might win again. There are enough people who are too afraid of any changes Biden might bring, small as they are.

    Let us see…

  6. Paul Gale

    Bravo!…I loved the deftly erudite and informed cynicism overlaid with a little curative optimism…Almost gave me hope

  7. Michael Taylor

    Speaking of Tiffany, the other day she tweeted to Joe Biden basically telling him to stop telling lies in the face of God (or something like that).

    I guess she thinks it’s OK for her Dad to tell lies.

    Hypocrisy and stupidity are two traits that flow freely through the Trump family.

  8. Christine Smith

    Enjoyed that! History has a broad sweep which is often repeated. I agree with this writer that it doesn’t much matter what happens in the US elections – the empire is done. On the smaller, human scale it may matter in terms of programmes and where the tiny amount devoted to supporting their citizens is directed. Great to see people like Kirsten thinking in wide and philosophical ways about where the very near future will lead us!

  9. Matters Not

    Kronomex, Karen Kyle had to read the piece so that she could make the comment she did on the basis of knowledge. Or are you suggesting she should make comments about worthwhileness in advance of any reading? Now that would be a just cause for criticism.

  10. Phil

    Loved this article thank you Kirsten Tona.

  11. Jack Cade

    Trump has not caused any of the problems in the United States, he just lifted the lid on them. But the fact that the USA will not contribute to the search for a vaccine for Covid-19 because the WHO is involved in it merely illuminates the fact that big pharma actually dictates the health of Americans Negatively. USA – ie Big Pharma – senses a lot of money being made out of a vaccine and doesn’t want to share it.
    Never overlook the comment from a big pharma spokesperson – ‘We are not interested in cures. Cures affect profitability.’ They are not in the health business, the are in the money-making business.
    Trump has done what they wanted him to do, and now they can contemplate a Biden presidency because he has assured them and the armaments manufactures that he will not change anything.

  12. Kirsten Tona

    Spot on, Jack Cade. Thank you.

  13. Sean Crawley

    Wow! That’s fresh, I like it.

  14. New England Cocky

    “It’s hard to see how Trump can win on the day.”

    Uhm ….. NOT when you review the history of elections in the USA (United States of Apartheid). The 2016 election confounded all the pundits and reportedly also Trumpery personally. But then there have been other ”surprise” results.

    Consider the election of JFK in 1960, the first Democrat and Roman Catholic, assisted by Frank Sinatra and his contacts in the Chicago Mafia, to Bill Clinton in 1992, to George Shrubya Bush in 2000, just in time to spank a US puppet regime, installed and supported by the CIA and start the Iraq War to secure the oil reserves of Iraq aided by the weird state based electoral systems and the US Supreme Court. Still the NE military industrial complex made huge profits from the black hole war market.

    Yes, I think Jack Cade above has got it correct.

  15. Kronomex

    Matters Not September 3, 2020 at 7:01 pm

    Kronomex, Karen Kyle had to read the piece so that she could make the comment she did on the basis of knowledge. Or are you suggesting she should make comments about worthwhileness in advance of any reading? Now that would be a just cause for criticism.

    Karen could have made more valid comments about why she considered it “Overly long unhinged rant. Not worth reading let alone making public.” I guess that’s what annoyed me more than anything else, a vague comment with no substance. I will also admit that a bit of extra thought on my part was called for, but I was ticked off.

  16. Grumpy Geezer

    What a well-written piece. Enjoyed every sentence – my nodding in agreement was interspersed with hearty guffaws at gems such as “Zuckerberg almost broke a sweat… and that’s pretty amazing for an actual android” and “Porn Barbie and the Overbite Twins”.

    Keep contributing please Kirsten.

  17. Jack Cade

    NEC

    And JFK reneged on whatever deal his father made with the mob(sters), by allowing his brother to target them. One of the families is recorded as saying ‘…don’t worry about Bobby…his brother’s gonna get hit.’
    And he got hit. And the US press then made a ‘patriot’ out of Jack Ruby for destroying the evidence.
    And Bobby got hit.
    People like Dumbya and Trump don’t get ‘hit’, because they pander to different mobsters – Pharma, NRA, military- industrial gangs.
    And we tut-tut at Putin for acting like an American Capo…

  18. leefe

    Well, Karen Kyle has chosen an appropriate name.
    Personally, I think this article is one of the best written pieces I’ve seen here. Hope we get more from Kirsten.

  19. Matters Not

    Karen Kyle has a past.

    The secretary of the Bendigo Trades Hall Council, Karen Kyle, says she has been heartened by the level of support and anger among protesters.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-07-04/unions-ponder-long-fight-against-ir-changes/2050580?pfm=ms

    Further:

    Organisers faced angry demands to remove a series of white crosses, bearing union slogans and placed along the Calder Highway near Bendigo, amid claims of bad taste.

    Defiant Bendigo Trades Hall Council secretary Karen Kyle insisted the crosses were a fitting symbol for the loss of conditions under controversial federal workplace laws.

    And

    BENDIGO’S union movement is mourning the death of one of its best-loved sons. … John Halfpenny, left-wing unionist and former Communist Party stalwart, died on Saturday, aged 68, …

    Former colleague and Bendigo Trades Hall secretary Karen Kyle described Mr Halfpenny as an “amazing” man.

    https://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/648482/union-hero-dies/

    Seems like Karen Kyle spent some time in the trenches. And while we are certainly not as one, I read what she says.

  20. Kirsten Tona

    People, just one interruption, can we please not gang up on Karen Kyle or any of the others who hated my article. She has a right to an opinion and a right to express it and I’m grateful she made the effort to state her mind, even if it was to say I am unhinged and not worth reading. On another forum I am being told I am actively helping ruin the world with this piece, so “unhinged & unreadable” is an insult I can live with.

    btw: by Incest Porn Barbie I mean Ivanka Voldemort & the Overbite Twins are her chinless wonder brothers, I thought that would have been clearer. Maybe I should rethink my nicknames fo Jared Kushner & Stephen Miller as well before I publish my take on those bloodless little ghouls…?

  21. corvusboreus

    Vanka Ivankover

    Sorry., couldn’t resist.

  22. totaram

    Kirsten Tona: No one is ganging up on anyone. Very proper of you to rush to defend etc. We have just asked them to be more specific about what they don’t like. Just saying something is “[insert epithet]” is not very useful. We here are all for robust debate.

    Matters Not: re: Karen Kyle: why, in spite of her past, does she think this piece is unhinged? Are you sure it is the same Karen Kyle? Or has she had a light-bulb moment like Mark Latham? (Tee, Hee!)

  23. Vikingduk

    Ivanka the skank? Skanky Vanky? Na. Incest porn barbie and the overbite twins does it for me. When you post next, re bloodless ghouls, I’d like to see your original terms for this pair of misbegotten arsewipes. Thanks for the article, nothing like a go hard or go home read to brighten the day. Do you think bunker baby wears a condom for his late night sojourns with barbie?

  24. A Commentator

    It’s interesting that misogynist comments are tolerated when it is about political opponents

    I don’t think such juvenile sexist humour is acceptable

  25. corvusboreus

    A commentator,
    Point accepted regarding the personal targeting of a female, but, in all fairness, the fact that D Trump has himself repeatedly made comments about his sexual attraction to his own daughter is a turd too tempting to pick up and fling.
    I guess the fact that the author of this article deployed a dyslexic fupduck in the second sentence might have set the tone of the subsequent comments.
    Anyways, if Ivanka really truly hates all the negative attention that her nepotistic appointments within her daddies administration brings her, she could always ‘find something new’.

  26. Tom

    Fantastic article.
    Will be reading more of Kirsten’s pieces.

  27. Michael Anderson

    Where I live, in the fire-ravaged Democratic state of Oregon (Eugene), Trump supporters are calling in false leads to the police that “antifa” started the fires. His Y’all Queda Nazi militias have been reported threatening reporters and firefighters with guns at “checkpoints” they’ve set up. And he hasn’t said anything about the fires other than “terrible, just terrible”. The feds have given us a little aid, but not much. Men and material to fight these fires is scarce, and those guys are heroes.

    But these bastards want to let it all burn down now and turn the Pacific Northwest into either an open-pit mine, or an elite vacation spot. Disaster Capitalism—practically the only kind left. Plus they’re decimating any public services they can find. And, of course, killing the Post Office.

    He’s a symptom of collapse, all right…perhaps a terminal one.

  28. Michael Taylor

    Michael, our hearts go out to you. I hope you are safer

    I’ve been keeping an eye on the hell you guys are going through. As you know, we went through that last year and I’m deeply concerned that we may face the same horrors in the coming summer.

    We had all sorts of conspiracies to put up with, too. Namely the Murdoch media pushing the rubbish that climate change had nothing to do with it – all the fires were started by arsonists.

    Donald Trump also has a nasty habit of believing conspiracies. Won’t be long and he’ll be tweeting that Antica (or Obama) started your fires.

  29. Michael Taylor

    Another one was; “The greenies started the fires to prove that climate change is real!”

  30. Rossleigh

    Actually, the narrative from some in the USA exactly matches what happened in Australia.
    1. It’s not climate change, fires happen
    2. It was arson.
    3. There was a lack of fire management. This doesn’t happen in places where they have good fire management like Antarctica…

  31. wam

    I find it very hard too enthuse about the us beyond their extremism.
    I have never met an American who doesn’t believe in trump/biden as successful citizens.
    Trump is my favourite for POTUS but Biden has a chance to succeed by his climate and trump may lose through his fire comments???
    The potential tragedy is the assault weapons which could kill thousand of police, service men/women and a large number of men and women protesters.
    If t doesn’t mean civil war 2 The end of the warped 2nd may be on the agenda?????a

  32. isw

    And I’m considered wry!

    A VLCC tanker registered in foreign climes remains a potential hemorrhaging disaster,
    sort of like using fake australian passports for true covert operations,
    or, the Epsteinian Maxwell nee Mossad society’s cuties-Kompromat as portrayed above,
    a ship of deadly fools wrapped in a convenient enigma flag indeed!

    Besides this parochially endemic blind spot I enjoyed the hell out your insightfull wits!

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