SHIPS IN A BOTTLE: How STAR TREK Got Me Through Covid, Quarantine, and the End of Trump

Normally, I’m not a trendsetter. I don’t beta test anything, I like to wait until the kinks get worked out. But when it came to the Coronavirus, apparently I couldn’t wait. Working as a bartender, I contracted the disease sometime over the weekend of March 13-14, 2020, the last few days before the shutdown in NY and NJ. While my infection took a week or so to fully bloom, by the time it did, I had developed some of the more disconcerting symptoms: Difficulty breathing, incredible fatigue, and a hacking cough to wake the dead. A trip to the local CityMD confirmed: I had a heaping helping of Covid-19 with a side of pneumonia. The doctor said that under normal circumstances, I’d be hospitalized, but given the state of those institutions at the time (swamped and deadly), he thought it was actually better for me to tough it out at home (where, I guess I should note, I live alone). I was prescribed some heavy duty Rx (which my friend T.Jay, who also risked his health to drive me to the doctor, graciously picked up for me) and told to try to get as much rest as possible. 

This seemingly simple directive proved difficult. Despite being constantly exhausted, sleep was elusive, mostly due to—you know—not being able to breathe. I spent my days on the couch, and my nights propped up in bed with every pillow I could find, like the Elephant Man, afraid that if I somehow fell into a horizontal position, I would instantly die. When the coughing fits would ensue, I’d close my eyes and speak my mantra, softly saying, “Breathe... Breathe... Breathe…,” over and over, until my dumb body finally listened. 

In addition to the drugs, the tea and water, the crackers, and the clementines (about all I could ingest), there was, of course, TV. A lot of TV. Like… all the TV. My first quarantine binge was a rewatch of MAD MEN, the entire seven seasons of which I managed to get through in a matter of weeks. And geez, that Don Draper is a piece of work, am I right? 

But that first week of being sick, I also decided that I would begin each night in bed by going back to one of my all-time favorite shows, albeit one I don’t own (yes, I still own hard media) and hadn’t seen in a long time: STAR TREK. 

And when I say, STAR TREK, I mean the original series (or, TOS, in the proper parlance). I’m kind of a classicist. For me, the original is usually the best. And with something as groundbreaking as STAR TREK, it’s hard to be objectively critical towards the relative shortcomings of its lesser episodes in light of everything that the series got right. 

I didn’t exactly “binge” TREK. I would usually do only one episode per night (via Netflix), and then switch to something for which I felt free to pay half-attention while fighting to fall asleep, not caring if I dozed off in the middle of, say, THE BLACKLIST or CRIMINAL MINDS (a terrible program I only watch because of a Paget Brewster obsession that I’m certain she’d find nothing but charming).

In short time, my nightly STAR TREK viewing became kind of the highlight of my day. I found myself looking forward to bedtime (even though, let’s be honest, given the circumstances, that could’ve been 7pm if I’d wanted) and my nightly voyage with the USS Enterprise, boldly going where no man (ahem) had gone before. There were episodes I remembered vividly, ones I sort of hazily recalled, and others I probably hadn’t seen since watching reruns as a kid at my grandparents’ house when they’d babysit me in the 1970s. 

I may not have remembered every episode with dilithium-crystal clarity, but I knew the crew like they’d been at my side since childhood. The cocky but virtuous (well, mostly) Captain James T. Kirk; The steadying presence of First Officer Spock, the human / Vulcan hybrid battling to keep that former half of his psyche buried, often unsuccessfully; The cantankerous conscience of the ship, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy; and the multiracial bridge crew, each a valued member and distinct personality in their own right. 

What resonated most with me every night as I sat ramrod in bed was the underlying message that creator Gene Roddenberry imbued into the series and for which I found myself in dire need: Hope. In episodes both good (“The Devil in the Dark,” “Amok Time,” “Mirror, Mirror” to name a few) and not-so-good (“Spock’s Brain,” “Spectre of the Gun,” “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”), Roddenberry’s vision of a future in which humanity had evolved to excise our baser instincts in favor of a more humanist, tolerant, and forward-looking existence was an even more soothing balm than the dollops of Vicks VapoRub slathered on my wheezing chest. 

And this optimistic vision of the future wasn’t just helping me to fight my own personal health crisis; perhaps even more importantly, it was giving me a much-needed catharsis from the other deadly scourge America was suffering, the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Space Force notwithstanding, the Trump administration (or, “administration,” as it should really be in quotes given its lack of administrating) espoused policies and attitudes that were completely anathema to those that Starfleet will come to represent in a few centuries. I NEEDED to see people—fictional, sure, but whatever—wanting to expand their horizons, striving to help others (even sentient rocks!), to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, even at the risk of their own safety. I don’t think Bones would’ve had to yell at anyone on the Enterprise to wear a mask.

My daily STAR TREK ritual continued after I recovered from the virus, eventually shifting from bedtime viewing to what I’d put on the tube while I was making and eating dinner every evening (once that ritual resumed). As I wended my way through the third, final, and—as universally acknowledged—weakest season, I started to wonder what was going to replace it in my queue once I hit the final episode?

There had been other TV binges through quarantine, of course. I plowed through THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW and BOSCH and SCTV and DARK and SUCCESSION and OZARK and some others I can’t quite think of right now because I’m getting bummed out at the thought of how many hours I’ve spent watching TV the past eleven months but ANYWAY MY POINT IS…. None of those shows provided me with the kind of catharsis that STAR TREK did. Okay, maybe DICK VAN DYKE came close (albeit in a very different, more personally aspirational way). 

The logical transition was to jump to STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. But here’s the problem: I didn’t like TNG (again, vernacular). I watched it sporadically in its initial run from 1987 to 1994, but it never clicked with me the way TOS did. Particularly as the show became more invested in family dynamics (in the final season, there are THREE EPISODES IN A ROW about fathers and sons!) and romantic entanglements (I’m sorry, you know who should never get together? A Klingon and a Betazoid), it just never felt like the TREK I loved.

Also, Wesley Crusher. Never forget Wesley Crusher. Lord knows I’ve tried. 

But, with a little prodding from my friend Adam (an avowed TNG acolyte whose opinion I do value) and knowing how much my brother, Ken worships Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise-D, I decided to give TNG another shot, from the beginning. 

It was a tough go at first. Unlike TOS, which found its footing rather quickly (after the post-pilot reboot, of course), TNG took a while to figure out who goes where and how everyone fit together on the sparkly, if flatter new Enterprise (the bridge of which always evoked more an airport VIP lounge than the command center of a Federation starship to me). Heck, they went through like three different chief engineers before finally realizing Geordi LaForge was the obvious choice for the gig. 

Also, Wesley. There was Wesley. 

But by the second season, I found myself beginning to warm up to the show, and by the time Picard was assimilated by the Borg at the end of Season 3, I was all-in. And while TOS will always be my favorite, I have to grudgingly admit that if I had to pick a captain under whom to serve…. It’d be Picard over Kirk. It’s not just that Jean-Luc (the Frenchman with the British accent) has more impulse control and better elocution than James Tiberius (pretty sure Picard knows how to pronounce “sabotage”), he also exudes the kind of bold, but smart leadership that inspires more confidence than Kirk’s oft-reckless, Shakespearian breach-diving. Kirk might be more fun than Picard (and slightly less scary), but he’s also far more likely to get your red shirt disintegrated (with you in it). Also, I’m sure that my being older makes it easier for me to relate to the fiftyish—but still dashing—Picard. Not that I’m dashing. But I am fiftyish (heh). 

But it’s not just Picard that endeared me to TNG this time around. I actually grew to care for the characters (although no, I was not sad to see Wesley go in Season 4). I came to love Data (even if, to me, it seems plainly obvious from the start that he absolutely has emotions); I stopped thinking of Will Riker as simply a chair-straddling cheeseball; I began to see the need for Deanna to have the seat next to the captain on the bridge (although I wish the character had been treated better in the series, and wasn’t mysteriously absent in some episodes when she’d be most needed). I thought Ro Laren was a fantastic addition and wish Michelle Forbes had been willing to commit to the series as more than just a sometimes guest star. But more than the characters themselves, it was their interactions that came to define the series, their incredibly believable relationships with each other, both one-on-one and as a larger group. I still had issues with the more soap operatic installments, shows that centered around children, and pretty much every single Klingon-centric episode (Honor! Tradition! Honor! WE GET IT ALREADY! Geez, give it a rest, shellhead!). And, again, the quality of the shows varied widely from great (“Darmok,” “Chain of Command,” “Sarek”) to, um, WTF (“The Child,” “Sub Rosa,” “When the Bough Breaks,” and of course the infamous “Code of Honor”). But once it gelled, this cast and crew became a true ensemble that engendered the same kind of inspirational affection I’d felt for Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, and, uh, maybe sometimes Chekov. 

(I should also make a note that I followed up every episode of both series the next day with its corresponding installment of the fantastic MISSION LOG PODCAST, in which hosts John Champion and Ken Ray [since departed] pull apart each episode with wit, intelligence, and alacrity [sadly, a scarcity in podcasts]. If you’re into TREK at all, I can’t recommend it enough. As of this writing, they’re up to Season 5 of DS9 [with Norman C. Lao replacing Ken Ray as of 2019], so there’s lots more to come.)

As my TREK marathon stretched out over month after month I realized it was actually going to outlast the Trump Administration, which felt… really good. And while the Orange Overlord’s ouster didn’t quite go as planned, it was still a happy ending (even if, as with TREK, it was an open-ended finale). 

And then, on Thursday, February 18, 2021, after almost a full year and 256 episodes total (80 for TOS, 176 for TNG)… I was done. I sat down with my “steering wheel” (as my brother calls my generous portioning) of rigatoni with red sauce and a bottle of Bordeaux (felt appropriate) and settled in for “All Good Things…,” the feature-length 1994 finale of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. In the episode, Q, the omnipotent, extra-dimensional thorn in Picard’s side (kind of his Mr. Mxyzptlk, I always thought) reveals that the trial of mankind begun in the series’ pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint,” never ended, and bounces Picard between the past, present, and future to solve a potentially life-eradicating time anomaly that, it turns out, he caused himself. The crew(s) of the Enterprise prevail, of course, and mankind is spared, but Picard has a new perspective on the life he led, lives, and may one day lead. He decides to remove the arm’s length at which he’s kept his “family” and, in the series’ final, iconic scene, joins his senior staff in their regular poker game for the first time. 

I’m not ashamed to admit that I sat there with tears streaming down my face, even though I knew what was coming; “All Good Things…” is one of the handful of TNG episodes I knew well (and greatly enjoyed). My emotions were more about the totality and weight of this journey that I had taken with both Enterprises over the course of 256 (give or take) mostly-consecutive nights. I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the aid that Gene Roddenberry (et al) had given me in dealing with a serious illness, a forced, solitary confinement in my home, and a daily reminder that the fate of my country and the world was in the hands of a malevolent being that made Khan Noonien-Singh look like a Keebler Elf (with much better pecs). 

So now what? What takes the place of these two shows? I guess I could go back to the 1973-74 animated TREK series (which is now considered canon), but I don’t have CBS All-Access (which also precludes giving PICARD and LOWER DECKS a shot). I’ve watched all the movies starring both casts (the TNG films being even more spotty than the TOS ones… call me crazy, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE remains my favorite film starring the original crew, and I really like the much-derided NEMESIS, the final TNG flick). Despite getting well into Season 2 of DEEP SPACE NINE, I gotta say, it does nothing for me (if I have to hear the term, “gold-pressed latinum” one more time, I’m going to explode). I’ve only ever seen a few episodes of VOYAGER, but it’s my mom’s favorite, so I’ll give that a shot. I sampled ENTERPRISE (not bad, I’ll probably finish that one next, timeline be damned). And I just recently caught up with the first season of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY thanks to CBS’ rerunning on its old-fashioned non-streaming tee-vee network. It’s fine. I guess. 

But I have the same issue with every post-TNG iteration of STAR TREK, and it’s something that actually began in later seasons of TNG. From the beginning, Gene Roddenberry insisted that in the future he created, conflict would mostly be a thing of the past. Granted, seeing as how conflict is the very foundation of drama, you’d think this would be a bit of a hindrance to storytelling, but TOS managed to work around it (and few would argue that the relationship between Spock and Bones was sunshine and lollipops). But there were specific aspects of 20th century society that he wanted to paint as anachronistic: racism, sexism, capitalism, religion, and poverty, to name a few. Those things could be shown as existing on more unenlightened alien worlds, but in the Federation… nuh-uh. 

Not every writer and producer who worked on STAR TREK under The Great Bird of the Galaxy (as Roddenberry was known) shared this vision, and in the wake of the series creator’s death in 1991, those thematic shackles were lifted (they had actually already begun to loosen after Roddenberry took a less active role in the series after the first season). Crew members bickered more, altruism seemed to take a back seat to lesser virtues with some characters. The existence of God and money in the 24th century seemed to be at the whim of the writer of any given episode (how can you “buy a round” in Ten Forward if everything costs nothing?). The different shows’ inconsistencies and darker tones may have made things easier for the creators, but for me…. Something got lost. 

Pop culture has always played a huge role in my life. Some might argue too much so, but that’s (like everything) a subjective call. If you’ve read this far, you probably don’t find fault in shedding tears over fictional space explorers from the 24th century. But even if you can’t relate to this kind of connection to a 55-year-old TV franchise, please try to understand that what I’ve detailed here is not hyperbolic. 

I always knew that STAR TREK was more than just an iconic science fiction franchise, I always understood its importance in the realms of culture and science, I just never dreamed that it would come to mean so much to me in a time of strife. I NEEDED that daily escape into a world in which people are GOOD and things are BETTER and disease and hate and selfishness are things of the PAST as much as I needed the antibiotics and steroids prescribed to me. Maybe more. Beverly Crusher may not have waved a beeping, blinking, gray hand-held device over my chest to instantly cure my Covid / pneumonia, but the fictional world in which she lives played a big role in keeping me from falling into despair during the past, really difficult eleven months. And for that, I’ll always be grateful to the crews of the USS Enterprise and those who made it so. 

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STAR TREK TOS & TNG posters by Dusty Abell

 

No, Really, Why So Serious? Or, Why JOKER Doesn't Work.

There are lots of times when my opinions on pop culture don’t line up with the mainstream. That’s been the case my entire life. But there are also times when I find myself at odds with people of usually like-minded opinions. Such is the case with a movie most of my fanboy friends are rallying behind, one that left such a bad taste in my mouth I had to take to these here Internets to get some things off my chest about JOKER.

SPOILER ALERT! Many spoilers ahead. Consider yourself warned.

From the initial announcement, I was not really jazzed about this movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Batman mythos, and think the Joker is perhaps the greatest supervillain of them all. But one of the things that makes the Joker so great is that, since his introduction in Batman #1 in 1940, he’s remained a mystery. In eight decades of Joker stories in the comics, he’s never had a real name or a full backstory (aside from a 1951 explanation of how he got his distinctive appearance). Sure, Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke gave him an ostensible origin, but that tale was (a) not supposed to be considered in-continuity (despite becoming so retroactively) and (b) acknowledged in-story as perhaps being an unreliable memory of the Joker (“Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… if I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!”). Gee, that sounds familiar, no? 



We know that the Joker is nuts. We know that he’s dangerous. That’s really all we need to know. As such, the prospect of a full-length motion picture origin for this character wasn’t something that held any interest for me.

Also, I rankled at the idea of making Joker the protagonist of a film. True, he’s popular enough to warrant it, but that doesn’t matter. The Joker without Batman is like doing a Professor Moriarty film without Sherlock Holmes. What is the point? In the 1970s, DC Comics gave the Joker his own solo series, one that lasted only nine issues. One of the reasons for the title’s failure was that DC found it difficult to make the “Clown Prince of Crime” function as the lead. He worked best… worked only, in fact… as the villain, as the antagonist, preferably towards the Batman. Numerous “solo” Joker graphic novels in the decades since almost (if not) always included the Caped Crusader as a nemesis.

The view from my apartment

But I decided to go see JOKER for two main reasons: First, parts of the movie were filmed in the towns where I live (Newark, NJ) and work (Jersey City), and I was curious to see them onscreen. The entire opening scene of the movie takes place on the very block on which I live (I could see the set from my window), and some friends and I dumpster dived for set memorabilia after Market Street had been returned from its faux 1980s Gotham City dilapidation to its current actual dilapidation. 

The other, primary reason I had to see JOKER is that once it came out, practically every person I’ve ever met in my life was asking what I thought.

So I went (by myself, hoping not to set off any alarm bells amongst the incel-fearing staff). And yep. My instincts were right. Didn’t like it.

It’s not that JOKER is poorly made. It accomplishes what it sets out to do. It’s just that I hate what it sets out to do. By giving the Joker a sympathetic backstory and making him the anti-hero of the tale, JOKER commits the cardinal sin of comic book adaptations: It utterly misses the point and the essence of the character.

Now, before you start accusing me of being an intractable pedant, I understand what Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix were trying to do. I get that this is a different take on a well-established character. But in every conceivable way, it’s wrong. Arthur Fleck never feels like the Joker. He feels like (as was widely presumed from pre-release materials) an amalgamation of Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin in clown makeup. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance reeks of pathos, anxiety, depression, delusion, paranoia, and instability, but he never comes close to evoking the terrifying, sheer anarchic malevolence of (you knew I was going here) Heath Ledger in THE DARK KNIGHT.

I realize that this movie ain’t that movie, but comparisons are inevitable (to this and every other version of the Joker). Prior to TDK, we had Cesar Romero’s campy gagster (fine within context) and Jack Nicholson’s wannabe artiste (too likeable and Jack-Nicholsony, just one of innumerable flaws in Tim Burton’s stiff melodrama), neither of which truly captured the essence of the character created by Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, and/or Bob Kane (the precise creative provenance will forever be in dispute).

But then came 2008, and Christopher Nolan’s Bat-masterpiece, THE DARK KNIGHT, at long last giving Batman fans a Joker for whom they’d longed. What Nolan (along with co-writers Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer) understood was that in order for the Joker to be a truly horrifying, existential threat to the Batman, as well as all of Gotham—cops, crooks, and gen-pop alike—he had to remain a mystery, an “agent of chaos,” someone for whom money, order, or any semblance of normalcy felt like a complete anomaly. Heath Ledger’s performance, with all its verbal and physical tics (contrast his long fingernails with Phoenix’ gnawed nubs), took what was on the page and brought it to indelible and unshakeable life. The white may have been makeup, the rictus a scar under lipstick, but godammit, this felt like the Joker.

Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck isn’t the embodiment of anarchic malevolence. He’s just… pathetic. Pitable. Except of course, when he’s killing finance bros and exploitative talk show hosts. Then you’re supposed to… what, cheer for him? I guess? Or at least revel in his numerous slow-motion dances to questionable soundtrack selections?

It just felt… off. And not the kind of “off” that was the point of JOKER’s far superior antecedents, Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER and THE KING OF COMEDY. It felt like the work of filmmakers who thought they were making something entirely different than what ended up onscreen. At least to me. I didn’t get any deep treatise on mental illness or metaphor for heartless capitalism, I just got... Ugly. Superfluous. And worst of all, self-indulgent.

(Also, if I can veer off of character and into plot for a second, the entirety of the Murray Franklin part of the story strains credulity at every angle. Showing the [how’d they make that?] video [without permission] in the first place [it’s not that funny], inviting Arthur on the show, letting him go on in clown makeup during a riot in which criminals are running around in clown makeup and masks, not vetting his material [or even giving him a pre-interview], not running a security check on him, letting him call the shots [pardon the pun] on his appearance, not cutting to commercial and having security haul him off the second he admitted to the subway killings, the entire subplot is comically ridiculous. If, as some have suggested, Arthur's appearance on the show is yet another of his delusions, it makes more sense, but only adds to the pointlessness of the whole thing.)

In another boneheaded twist, JOKER also gives us Thomas Wayne as a villain. Depicting Batman’s doomed dad as a power hungry, tone-deaf, rich asshole goes against the character as much as Jonathan Kent being a callous paranoiac in Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL. If Thomas Wayne has no empathy for the downtrodden of Gotham City, if he’s not using his wealth for philanthropic purposes, then his death isn’t a tragedy (or not as great a one, anyway). Also, if Thomas Wayne is Donald Trump, then that means Bruce is Donald Jr., and you know who Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t become? Motherfucking Batman, that’s who! Hell, this movie even makes Alfred into a dick! So who cares what happens to them?

Oh, right, we’re not supposed to care about the Waynes, we’re supposed to care about Arthur. He’s the star. He’s the hero. Sorry, anti-hero.

All of this role reversal might’ve been a bit easier to stomach if the movie didn’t bow to so many Batman conventions. Despite his claim of JOKER not being a DCEU film, Phillips really wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Not only do we have to yet again witness the murder of the Waynes (cascading pearls and all), there’s also an homage to Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns in the form of the bank of TV screens after Arthur kills Murray. That’s a lot of Batman in a movie that’s not supposed to be a Batman movie.

But, as I said at the beginning, this is another case of me being woefully out of touch, with both the mainstream and much of the comic book cognoscenti. And while I’ll take this opportunity to toss in my mantra of “it’s all subjective,” this is also one of those cases where I simply do not understand how a dyed-in-the-wool Batman fan can get behind this film.

The other day, one of the dozen or so ads for bootleg memorabilia that scrolls into my social media feed on a daily basis pictured a Joker tee-shirt that redrew an old Irv Novick image (of a character called Willie the Weeper from the cover of The Joker #2) in the Joaquin Phoenix outfit and makeup (which I hate, by the way…forgot to mention that), with the tagline in the ad reading, “He is the hero, not a villain (heart emoji)!” I mean, seriously… what the fuck?

Loving the character (which I do) is one thing. But you’re not supposed to side with the Joker. And, perhaps even more egregiously, when he kills people, you’re not supposed to think that’s a good thing. Unless you’re, you know, John Hinckley Jr. Or maybe Jared Leto (oof, at least the silver lining here is that hopefully we never see that guy again). 

The bottom line is, the world of JOKER is not a world where I wanna live, fictional or otherwise (even if it is on my block).

But hey, I guess that’s just me. The damn thing just became the most successful R-rated film of all time. So you guys go ahead, paint on a happy face, dance to music by pedophiles, and let the darkness wash over you. Me, I’ll go watch THE DARK KNIGHT for the 400th time and revel in a world that’s not exactly sweetness and light, but where you can at least tell the good guys from the bad.

Asshole America

In 1987, after being acquitted in a high profile racketeering trial, New York mob boss John Gotti earned the media nickname, “The Teflon Don” due to the inability of any of his charges to stick. Gotti was eventually sent to jail in 1992, and died a decade later of cancer, but even if he had avoided those fates, he’d still have to abdicate the nickname to the true “Teflon Don,” the melon-tinged, racist, wannabe autocrat who currently holds the position of President of the United States, one Donald J. Trump.

Adam Zyglis

When the failed businessman (if we’re being honest) turned reality TV star was elected President in 2016 despite decades of recorded conduct that would’ve rendered any other candidate ineligible, there was a contingency that opined once he took office, he’d straighten up, tone down the coarseness and the divisive rhetoric, and become more “presidential.” 



Only that didn’t happen.

If anything, as Trump’s delicate, yet oversized ego began to get even more inflated by the power and the glory of his new office, he doubled down on the kind of behavior that is—shall we say—unbecoming of a world leader. He continued to call opponents “losers” and other schoolyard pejoratives, he used his position to further the financial interests of himself and his cronies, he embraced despots while alienating longtime allies on the world stage, he did everything in his power to try to derail a legitimate investigation into collusion with Russia… oh, hell, you guys know the list. It’s unending.

Rob Rogers

And with each new twist of the knife into the heart of the Republic (and for which it stands), a chorus of hopefuls would think, “This is it! This’ll finally turn Uncle Joe and Aunt Dotty against him! This is the thing that’s going to take him down!” 

But none of them did. Not taking Putin’s side over ours (“I don’t see why it would be!”), not the Mueller report (“Completely exonerated”), not another round of accusations of sexual misconduct (“She wouldn’t be my first choice, believe me”), not the constant tweeting of racist dog whistles (“Go back to your countries!”), none of it has made a dent in his base or his support in the Republican party. NONE. OF. IT. STICKS.

How can this be? Why is this unrepentant asshole so untouchable? I think the answer is simply… because he is an unrepentant asshole. If someone is totally unpossessing of shame, humility, empathy, and self-awareness, it’s kinda hard to cut through that armor with things like empirical evidence and civility. It makes him invulnerable to criticism. And so every assholish thing that this assholey asshole does and gets away with only solidifies his support amongst Asshole America.

John Cole

We need look no further than his rallies. Those fucking rallies (over FIFTY since taking office!). Arenas and auditoriums and expo centers full (or partially full, anyway) of mewling sycophants who gobble up every mouth turd that falls out of his puckered face hole (that probably smells like a mix of rotting meat and Life Savers): Lies and self-aggrandizement and race baiting and lies and media bashing and let’s not forget the lies. Speaking off the cuff, he rambles and dishes out his greatest hits and says absolutely nothing of substance, but to many of his base, (and please forgive my repeating myself) WHAT he says isn’t as important as HOW he says it. That sniffling, gravelly tenor of his, punctuated with barks and growls and the occasional “Am I right?” has the same Pavlovian effect on his base as chirping, “Who’s a good dog? You are! Yes you are! You’re a good dog!” to an excited Jack Russell Terrier who doesn’t understand what you’re saying, but really wants to go outside and chase his own tail for an hour.

If you need any evidence that the tone is key, look no further than the rally in June of 2018 at which he declared, “We got more money, we got more brains, we got better houses and apartments, we got nicer boats, we're smarter than they are and they say they're the elite. You're the elite, we're the elite!”



Dr. Jack & Curtis

Putting aside his usual poor grammar, let’s look at the content. He’s presuming that everyone at the rally is (a) super wealthy, (b) possessed of a MENSA level intellect, (c) living in the finest appointed homes, and (d) spending their weekends on the water in their yachts or some such conveyance.


But he made this speech at a rally in North Dakota. A landlocked state. And yet still, they whooped with wild enthusiasm (if that’s redundant, I apologize, I’m a little worked up). Did anybody in the crowd turn and look at the person next to them and say, “I don’t have a boat. Do you have a boat? Also, I’m living paycheck to paycheck in my parents’ basement, what the fuck is he talking about?”

David Plunkert

It’s doubtful (and not just because I’m sure there were some people there who WERE well off and maybe even owned a boat, that’s not the point). For many people in Trump’s crowds, they FEEL his anger, they can taste the bile in his throat as if it were their own. Whether it’s borne of fiscal anxieties, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, whatever happens to be their own particular peccadillo, it doesn’t matter if he speaks to it directly or not. He’s mad. And so are they. 

Asshole America just loves being validated by the person holding a job that was once considered a bastion of dignity and restraint. Unlike other Presidents who strove to inspire and unite, this one is content to JUST BE PISSED AND DIVIDE. Rather than those snooty college boys telling you to “ask not what your country can do for you” or some similar kinda highfalutin’, unselfish bullshit, they finally got a leader who just bitches about brown people and those damn furr’ners and his own personal enemies and who (again, no doubt disingenuously) brags about the size of his mushroom shaped joint. 

Trump revels in his anger. It defines him. That’s his message to Asshole America: “Go ahead and be an asshole!” They’ve never been so fully and completely sanctioned by someone whose job it is to lead (you know, aside from Grand Wizards). If the most powerful person on this doomed planet can be such a colossal dick and get away with it, then why can’t they? Why CAN’T they be openly racist instead of just behind closed doors? Why CAN’T they be rude and demanding at a restaurant? Why NOT park in a handicapped spot if they want? Hey, let’s buy some more guns! Where’s the nearest Walmart? Anyone who thinks it’s a coincidence that hate crimes have increased in the past two and a half years is either kidding themselves or holding office as a Republican. Or both.

I’ve watched pundit after pundit after pundit try to parse this seemingly inconceivable state of affairs, wringing hands over uneaten plates of breakfast pastries, begging historians for hopeful precedent to end this national nightmare, asking Democratic POTUS hopefuls how they can defeat Trump next November, all digging way deeper than they need to.

It’s simple. It’s superficial. It’s the ultimate triumph of anti-intellectualism, greed, hatred, and selfishness. It’s more insidious than Idiocracy. We’ve officially become Asshole America. And I honestly don’t know if we can ever recover.

The Cantaloupe-Colored Mea Culpa

I realize that the last thing the world needs is yet another piece by a terrified, angry liberal screaming into the void / preaching to the choir about Donald Trump, but I have to make a public mea culpa. See, I thought… and often loudly opined… that he’d be gone by now.

Since the day Donald Trump was elected the President of the United States (you all remember that, right? Shortly after Halloween, couple’a years back?), my prediction was that he wouldn’t fulfill even half of his term. My window for his departure (whether through resignation or impeachment) was 15-18 months. 

Well, it’s now August 2018, and as the perpetual pit in my stomach confirms, Boss Tweet is still firmly and flabbily ensconced in the Oval Office (or, more likely, one of his golf clubs). 

In the beginning, my theory was that enough impeachable dirt would be rather quickly uncovered that would make it difficult for him to stay in office, and that he’d resign, but spin it as “finishing the job early,” so he could move on to creating his new media outlet, or just go back to slapping his name on crap, or whatever. Because while I never bought the theory that he didn’t want to win (he ALWAYS wants to win, even if his primary motivation for running was spite), it’s a given that he never wanted to do the actual hard work. Doing work is not his thing, man. 

Well, certainly, dirt has been uncovered. And his behavior in office continues to bring disgrace to the entire country on practically a daily basis. He has said and done things that would’ve been political suicide for anyone else in any of the branches of government. 

But there are three things on which I didn’t count. One, that none of this would matter to his intractable base, the true wall that he has built around the country, one made out of flesh and ignorance. Two, that Congress would turn out to be cowardly toadies who make excuses for Trump rather than hold him to his oath of office. And three, that the POSPOTUS himself would become hopelessly addicted to the power and sycophantic glory his position engenders. 

And while I still think there’s a wee bit of a chance he doesn’t make it to the end of his term, if he does evade being ousted from the post for which he is so brutally unqualified… I think it’s more likely than not that we’re in for another four years (or more, if he has his way). But even if Donald Trump ceased to be President tomorrow, enough damage has been done that I don't think it'll be fixed in my lifetime, if ever. Maybe we are now living in the Idiocracy that Mike Judge predicted (only we got there 490 years earlier than the movie's timeframe. Isn't that cute?). 

I was not one of those optimists who felt that Trump didn’t stand a chance in 2016. I’m cynical enough that I believed the country's  heapin' helpin' of gullibility, hate, and misogyny left a decent chance that he could beat Hillary Clinton (who, without getting into pointless rehashing, was in my opinion, the worst possible candidate to go up against him). 

So I was not shocked on November 9, 2016, when I awoke to the confirmation that the Captain Bonespurs had beaten his cocky and  entitled opponent. Horrified, numb, depressed as fuck, sure. But not shocked. 

As I rode the train to work that morning, I got a taste of the divisive environment that was about to ripen in America. Sitting across and down the car from me was a young African-American man reading the newspaper, and when I locked eyes with him, he scowled, shook his head in disgust, and went back to reading. I thought maybe I was being paranoid, but as I stood and crossed to the door as the train pulled into the station, I glanced over at him, and he repeated his repulsed reaction. I wanted to try to explain that I wasn’t the enemy, that I was as mortified and disgusted as he, but I decided to let him have his resentment. He deserved it. 

As a quick side note, while I held my nose and pulled the lever for Clinton, I can’t side with those who blame voters who chose Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or any other third party candidate for the results of the election. Nobody should be vilified for voting their conscience, for refusing to choose “the lesser of two evils,” regardless of the ramifications. If fingers must be pointed (an ironically pointless exercise), aim them at those who actually voted for Trump, or the 40-some percent of the eligible voters who abstained altogether, whether out of apathy, laziness, or whatever other lame excuse they mustered. 

18 months in, my own grief has turned to anger and dismay. Not to put too fine a black point on it, but I truly think we’re doomed. What we’ve witnessed as this presidency has edged closer to dystopia is the triumph of narcissism, anti-intellectualism, and willful, arrogant ignorance. His followers not only don’t want to hear any of your fancy “facts,” they are proud of their aversion to (gag) “FAKE NEWS,” that Pavlovian, unbreakable, catch-all rejoinder that carries about as much intellectual heft as a surly teen’s “Whatever.” You can (and we do) have concise, carefully corroborated, and non-partisan laundry lists of malfeasance and lies perpetrated by their Great Orange Leader, and they reject it without even taking a nanosecond to consider ANY of it might be true. None of these people have ever typed Snopes into their browsers.

Even when, at one of his seemingly ceaseless rallies (which are not held for the benefit of the attendees, but rather for the fluffing of his own perpetually needy ego), Trump spouts some nonsense that has NOTHING to do with the audience—like, say, implying that they have better houses and boats than the so-called elites—they scream and froth and lap it up like melted Velveeta… because WHAT he says matters less than HOW he says it. His anger and hatred and dismissiveness reflect their own and they feel validated, even empowered. “I can be a dick to people because the leader of the free world is a dick!” This is why old white men think it’s okay to accost a young brown woman for daring to wear a Puerto Rico tee-shirt in America. It’s why hate groups have not merely proliferated under this administration (up 20% since 2014), they’ve felt emboldened to come out in the open and proudly fly their flags. 

So, if facts have completely ceased to matter (after all, truth is not truth), how can the left appeal to the 2016 fence-straddlers who ultimately jumped onto Trump’s side, and then drank deep from the well? Aye, there’s the rub: I don’t think we can. Setting aside the ballooning deficit, unless the economy stops improving (a trend that began before Trump took office, but for which he naturally takes full credit), nothing’s going to make the Trumpsters turn against their Great and Powerful leader. And maybe not even that. Aside from some who are beginning to see the downsides of Trump’s tariffs, most of his followers don’t seem to care how much he’s worked against their own self-interest (particularly if they have kids who are going to have to live with the environment —both literal and cultural—he’s curating). At this point, their love for him is a matter of personal pride, even if he could not give one flying fuck about any single one of them. 

Because this is the thing that I truly don’t get: How anyone, regardless of politics or social status or any sociological dividing line you wanna draw, cannot see that the ONLY thing he cares about is his own ego stroking. That’s it. The beginning, middle, and end. Much as I loathed some of the Presidents that preceded this one, I still believe that every one of them felt that they were doing what was best for the country (Okay, maybe not Nixon, but I was too young to have had issues with him at the time). Not this guy. This guy doesn’t give a shit about you. Unless you happen to be Ivanka reading this thing right now, in which case, THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOUR FATHER WANTS TO BANG YOU, GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM! 

So. Sigh. Here we are. We’re stuck with him. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Mueller investigation, no matter what we hear on any more audiotapes, no matter what he tweets or says or does, he has succeeded in relentlessly bludgeoning the republic into a state of numbness. Nothing matters anymore. The United States of America is Trumpland now. Paint the White House gold and slap his name on the outside. He’s here to stay. 

FOREVER. AND EVER. AND EVER. 

Ghad, I hate being wrong.

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POSTSCRIPT, August 23, 2018: I posted this yesterday morning, having no idea (of course) that later that afternoon, two of the biggest bombshells in the ongoing investigations into Trump would be dropped: Paul Manafort's guilty verdicts on 8 of the charges against him, and Michael Cohen's guilty plea for campaign finance violations, incriminating "a candidate for federal office." While the news media went into overdrive pontificating what these two events meant for Trump, I remain convinced that the answer is, ultimately, nothing.