A duly constituted state of these United States appoints to a position of responsibility for health-related measures during a pandemic a person who dismisses what he calls “the so-called pandemic” as a vast communist plot AND IF ANYONE AGREES TO BE VACCINATED FOR SO-CALLED COVID THEIR DNA WILL BE REPROGRAMMED TO MAKE THEM A ROBOT OF THEIR CHINESE AND RUSSIAN MASTERS.

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Is Igor Shepherd a doctor? No evidence of that online. He says he picked up something he’s calling a medical degree during his young dark evil days in the Russki military but did anyone in Wyoming check on that? Did anyone in Wyoming check on whether Igor is insane?

Igor is Donald Trump’s Little Edie Beale, a strumpette on the psycho circuit who barks about global conspiracies to debrain your immune system. And someone in our sickest state (in 2016: second highest suicide rate; first in gun deaths; worst traffic fatality rate; highest divorce rate) decided to appoint Igor to an important covid-related committee. They decided to put Typhoid Mary in charge of typhoid-relief activities.

Wyoming has hurriedly shoved Igor under the buffalo chips and won’t talk about it. The End.

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Which makes Igor a very small story amid the much larger story of Big Edie, currently spraying territorial urine all over the faces of our Supreme Court Justices.

But UD thinks Little Edie is a sort of wedge into the Big Edie story. UD thinks the restless mental emptiness of America’s wide open spaces, the rageful giveashittery of portions of our hinterlands, takes you in one of two directions, both utterly captured by Trump. One we know from the Sybil, via TS Eliot’s epigraph to The Waste Land: apothanein thelo. I want to die. Suicide, guns, alcohol amid snowdrifts late at night, helmetless motorcycling… There’s no easier place to off yourself than the heart of the heart of Trump country, and they like it that way because quite a few of them want to die. Donald Trump’s maskless droplets-languishing is fuck yeah.

The other direction? Instead of killing yourself, you kill other people. Like Wyoming’s Igor, you’re a rock-hard paranoid who knows that sooner or later the communists led by Kamala Harris (Trump: “She’s a monster.”) are going to attach your negative posilator to your positive negalator and deactivate your synaptic narcoscopies and all hell will break loose. Get them before they get you.

SCOTUS FULL OF TRUMP APPOINTEES

JOINS THE CONSPIRACY TO DENY TRUMP

HIS RIGHTFUL VICTORY

America under Trump became less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, sicker, and deader. It also became more delusional. No number from Trump’s years in power will be more lastingly destructive than his 25,000 false or misleading statements. Super-spread by social media and cable news, they contaminated the minds of tens of millions of people. Trump’s lies will linger for years, poisoning the atmosphere like radioactive dust…

[His lies] belonged to the postmodern era. They were assaults against not this or that fact, but reality itself. They spread beyond public policy to invade private life, clouding the mental faculties of everyone who had to breathe his air, dissolving the very distinction between truth and falsehood. Their purpose was never the conventional desire to conceal something shameful from the public...

Trump spoke them openly, not because he couldn’t control his impulses, but intentionally, even systematically, in order to demolish the norms that would otherwise have constrained his power...

Trump’s purpose [was] to keep us locked in a mental prison where reality was unknowable so that he could go on wielding power, whether in or out of office, including the power to destroy...

Trump demonstrated again and again that the truth doesn’t matter. In rational people this provoked incredulity, outrage, exhaustion, and finally an impulse to crawl away and abandon the field of politics to the fantasists…

He leaves behind a society in which the bonds of trust are degraded, in which his example licenses everyone to cheat on taxes and mock affliction. Many of his policies can be reversed or mitigated. It will be much harder to clear our minds of his lies and restore the shared understanding of reality—the agreement, however inconvenient, that A is A and not B—on which a democracy depends…

The election didn’t end his lies—nothing will—or the deeper conflicts that the lies revealed. But we learned that we still want democracy. This, too, is the legacy of Donald Trump.

As Trump mentally deteriorates, this 1999 article prepares us for what to expect. For Trump, it’s pardons; for John Paul II it was blessings.

“We are, of course, very concerned for His Holiness’ mental condition,” said chief papal physician Giuseppe Clementi, standing by the pope’s bedside, surrounded by dozens of newly consecrated pill bottles, urine-specimen cups and orthopedic slippers. “Pretty much anything you hold up in front of his face these days, he blesses.” [At an airport recently,] the pope broke free of his handlers and blessed a luggage cart, a podium, a Life photographer’s camera, the plane’s left-side landing gear, three TWA flight attendants, and two of the Swiss Guard who were attempting to release his grip on the landing struts and subdue him. Upon realizing that he was being physically restrained, the pope worked his papal-signet-ring-bearing right hand free and blessed the entire aircraft, which now resides in its own special five-story grotto under St. Peter’s Basilica.

The pope’s blessing rampage also necessitated the construction of a 40,000-square-foot reliquary for the storage of thousands of now-holy items. Housed in the structure are such hallowed objects as the Blessed Vacuum Cleaner Of St. Matthew, the Consecrated Ball Of Crumpled-Up Paper, and the Sacred Zagnut Bar Of Christ, which the pope discovered and blessed during his recent U.S. visit.

Along with handing out pardons to everyone he encounters, Trump can be expected to offer to grab the pussy of any woman he meets, and to ask random Americans if they will let him spray hydroxychloroquine into their ass.

Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work… “If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said [a literature] scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

Okay, so what’s the catastrophe? Certainly we’ve all allowed ourselves to think of geopolitical disaster as a paranoid depressive conjuring revenge pads about the White House … But – to alter one of George’s famous remarks to Martha – “In reality it usually works out that the nature of the calamity is more private.”

Which is to say, we’re back at UD‘s Trump-may-commit-suicide theory.

I mean, if you want to talk about Shakespeare as a Trump template, which the NYT writer does, suicide is all over the place, ain’t it? There’s a serious effort at suicide in Lear; Hamlet famously goes on and on about whether he should bother existing, and of course Ophelia does the deed; Lady Macbeth apparently offs herself. Ditto Othello…. Go here for the full, long, list. Why offer an analysis of the Last Days of Trump featuring Shakespearean tragedy and unnamed “catastrophe” and not go there? THE Shakespearean catastrophe is suicide.

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Yes, UD still puts the likelihood of Trump doing (or attempting) it at maybe ten percent.

But if he does do it, it will be – in line with his whole life as a showman – a lollapalooza.

Rumor has it he plans to “leave the White House on January 20 in Marine One, then take Air Force One to Florida, where he would address supporters at a rally timed to coincide with Biden’s socially distanced inauguration outside the US Capitol.“

At this rally, he will ascend a massive golden escalator — larger and more glittering than the one he descended on the day he announced his presidential run. As he gradually rises, flames will begin to shoot out from the sides of the moving stairway, and the crowd will go wild as screaming fireworks also appear. But instead of the national anthem they expect to hear, it’s… the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde?

And here at the very top of the escalator appears La Pasionaria, Trump’s true spiritual mate all along, Lara Trump, halo’d in gold. She sings:

In the wafting universe of the World-Breath

Drown, be engulfed…

As they clasp, they expire.

Laid low by covid, Giuliani (with the president’s blessing) has designated “Mr 7-7-7” as the new head of the president’s election fraud team.

… than your blogueuse, every now and then she becomes oddly inspired and does something like this.

… looks like a nineteenth century landscape painting. Like the other garden photo a couple of posts down, this was taken early on this late autumn morning, with the sun already up and doing its thing.

It all made me think of the poem “Sunlight on the Garden.”

Look. The Republicans are doing their bit to undermine the election for Republicans, so that’s all good. But Democrats can’t take anything for granted. UD has been contributing to Jon Ossoff’s campaign for some time; she likes him, and she likes the fact that he’s part of the effort to flip the Senate.

At the moment, polls have him looking very good indeed.

… UD‘s garden, after a night of wind and rain.

Once an obscure school, Edinburg now captures the world’s attention with its football program’s amazing, award-winning defensive end, who … well, the thing that caught the world’s eye was his vicious attack on a referee who did something he didn’t like. But let’s roll the whole tape.

Edinburg High senior defensive end Emmanuel Duron, the team’s star defender, was flagged on a play early during the second quarter after he shoved an opposing offensive lineman to the ground and attempted to make a tackle on PSJA High freshman quarterback Jaime Lopez after the whistle had blown the play dead.

Duron and referee Fred Gracia exchanged words after the play was over, and Gracia ejected Duron from the contest after back-to-back unsportsmanlike penalties on the same play.

Duron, who was leading the Bobcats in tackles (102) and sacks (eight) through four games, then charged onto the field as teammates raced after him in an attempt to hold him back. The senior defensive end collided with Gracia, checking him chest-to-chest at full speed and sending him to the turf.

Duron was escorted out from the stadium by a team of four Edinburg police officers who were working security for the game. He was not handcuffed, but was removed from the premises and did not return.

… Duron was suspended for the remainder of the 2019-20 soccer season after a similar incident occurred during a match on the pitch last year against crosstown rival Edinburg Vela.

Duron was The Monitor’s All-Area Boys Wrestler of the Year last season.

You’ll note that I linked you to local coverage up there. Here’s Emmanuel Duron’s current Google News page. He and his school have really hit the big time.

I linked you to local stuff because in order to understand the sort of world that generates and lionizes notoriously violent eighteen year olds, you need to understand Texas. Everyone else headlines this story with words like violent, disgusting, shocking; the local press doesn’t even make reference to the assault.

Bittersweet: Bobcats beat

Bears for 6A playoff berth,

lose star defender

The most important thing, the headline thing, is that his team won; but the victory was “bittersweet” because they “lost” their “star defender.” No explanation of how they lost him.

First two paragraphs:

The Edinburg High Bobcats and PSJA High Bears met Thursday night at Richard R. Flores Stadium to play a win-or-go-home District 31-6A zone play-in game that started off with a frenetic pace.

But the moment was bittersweet for the Bobcats, who lost their best defensive player during a 35-21 victory over PSJA High to advance to the Class 6A Division I playoffs, after an ugly moment during the first half threatened to derail the entire game.

So the lead is that the game had a good fast pace, and that tragically one side’s best defensive player was “lost.” But they won anyway! The still unspecified event that prompted the loss almost derailed the game… And an assault on a ref followed by four police officers dragging the player from the field would certainly derail a game anywhere outside of Texas; but why not take advantage of the points your side made as a result of the unhinged physical attacks and the cheating of your most admired player?

Oh, the article goes on to recount the attack; but look at the whole thing. Almost all of it is taken up with fans’ excited accounts of the win.

This blog has long covered our most revered college football players – the crazed giants led by Richie Incognito. Duron is king of the Edinburg world and will soon be fought over by recruiters from all the big football universities. He will soon be king of the world.

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PS: I’m always astounded at the fragile sensibilities of sportswriters. These guys are blown away (“unreal,” one of them writes) when violence like this happens on the field. Someone needs to tell them that it’s routine. German soccer officials get bodyguards.

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UPDATE: The school has withdrawn altogether from the playoffs and has apologized profusely. It’s a start. But the district faces a world of pain. Litigation. The worst imaginable global publicity. Huge money awards. Plus questions as to why their Incognito-in-Training wasn’t removed from football, given that he’d already been removed from soccer. Did the school think a differently shaped ball would mean different behavior? The sports-mad folk of Texas have a great deal to answer for, in so many respects. This is merely the latest disgrace.

Another Update: “Duron was charged with assault in Edinburg Municipal Court, a class A misdemeanor. If convicted, the charge is punishable by up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $4,000.” That’s the least of his and his school’s problems. Because of the global attention to the case if nothing else (and he may have prior arrests/convictions), he’s liable to get some jail time; the school district may face an expensive lawsuit. It seems especially damaging and unfortunate for the particular school (coach, principal) that Duron was allowed to keep playing. Brace yourself for lurid tales of his off-field violence from friends and teammates.

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Mugshot. Adorable I’ll fuck you up too motherfucker expression on the lad’s face.

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MORE: And here’s what the players – gathering, with LET US PLAY signs in their hands, for a protest in front of the administration building – don’t get. It seems obvious to them – and to a lot of other reasonable people – that collective punishment is unfair. THEY didn’t attack the game official.

But they are in fact a collective, and collectively they represent a school, a school district, a town, even a local culture. What happened on their football field was grotesque — so grotesque that it has captured the disgusted attention of significant parts of the world, not just America. Something is wrong with Edinburg High School, not just with the dude who socked the official. It knew full well it had a monstrous person on its teams, and it removed that person from soccer. But not from football. Why the hell not?

Let UD tell you why. Because football is already an incredibly violent sport (soccer’s violence is all about the audience, with fans in some countries routinely staging fascist rallies while the game proceeds), with enormous tolerance — nay, admiration — of violence. You can just hear the coach telling the principal (assuming the principal even bothered expressing hesitation to him about Duron) that the dude is admittedly too hot-headed for soccer, but football suits his temperament fine. You can hear the coach reminding the principal (and is it a factor that he’s a man and she’s a woman?) that he’s the most valuable player on the team, and they’ve got to get to the playoffs. “They’ve played their hearts out all season. He’s learned from the soccer punishment. I’ll take responsibility for his behavior.”

Football culture up and down the line is pretty fucking twisted; but high school kids! Texas! Ain’t my place out here on Coastal Elite Coast to tell football-crazed Texan towns how to live; but I can tell them that we’re all watching, and when their way of life produces Emmanuel Duron we’re judging everyone down there, not just Duron. Durons are enabled by groups of moral idiots who can’t see past the next field goal. If students at Edinburg High want to be angry, they should be angry with their coach, their principal, and their superintendent. Those are the people who make Durons happen.

With the shocked and appalled eyes of the world on their little school, Edinburg needed to acknowledge its twistedness, and needed to make a strong reformist statement. Sorry, kiddies.

LOL

He wanders, pale, sleepless, delusional, into a room, and performs a surrealistic piece that more and more people are calling, simply, “46 minutes.”

Soon the title of Trump’s unprecedented performance last Wednesday will shorten to 46, a nod to its obvious precursor, John Cage’s silent, genre-busting, 4’33. Recall the shock, amusement, anger, discomfort, and fascination when, in a New York concert hall in 1952, a pianist walked onstage with a flourish, sat grandly at a grand piano, and for four minutes and thirty-three seconds proceeded to do absolutely nothing. In a grand room of the White House, Trump’s appearance – vacuous, arrogant, hallucinatory – generated similar emotions.

Yet because of its basically unendurable sickness, the president’s performance was above all ignored by almost every American media outlet. It appeared only on Facebook.

Susan Glasser argues that we avert our eyes at our peril.

… This might have been a holy-shit speech, but it came in the “yeah, whatever” phase of Trump’s lame-duck Presidency. The courts have thrown out his legal team’s cases. The battleground states have all certified their election results affirming Biden’s win. The Electoral College will meet on December 14th, and the outcome does not appear to be in doubt.

And yet there are nearly fifty days until Biden’s Inauguration. This is far, far beyond the craziness of the past four years. Is this the kind of speech from their leader that Americans should just ignore?

… [Not] a single Republican senator had a word to say about Trump’s insane remarks from the White House on Wednesday …

… [W]hen the President launches a direct attack on the most important traditions of American democracy, I’m not ready to say “Yeah, whatever” just yet.

The presidency of Donald Trump is not mere performance art. In its degenerate stage it looks like Cage; it looks like Jarry. It looks like Mary Tyrone wandering in, pale, sleepless, and delusional at the end of Long Day’s Journey. But it is real. It is actually happening. A fourth Christ of Ypsilanti has entered Milton Rokeach’s hospital, this one with presidential powers.

‘Newt is coming from a very dark place. First, his wife is the “ambassador” to the “Vatican” and is according to unimpeachable sources in bed with (yes literally) an illegitimate pope who has openly questioned Donald Trump’s Christian faith. Behind Gingrich stand the massed powers and riches of the idolatrous Roman Catholic church, which, in league with George Soros, seeks the death of Donald Trump in order to protect their global “brand” from the internationally proliferating MAGA movement. If you break the letters NEWTGINGRICH into their component parts, you get GRINCH TWINGE. Newt Gingrich is The GRINCH who Stole the Election Without a TWINGE of Guilt. His wife’s name – Callista – is the title of an 1855 novel by none other than John Henry Newman, the most famous British Catholic priest ever. Aligned with Newt’s popery and Sorosian World Order is his capture by Bolivarian “Chavismo” and more broadly Hugo Chavez’s “Socialism of the Twenty-First Century.” For someone with this portfolio to call me destructive is really something.’

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(UD thanks a reader for correcting her extensive misspellings of Sidney Powell.)