This is what’s gotten the most attention in last week’s Vice Presidential debate, though you already know because, well, it’s gotten the most attention.
It was the moment when that fly landed on Mike Pence’s head and stayed there for a full TWO MINUTES, during which time he did absolutely NOTHING.
Like, he didn’t even flinch. Could you imagine doing that? What a circus trick.
I kept thinking of that scene in the movie Ordinary People where Conrad, the emotionally repressed, suicidal teen played by Timothy Hutton, bemoaned in therapy how much effort it takes for him to actually feel something.
To which his spirited Jewish psychiatrist, played by Judd Hirsch, replies, and I’m paraphrasing:
Do you know how much effort it takes NOT to feel something?
This is harder, and more delicious.
This seemed the perfect analysis to me of Pence, the religious conservative former governor of Indiana and current Vice President. The man who is said to not eat alone with another woman or be in a place that serves alcohol unless his wife is present.
The man who, for decades, has also been simultaneously dogged by rumors that he’s a repressed homosexual, with stories from the past claiming that as a kid even his own father once gave him the nickname of Bubbles on a car ride with the family because he was so, um, effervescent.
Don’t act like you didn’t giggle #bubbles4ever
Well, all I can say is I would’ve preferred Bubbles compared to the things said about my own queer self at various times growing up.
Though never by my father. At least to my face.
That, in itself, could explain a lot about the differences between us. I watch the debate alone with my husband of 32 years (Note: Well, technically only 5 years of marriage but 32 years together. We weren’t able to legally marry for the other 27 and, if Pence had his way, we never have been able to) and together we root for the woman of color positioned 12 feet away from him beside that thick shield of Plexiglas.
Yes, you are Senator Harris.
Meanwhile, Pence sits up on the stage purposefully and unapologetically interrupting her as the running mate and chief cheerleader of the first openly white supremacist POTUS in modern times.
Pence and I may be close to the same age but as far as I know, that’s where the similarities end. Unless you believe the now disavowed comments a college roommate of his once made that Pence used to like looking at muscle magazines back in the day.
Okay yes, I will admit to occasionally being tempted by a publication or two like that in my youth. But I got over that phase once I realized that revering a man who appears muscular on the outside is not necessarily as desirable as it seems.
Though it can be.
It often feels this ridiculous #YESILIFTBRO
Nor is it a representation of who he is on the inside. Though certainly it could be.
But you never learn any of that stuff when you stiffly refuse to feel the various stimulations on and in your head that almost everyone else watching you can so easily see.
When you are so pursed and controlled that you can’t even admit there’s a fly on your head, or perhaps worse yet, can’t even feel it, God knows what else you’re missing. Or choosing to miss.
How much hairspray? Seriously
Or, well, allowing to happen so as not to face the reality of who you are, what you’ve become and, most importantly, what you now represent.
And what people are truly seeing when they look at you.
But the one thing I can do is to not let him make me into a liar.
The Chairy is better at the truth!
Trump has COVID-19, the potentially lethal virus he’s mask-lessly,and very purposely, downplayed to the rest of us for months. (Note: So far 210,000 Americans dead and 7.3 million infected).
Just how bad it is depends on who and what you believe. But let’s put it this way, it was bad enough for him to be helicoptered to the hospital on Friday, reportedly after having trouble breathing and receiving oxygen.
Airlifted to a nearby hospital? Totally normal, nothing to see here #WHAT
Right now this is where he sits, or lies, at Walter Reed Medical Center, benefitting (Note: Or not, how would you know for sure?) from top of the line, world-class medical treatmenton thepublic dole.
Since then the man who refused to wear a mask and social distance – so far the prime protocols the medical establishment has urged us all to follow in order to prevent this potential killer– the protocols that he shamed Democrats, the media and, in fact, his own followers and personal staff working beside him for following – has received worldwide well-wishes, support and concern.
Ah, the old standby of “thoughts and prayers”
People are literally flooding him and falling all over themselves with public thoughts and prayers. In particular, his opponents on Capitol Hill, on TV, and in any big industry, have prefaced their remarks about him and any issue regarding him by saying a myriad of creative and well-constructed platitudes.
They range from everything like:
Clearly,WE ALL wish the president a speedy recovery,to
As Americans we all want our president to be healthy,and on towards,
I think we can all safely say our hope is for, as soon as possible, President Trump to be safely back at work and behind the resolute deskwhere we can then disagree. It’s what we, as American, are all praying for.
Hmm. Well, given my lifelong penchant for honesty I gotta tell y’all the truth –
Not so much and not this American.
Yeah, I said it
I’m not proud of that, nor, am I ashamed of it. I’m only offering it up as my absolute, unvarnished reality in the hopes of, in turn, setting us all free.
As humans we’re all imperfect and pretending to be otherwise doesn’t really get us anywhere. I don’t wish Trump death, as I’ve read and privately/publicly heard others saying. I just don’t wish him well, about anything.
It’s wild how something can be totally predictable and completely unbelievable at the same time.
Yeah, I might save him from a burning building because I’m a human being but no, I wouldn’t risk my own life to do so.
We all decide what is a bridge too far for us and then attempt to do better if we believe we’re lacking.
I don’t think it helps anything or anyone to, um, make stuff up because it’s, um, beneficial to us in the moment. Lies beget lies, which begets bad behavior, which in turn begets horrible power grabs and many more lies and consequences.
Isn’t that the way we got into this mess in the first place? That place where we pretty much don’t know whom or in what to believe?
She tried to warn us. #Hillaryforgiveus #actuallydont #dontdeserveyou
Perhaps one day I will evolve (or devolve, depending on your view) to be the kind of person strong enough to turn the other cheek at someone I have watched gleefully cause so many to suffer without batting a painted-on eyelash or eyebrow. But honestly, with this guy,right now, I’m not anywhere near that.
Nor are so many others I know and know of, despite what they are publicly espousing.
This doesn’t necessarily make us evil, or even evil geniuses, just people who might be able to one day do better. (Note: Or not. It depends on what your definition of better is).
Guilty
But for right now, as someone recently, and most honestly, admitted (Note: And it’s one of the rare times he’s done so):
IT IS WHAT IT IS.
When it comes to abusive behavior towards others and innate meanness, when it involves rallying white supremacists to come out into the streets armed and intimidate everything good and free about law-abiding citizens just wanting to cast their votes or even protest, my well-wishing tends to be a bit more…measured. Meaning it leans towards the oppressed and endangered.
When it comes to sympathy, my kind thoughts don’t extend to those who are sitting on several billion dollars in assets, paying zero in taxes and then publicly bragging about it to people who live in one and two room apartments.
Please enjoy your socialized medicine while you’re at it
When it comes to my heart, well, it doesn’t involve someone who knows they have been exposed to a potentially lethal virus and yet exposes hundreds or even thousands of people to it in order to rake in more money to support their political ambitions or, perhaps, even to infect the very person they’re running for office against.
When it comes to prayers, the first or even thousandth person on my list is not someone who confabbed and giggled and yeah, colluded with world leaders who seek the destruction of my country in order to get elected to the highest office in the land. And it certainly doesn’t include a guy who used said office to make himself and his family business tens of millions of dollars in the process.
And that’s only the half of it
I could go on and on, gosh knows there is evidence and more than enough time these days. But I think there’s enough here for you to fill in the rest. If not, google non-white children separated from their parents, put in cages, and never returned to them on the U.S. border and see what you come up with.
People like to think of Trump as some sort of all-powerful superhero/villain (Note: Depending on where they stand) or an exceptional kind of evil genius. But I don’t. Sorry Michael Moore.
Right now I consider him nothing more than a sick, fat old man who has a lot of power but no conscience. Someone who is street clever and will stop at nothing to stay in the presidency so he doesn’t have to face criminal charges in court like a regular citizen and possibly go to jail, or at the very least pay millions of dollars he likely doesn’t have accessible to him, in back taxes.
I need to find a hillside to scream at the top of my lungs
Someone I find just plain sad and mean and, yes, for now, regrettably with more power than many. Kind of like, as I said to one friend recently, a really mean Oz. But what’s behind the curtain is not a superpower, just a super liar who temporarily controls the levers of some earthly powers.
Someone who is dangerous but not omnipotent, as recent events prove.
This is why I can’t and don’t wish him my bestright now. Nor do I wish him back on the job as his good ‘ole self in the near or even distant future.
What I prefer is for him to have a time out, sit in a hospitalcorner and have a good longthink about what he’s done. Like the child that he is.
Where is this balloon these days?
It probably won’t make a bit of difference but it’s the best that I, and many like me, can offer or feel at this point in time.
He’s not in my thoughts, among my hopes or anywhere near my heart, thank God.
This doesn’t make me a bad person. Just an honest one.
notes from a chair 