The Algae Is Brutal, The Choice Is So Clear

Hoo boy. We made it, barely. Not stressed, really. But pretty wrung dry by the relentless lies, slurs, sludge, fearmongering in "the most nakedly bigoted American political campaign” by bottom-feeding crooks, hacks and pedophile-adjacent rapists scurrying to escape their well-deserved debacle (please). On the last day, they just disgorged more foul crap: "plunging" oil prices, millions of "illegals," transgender three-year-olds, "tremendous" algae problems, ubiquitous "jihadist leprechauns." Jesus. VOTE.

Philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) borrowed from Platonic skepticism to voice the now-time-honored tenet Non Sibi Sed Omnibus - "Not for self but for all" - espousing Stoic ethics, virtues and public duty to call for the denizens of a society to contribute to the general good by serving humankind through acts of kindness. Unsurprisingly, America's vapid, vicious right wing did not follow Cicero's wise counsel in an election campaign that, perhaps more than any other, became "a furnace in which pretense burns away and essential character is exposed." And unholy shit, it did and it was..

Campaigning for El Sayed - and touting Saddam Hussein's Cheesecake Factory - Obama cited a common historic arc. "Whenever a movement builds to challenge (a) broken system, the people who benefit from the status quo will say and do anything to stop that train from coming," he said, adding "they may even use" your name or faith to suggest you are less "American" than they are. "We have seen this movie before. I starred in it." After his initial Red Scare strategy failed and now a cornered animal in "the Apocalypse Now phase of his presidency," Trump has pivoted to a mainstay of American “exceptionalism” - bigotry.

Having long ago abandoned dog whistles, quaint niceties of old-school racism - "states' rights," “welfare queens,” "law and order" - and any rhetorical restraint, Trump has lurched from golden-escalator rants about Mexican rapists to banning all Muslims "until we can figure out what the hell is going on" to vitriolic, straight-out "Islamophobic tears" wherein Somali-Americans are "low-IQ garbage" who all drive BMWs and "don’t have to work because they steal so much” and feds are raiding the home of "terrible person" Ilhan Omar to haul off her phone and a Somali kids' phrase book her husband was using to learn English.

In final, moronic Islamophobic rants "like watching a man vomit up bigotry that has been poisoning his soul for decades," he called El-Sayed - a Michigan-born-and-bred Rhodes Scholar and doctor with two PhDs - a "communist" Muslim Brotherhood member (we know, we know) "on the side of the terrorists" who'd "have to go through a metal detector" before going into the Senate and who'd "open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas." El Sayed: "The man is an idiot...There’s no there there."

Still, Trump lackeys have dutifully jumped on the racist bandwagon. Awful JD argues housing costs have soared because "we allowed 20 million illegals" into the country, and they should all speak English to protect the "identity of the country.” RFK Jr. says the world's 500 million Arabs don’t produce science.or literature (Not, not, not.) Ted Cruz says Americans could die with El-Sayed, a “jihadist leprechaun,” in the Senate. Weary observers likewise dismiss "insanely racist" raving of a "wretched stain" of a human being. From Texas: "Racist pieces of shit to the bitter end. Fuck you very much."

Racists and rapists and sociopaths, oh my: There's also been Trump's defense of Vivek's grotesque ad exploiting Amy Acton’s childhood sexual abuse: "A rapist and pedophile defending another rapist and pedophile. Nothing to see here." The obsessive demonizing and fantasizing about the "mutilization (not a word) of our children" as "Timmy leaves the house and comes home as Sarah" after imaginary surgery by underpaid school nurses. The idiotic name-calling - South Carolina's cis Dr. Annie Andrews, mother of three, becomes “Annie Trannie" - and leering at asses and ongoing ICE violence and weird sounds

The weaponization of government, its (mostly inept) war on voting - "Like its war on Iran, opening the Straight of More Lose" - its many court losses: In California, a judge told them to stop threatening state election officials with criminal prosecution and they can't toss thousands of votes, an Alaska judge refused to prohibit certifying any winner besides the GOP incumbent, Washington's Secretary of State declined to provide a list of alleged "noncitizens registered to vote," ripping the ask as irresponsible, illegal, not in good faith and based on "deeply flawed" data as "confirmed by your incorrect statement the election is November 2, 2026."

There’s the dark money - Musk’s unprecedented $446 million, $377 billion in Trump corruption - amidst “These are the biggest guys on Wall Street” partying, “We’re (sic) making a freaking fortune” boasts and “I-don’t-give-a-damn” gloats about gas prices. The fury of people struggling to feed their kids with, outside a Trump hotel, the chalk writing on the wall: “4 days (now 1) Asshole” as blue waves lap. The hubris and absurdity of what Timothy Snyder calls "superpower suicide...Empires have risen and failed before, but (no) state has ever chosen to kill its own power (with such) world-historical levels of strategic buffoonery.”

The stupid it burns, notes HuffPost of its "not-even-remotely-exhaustive" list of 285 dumb actions by Trump et al. Among them: Tried to buy 10 737s, without engines, from a company that didn’t own them. Accidentally published classified data on its own website. Deleted historic photos of the Enola Gay because it had “gay” in the name. Said “Everything’s computer!” circumcision causes autism, “I love the inflation,” “Nobody knows what magnets are,” the Pope was "weak on crime," "The numbers are beyond any numbers,” Thanksgiving side dishes were called “surroundings." Accidentally fired the Ebola response team, the people who manage U.S. nuclear stockpiles, scientists who manage bird flu outbreaks, veterans running the Veterans Crisis Line. Spent $2 billion illegally rebranding the Defense Dept. the Dept. of War. Pepper-sprayed a toddler. Reclassified swastikas and nooses not hate symbols. Mislabeled every country on a map of Africa at a global AIDS conference with African officials. Hired a Naval Secretary who got the date wrong for Pearl Harbor, twice. Put a 22-year-old with no anti-terror experience in charge of terrorism prevention. Reassigned FEMA workers to ICE during hurricane season. Boasted the Reflecting Pool lining was “so powerful” it couldn’t be cut with a knife, then charged vandals cut it with a knife. Asked when New York's Mamdani reminded Spanish-speaking constituents, in Spanish, of their constitutional rights when confronted by ICE, "How is this not illegal?" Called the Iran war a “short-term excursion” that would end in a few weeks or "when I feel it in my bones." Declared it won 37 to 53 times. Still losing it.

Exhibiting his canny political instincts, Trump made a final pre-election appearance at the Reflecting Pool, one of his worst fails. "This is a massive piece of, umm, pool," he said, calling it "a work of art in many ways, but it was a work of art that never worked, but now it will work." He rambled about pipes, columns, stone, James Comey, top soil, and grass: “Like the human being, grass has a life also." He clumsily held up multiple photos of the pool, declared, "The algae is brutal," and said, "We’re very proud of what’s behind me, but we’re much even more proud of the statues." He also said oil prices are "plunging a record - nobody's ever seen a plunge like this," promised to protect former DOGE bro Big Balls from arrest, then posted a mash-up of him and Elvis.

Other big dumb guns - JD and Jr. - took MAGA's compelling closing arguments to upstate New York and Ohio. Vance told a story about his four-year-old daughter - "despite my best efforts I have apparently raised a Democrat" - "stealing" her brother's toys to donate to somebody else "and that’s what we gotta do in just one day is beat the Democrats.” In Ohio, Don Jr. spluttered Democrats want to "open the border to tens of millions of illegals," "go after" three-year-olds to let them be trans, and "make Ohio a state." (Online: "They want to make Cleveland a city! They want to make guacamole a dip! They want to make cocaine illegal!") "They're saying these things out loud, they're not even hiding from it!" he exclaimed. "So the choice here is so clear." Amen.

"We would use different forms of plastic, like fiberglass. we'd take a mold, they'd take it to the shop, they'd fill it up, it's the exact here, now they put it here, and voila! you have a nice window again. but stones were broken, stones were chipped. i came in, 20 years ago i went to the white house, i said, boy, this building's in bad shape. you'd pull up to the front door and you'd have a stone where the stone is practically falling off the wall. it just was terrible. it's now pristine, it's in beautiful shape, and you look at it and you see those pictures. i've even put two flagpoles up. never had a flagpole, i've had the little flagpole on top. put two flagpoles here. i mean, little things, i have a lot of flagpoles i have, i'm all over it, my place in los angeles. i have on the ocean, magnificent place. yeah, i have, yeah, right. but i have a guy, it's life. i call him flagpole jim, his whole life. that's all he does. believe me, when you order a flagpole, there are good flagpoles and there are bad flagpoles. there are ugly flagpoles. you ever see the ones that go up dead straight and they're flat on the top? that's called the piece of steel, that's not a flagpole. these are beautiful with a beautiful bronze top on it. the wires, the cords are inside so it doesn't look bad and so it doesn't make noise. the best flagpoles, i mean, you know, the flagpole jim, if you asked him to cross the street, please, he couldn't do that, but for flagpoles, he's great. best in the world. and we put not only one, we put one on the front and one on the back because you can't see 'em. you're in between the white house and they're beautiful and a lot of people love it. i mean, everybody loves it. who the hell is not gonna like a flagpole? but we put two beautiful, big, tall, tapered, beautiful tapered flagpoles with the american flags on both sides of the board. and barack hussein obama said, why is trump spending so much time fixing up the white house? because the white house has to be pristine. it has to be perfect. it can't have exterior moldings half falling off. it can't have broken windows at the main entrance where the window's been broken for years. it can't have all these things. barack, i'll teach you that sometime, cleanliness. i'll teach you cleanliness. i'll teach you a little bit about real estate, a little bit about, and here's the guy that built one of the ugliest places i've ever seen in chicago. but i wish him well, look, i do. i wish him well, but that place is stone cold, not good looking. stalag 11, no, it's a terrible, not good, but i hope it does well. i don't know where the hell he got the money. i heard they were totally short. all of a sudden, they came up with like $2 billion. who the hell gave? how come they never, you know, they look at me. we're, you know, we have great patriots. all of us were putting a lot of money, like, into the ballroom and making it great. but here's the guy, he's way short, billions short. the thing's way over budget. all of a sudden, he comes up with all this money. where the hell did he get? i don't hear any investigators in congress with me. he gave a ballroom, yeah, it was free. we don't care if it was free. we don't care, it's free. they say, we wanna know why did he give a ballroom. no, no, you don't understand me. it's a gift to the united states of america. we don't care. we don't care. but here's a guy got billions of dollars to build this thing. nobody's saying who put up the money. you know, i believe it might've been very much the same people that are backing mohammed. i call him mohammed, not abdul. you know what, i called him mohammed, and i did it for certain reasons. number one, he said, why does he call him? because i'm president, abdul, and i have the right to call you whatever the hell i want. i have the right to call you whatever i want. and we don't wanna have people that are gonna destroy our country. abdul, you'll just, he's an arrogant guy. do you ever see him where he's being questioned? they said i was arrogant, and now they find me to be an extremely nice gentleman. no, the level of hatred. the guy asks him a normal question. what work do you have to ask me? that question is right. he's a disaster, he's a nasty guy. and hopefully he gets his ass kicked because that's what he does. so, under my leadership, and these are a few points, and you've seen me every once in a while, just for fun, i'll walk off the stage. i'm finished because vote for these two and vote for our congressmen and women, vote for a few other people. just vote republican up and down the line because these points solve the whole thing. income for hard, these are what they call big points. these are the big ones. income for hardworking americans is soared to the highest level ever recorded. okay, so your income is at the highest level by a lot ever recorded, okay? and by the way, your inflation for the last three months is 1.7%, way down. i inherited high prices from sleepy joe biden. i didn't cause it. and by the way, my oil, i stopped, they're never gonna have a nuclear weapon, right? i stopped iran from having a nuclear weapon and i knew oil would, but the oil is much lower than it was for, the oil is much lower, gas, much lower than it was for Biden, much lower than it was for Barack Hussein Obama. and we've stopped. and by the way, when that war is over, it's gonna come plunging. it's gonna go back to the $1.85 that I saw in Iowa just before I said, let's make that journey into the middle east. 'cause we cannot let iran have a nuclear weapon. i said, let's make that little journey. and i thought, to be honest, i thought it would go up much higher than it went up. and, you know, i don't wanna say because they'll say, oh, he thinks it's, well, it's a very small price to pay for the security of this country and for the world, very small. thank you. it's gonna be over very soon, very soon. and you're gonna see. but prices are way down. prices are coming down. but i inherited the prices. my first day in office, i had a news conference. at first, i had, like, hello everybody. but the second day, i had a news conference. and those people right there, some of them, boy, that's a lot. you don't know many ways you'd like them to stop covering you so much 'cause they're so fake. but they get good ratings. i mean, it's very, they get good ratings when we're here together. but think of it, i had a news conference. so january 20th ago, january 21st, i have a news conference. first question from that guy right there. why are the prices so high? i said, i just got here. tell me about eggs. when will eggs go down? they're five times higher than they were just four years ago. that's my administration. i had very low egg prices. i said, i'll have to check that out. i've only been here for much less than 24 hours. so, this is ridiculous. this is ridiculous. and so, as soon as i walked in, and then came the word that they use all the time, i have never heard used this way. they looked at me. one guy said, affordability. i've been there for about 16 hours. affordability, sir, affordability. he had a little accent, affordability, meaning affordability. it's the first time i've ever heard the word in that context, okay? i mean, we're all smart, we know the word, but never heard. and every time i get to the thing, every time i have a news conference, i inherited these high prices. i inherited the highest inflation in american history. and i've got it down to 1.7. now it's my turn, you know, but. but it's the first time i've ever heard it. and every damn time i get up to do a news conference, they say two things. you're very unpopular, sir. i said, i don't think so. i think i'm really popular. you know, they used to say that before. i won three times, in all fairness. but they used to think, i love you, too. you sound like a nice gentleman. generally not my thing, but i'll take it. sounds very nice. had a lovely voice. no, i inherited these prices. i inherited all the problems with the farm prices. they caused the problems. democrats hate farmers, remember that? they hate you, they're not gonna give you anything. democrats hate farmers, they hate ranchers. but it's the first time i've heard it. and every damn time i have a news conference, yes, ladies, affordability, sir. it's all about affordability. what are you gonna do about it? i've been there for a short period of time. i've done a great job. prices are coming way down. you saw the chart, way down. and when the oil comes down, that's the big one, but when the oil comes down, remember, it's lower than it was with these guys. and we've done something, we've stopped them. we hit them with those b2 bombers. they still don't know what the hell happened to them. we hit their nuclear capability. but you know the eggs that they talked about? they're screaming at me about eggs. i said, tell me about eggs. what's the problem exactly, if you don't mind? they were five times, they were like literally five times. do you know that eggs are now as low as they were as they were in my administration? we've got eggs way down, we've got everything. and the oil's gonna come down very quickly. but the problem with it is, the democrats caused the high prices, the democrats caused affordability problems, the democrats caused them, and we're fixing them. they caused them, they caused everything. they caused the border problems, they caused transgender mutilization of your children, they caused men and women's sports. who the hell wants men playing in women's sports, a weightlifter, huh? my wife goes crazy when i talk about that stuff. darling, i love you very much, but please don't talk about weightlifters and showing the strain of the woman trying. it's not presidential, darling. i love you, you're so handsome. but it's not presidential where the young lady comes in trying to break, she's gonna, they put an eighth of an inch in here, a record that stood for 19 years, one eighth of an ounce here, little tiny piece of nothing, like a penny. they put one here, which i got rid of because we saved 10 million, don't we? so, it's hard to believe you have to save money. they put a little piece here, little piece here, she's going for the record, and ah. so my wife hates it. just don't strain someone. but she was straining, this is a young girl, lifting 211 pounds." - Donald J. Trump

Trump's closing argument, facing the wrong way.Screengrab from Bluesky

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