Smell a Rat?

Note: This post was written a few days after the November 2024 election, but not posted until the following February. It just seems so futile. Now, I figure, what the hell! Plus, someone – Greg Palast – has finally shot up a flare.

Does no one smell a rat?

There’s been plenty of anguish since the second elevation of The Dump to the presidency. I share it. This development is a catastrophe, politically and otherwise, for more reasons I’ll enumerate here.

The pundits I’ve heard since November 5th have uniformly accepted the results and are busy playing the blame game. I’m not remotely interested in this. No one, so far as I know, is suggesting what seems entirely plausible to me: that maybe, just maybe, the results of the 2024 Presidential election are illegitimate.

Instead, there’s been blame heaped on Kamala Harris: a poor candidate, some say. Yet she ran a virtually flawless campaign and absolutely wiped the floor with Dump in their one and only debate.

There’s been blame heaped on Biden for not stepping aside sooner; for not holding to his 2020 pledge to be a one-term, “bridge” candidate. An open campaign with multiple candidates and all the primary trimmings, some argue, would have produced a stronger candidate who could have won.

There’s been blame on voters themselves: a substandard election day turnout by Democrats.

I’m highly skeptical. I cannot accept that The Dump legitimately won. He betrayed the constitution and his oath of office by fomenting an insurrection. He was convicted on thirty-four felony counts. He is a known sexual predator. He bragged about ending abortion rights. He is transparently incompetent, unqualified, and corrupt. He ran the shabbiest campaign imaginable, with no real policies beyond a baldly stated plan for retribution against his political opponents. He is a known cheat. None of this adds up.

By now this wretched soul has done everything but shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. He belongs in a penal colony.

And yet this traitor “won” because of the price of eggs?

And no one smells a rat?

Rabbit is Racist

Rabbit is Rich is the third of John Updike’s “Rabbit” series of novels. It is preceded by Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux, and followed by Rabbit at Rest and Rabbit Remembered.

I’ve read the first two, am nearly finished with the third, and intend to continue through the series. The titular “Rabbit” is Harry Angstrom, so nicknamed in high school as a star basketball player. Those years turn out to have been the high point of his life, and the novels, published at about ten year intervals, chronicle the rest of his ordinary, everyman existence.

The books are quite good. The second and third in the series, in fact, won Pulitzers. Each is written in the present tense, which is a little odd at first, but you get used to it. Some of the overall story is quite moving, as in a meeting between Rabbit and a former lover some twenty years after their fling.

But this isn’t really a review. I want to comment on what I see as the casual racism in the series, which is most noticeable in Rabbit is Rich, when Harry is in his complacent, financially secure middle years. While no characters (most of them white) are klan members or anything that extreme, there is an unmistakable bigotry, a sort of benign intolerance, that is quite bothersome. A character will invoke a slur or stereotype, but no one stops to interject, “That is so racist!”

True, the N-bombs, anti-Semitic bombs, and homophobic bombs are not in abundance. But they are frequent enough. Since they are so casually part of the narrative, they’re like a slap to the face.

It’s that casualness that is so galling. Presumably Updike is just painting a portrait as he sees it, but he never condemns the sewage that spills from some of his characters’ lips.

There is, of course, much more to Rabbit is Rich and the others than what I’m here calling casual racism. I love a good sentence, and they are plentiful. There are also parts – in Rabbit is Rich, especially – that made me laugh out loud. I must admit that it’s tempting to ignore the stereotypes and slurs as outdated reflections of their times, which they are. But it’s difficult to overlook them, not without comment.

(In spite of what I have written here, I do recommend these novels. If you decide to read them, I strongly recommend looking at the entire series as a whole, and reading them all).

Project 2025

Project 2025’s defining document is more than 900 pages of ruthless, self-justifying policy objectives. The media usually calls it a “blueprint” for a second Trump term. It is really a blueprint for minority rule.

Bearing the arrogant title Mandate for Leadership, this long, dense document has no executive summary or précis, no bulleted main points. This is by design, because there is much to hide.

“If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration,” its authors state on the Project 2025 website. “This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project."

Their defining document identifies “four broad fronts that will decide America’s future.” I quote:

1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

The hypocrisy is stunning.

The so-called “mandate for leadership” is no mandate. These people and their ideas are broadly unpopular. They are devoted to money and power. They are devoted to white male minority rule. They are committed to getting what they want by any means necessary. They are unalterably opposed to anything that stands in their way. They are prepared for a bloodbath.

In a fair election they will lose, but the wild card remains: there is nothing they will not stoop to. They will cheat and call it winning. If that fails, they will unleash the minions, as we saw on January 6, 2021. Only this time, it will be far worse.

Follow this link to learn more about Project 2025.

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