THE WOKE JOKE IS ON DEM
(Nov. 10, 2024)
      Vice President Kamala Harris’s soppy, saccharine “message” of “joy” and “turn the page” was the dumbest, or should I say Dem-est, thing that she and her party could have done.
            To “go for woke,” as they did, was pouring oil on the Trumpster Fire. They might as well have slept through their too-short campaign. “Turn the page” closed the book.
            I mean, here was an emergency of unprecedented proportion, that’s all. The U.S. government, and by association, all democracy, was on the line. Then there is the little matter of global warming---currently wreaking worldwide weather havoc---which Trump does not believe in. I’ll have a Big Mac and one ecosystem to go, please, hold the fries.
            And all Harris could do was play Oprah-lite (with occasional appearances by Oprah-zembic, herself). Even when called on her impotency in a quasi-panic by New York Times institution Maureen Dowd, and interviews with an astonished Bernie Sanders, the most biting thing Harris could come up in return with was “Donald Trump is only interested in himself.”
            Roughly equivalent to “he’s a meanie” in the second grade.
            Look, Trump was openly running on: shredding the Constitution, suspending elections, jailing his opponents, using the military against “the enemy within” (identified essentially as all Democrats), destroying all environmental protections in order to exploit fossil fuels---eco-suicide---cutting and/or destroying Social Security and health care, putting anti-vaxxer nutcase Robert F. Kennedy in charge of the Department of Health, and putting the world’s richest megalomaniac, Elon Musk, in charge of the economy. Not to mention Arnold Palmer’s three-wood.
            Factor in Trump’s felony conviction on 34 counts of business fraud for which he faces sentencing (four years in prison, max), being found liable for, ahem, rape, being convicted of paying off stripper Stormy Daniels to not talk about their cruddy frolic, and, oh yeah, the ongoing federal probe for having, uh, tried to violently overthrow the United States government.
            Yes, “joy” and “turn the page” were potent stuff.
            You know, like tossing a Hallmark card into a vat of sewage to kill the stink. Like bringing cotton candy to a food fight, when the other side is armed with bloody cuts of meat.
            Harris might well be a kind-spirited person with good intentions who would have been capable of the presidency, and many are saying she should not be blamed for losing---that the causes were much larger and manifold, and building for many years. That’s true, they were. But this is somewhat like saying the Yankees lost the World Series because their uniforms itched, and the moon was not in the seventh house, and they got rid of the original Yankee Stadium.
            ‘Twas lack of beastlinesss killed Beauty.
            Trump was the most vulnerable presidential candidate since Harold Stassen. His first term in office was a train wreck. A day. Why get on board the Love Train in response? Take the high road? Against the lowest road ever traveled by a presidential candidate? Against a mass murderer? This is a “leader” who did nothing about COVID when warned five months in advance, and allowed a million people to die. Give him a bye on that big bye-bye?
            Harris should have simply ticked off the humiliating facts of Trump’s failures as president, and taken him apart. Daily. Sanders would have done this, skillfully, to great effect. All of Harris’s attacks on Trump came off only as ad hominem smears---from saying he is a (yawn) “threat to democracy” to being “dangerous.” Knock me down with a feather. Specifics? Absent. I mean, his failures as president?  That’s all there were! But she never did this. (Robert Reich did.)
            What did she do? "Accentuated the positive." Rattled off deceased cliche after deceased cliche. Make no mistake. . .Let me be clear. . .turn the page. . .forward, not backward. This was wimpy woke-ism all the way, a passive-aggressive effort to prove how civil and decent are the Dems, in the face of the most vicious and willfully crazy charges ever leveled in a U.S. presidential campaign. She ran out of cheeks to turn after day one. Not helpful: her habit of evading questions from interviewers, or wriggling around them, something she has a history of doing.
             Ah, but she “won the debate.” No, I don’t think she did. I was flummoxed by the so-called pundits declaring her the victor in that farce, what with her juvenile mugging and laughing and head-shaking---and very little refuting the sitting duck assertions of Der Trumpenfuhrer. I thought Trump’s “eating dogs” fiction and other idiocies were right in sync with the Internet lunacy consumed by his followers, and that he came off looking “strong,” to them. Seems I was right.
            Bernie Sanders correctly barked, post-election, that the Democratic Party is run by “big money interests” and “well-paid consultants.” Not to mention George Clooney. And, Bernie added, it has “abandoned working people.” Hell, that’s ridiculous---Lady Gaga sings real hard. Beyonce spends two hours a day on make-up and hair alone. Cardi B makes lots of videos talking about her anus. Snoop Dogg must do three or four commercials a week! (Of course, he might have voted for Trump, given the number of black males who did.)  
            Harris consulted the campaign to death. It was focus grouped into frothiness. Theme song: “Hollywood Swingin'’ by Kool and the Gang. When told to get tough, Harris got Oprah instead, literally and figuratively. The rallies were one big virtue-signaling corps. “This is not who we are,” the cry of the sanctimonious Democrat, was wishful thinking. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. (Evidently, she did not read my commentary on this subject.)
            Result: On Nov. 6, we all woke up to a massive repudiation of woke.
            Yes, and Biden. And the economy. And support of Ukraine. And the failure to deal with the border crisis. But underlying all of this was snarling, slavering revulsion for anything suggesting identity politics. Of which Harris is the current poster girl.
 

Trump was the most vulnerable presidential candidate since Harold Stassen. His first term in office was a train wreck. A day. Why get on board the Love Train in response?

            Okay, sure, you can throw in a dash of racism, a drizzle of misogyny, and a dollop of anti-gay (and the rest of the ridiculous acronym) brutishness. These are perennials. But the declaimers on CNN and MSNBC, up on their hind legs Nov. 6, blaming racism and misogyny for Harris’s loss, have forgotten that there has been, oh, a black president, a black vice-president (who happens to be female), many female and minority cabinet members including Secretary of State, countless blacks and latinos and Asian-Americans and gays and lesbians in public office all over the country.
            So much for that little big lie.
            What is a big big lie is “wokeness,” which holds that race and gender are the important, if not defining, aspects of character and personality, and the sole, or deciding, criteria in hiring, promotion, significance, general reward. When a society throws away excellence and achievement as aspirational standards, and replaces them with superficial identity markers in some kind of social experiment, it is suicide. I give you: Nazi Germany.     
            The Democrats went through that looking glass long ago. They anointed minorities and various gay permutations as holy, beyond reproach, in the purported interests of defending rights. In short, the Democrats became almost as reactionary left as the Trumpers are reactionary right. To hear the constant, tiresome charges of racism and “homophobia,” you would think the modern United States is the most vicious,  persecuting country in the history of the world---when it is certainly the most liberal.
            I mean, you would think that the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Affirmative Action never happened. That there are no laws against discrimination at all. You would think there are no ethnic minorities (a term that will soon be irrelevant) or gay people in any positions of responsibility in the society---rather than being in all levels and aspects of the culture, as they are. 
            The Dems long ago made “LGBTQ” and “trans” concerns the absolute centerpiece of their agenda, daily, which is sort of like macular degeneration: peripheral vision becomes the only vision you have left. I heartily support animal protection, but I don't build a party agenda around it. What of the, uh, rest of the world, and issues in it? What of, oh, the fact that apartments and condos and houses have been kidnapped and held for massive ransom by pirate, I mean private, equity groups? What of the millions of people openly defecating, urinating, fornicating, shooting and smoking drugs in the streets and suburbs of major cities? What of the fact that to be "middle class," you actually have to be. . .rich?
            I mean, in the liberal world, if you don’t have race or gender on your resume, you don’t play. And if you add “victim,” you go straight to the front of the line. Snowflakes? A blizzard of them. We live in victimhood chic, where the management of “Jeopardy!” had to recently apologize to a bespectacled female contestant for having as a clue the Dorothy Parker couplet beginning with “Men don’t make passes. . .” (Second half: “at girls who wear glasses.”) Yes, this made the woman “uncomfortable,” because she wore glasses, and because it was “sexist,” never mind it was just a throwaway witticism written by a. . .woman. 
            My pronoun is he/shee-it!
            And to have, my gawd, championed the alleged rights of children---children---to try to “change their sex” with hormones and/or surgery is like something out of creepazoid science-fiction. As if children or teenagers have the faintest idea which end is up, so to speak.
            Dem Dems have become a MAD Magazine-esque parody of liberalism---a cause that was primarily concerned with working people before all the libs got into limousines. And the more outrageous the Democrat liberal agenda became, the more rage came from the right-wing. It all turned into a “fuck you---no, fuck you” contest, every bit as sophisticated as a sandbox shoving match.  In the end, the left certainly did more harm to the interest of “LGBTQ” and “trans” people---and women and minorities---than it did good.
            And as for---tweet, tweet---the woke refrain, "defund the police," Harris is on the record as sympathizing with this, saying in multiple interviews that police funding should be "redirected." Gee, seems the "tough prosecutor," as she sold herself during the campaign, copped out. This idea is certainly sophisticated subject matter for any junior high school classroom discussion. Oh, yes, let's have less law enforcement! Let's up our chances of becoming crime victims! Must one really cite the ongoing epidemic of mob attacks on businesses? The open shoplifting that has left downtown San Francisco a retail ghost town, and closed countless emporiums across the country? The daily brazen murders, rapes, assaults, "hot prowl" (meaning when residents are home) burglaries, follow-home robberies, in the wake of relaxed penalties, less prosecution? The "progresssive" L.A. City Councilwoman, Nithya Raman, calling for zero punishment for dealing stolen catalytic converters because Toyota made them "easy to steal?" Her colleague, Eunisses Hernandez, actually saying that prosecuting this crime would make it harder for "Black, Latino, indigenous and immigrant" people to make a living? Thank goodness L.A. District Attorney George Gascon, who refused to prosecute thefts under $959, and advocated a zero bail policy, has just been "de-funded" by voters. . .
            But back to Harris, specifically, bits of her oleaginous concession speech:
            “I love you back and I love you back. So let me say my heart is full today. My heart is full today, full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me. . .I am so proud of the race we ran. . .bringing people together from every walk of life and background. . .I will never give up the fight for a future where Americans can pursue their dreams, ambitions, and aspirations. . . Hard work is good work. Hard work can be joyful work. . .This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. . .The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
            Syrup and cliches and tears, oh my! Not one statesmanlike, clench-jawed Churchillian warning about the horrible human taking over the country, not one expression of even mild outrage. Oh, but that would be “mean-spirited,” in Woke World. No. It would be inspiring and rousing---much more so than crapola about darkness and stars and joyful work. Not to mention honest.
            And so it appears that the Demos will continue in their own demolition derby. Consider: all you hear is praise for Harris and her “perfect campaign,” as one mooning (black) CNN guest said, or this Kool-Aid from Ben Rhodes in the New York Times: “Kamala Harris brought new energy and remarkable discipline to the campaign’s final months, revitalizing the collaborative joy essential to Democratic politics.”
            Bull, shit, and game. She wasn’t a candidate, she was a commercial. A demented monster openly threatening to destroy the country, and Harris cast herself as a Girl Scout; Miss Woke ’24. Pathetic. Shirking of duty, really, and nothing less. Small wonder the majority of the working class turned to the lying billionaire con-artist who said he would “fix everything.”
            Small wonder twelve million people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn’t bother to get off the couch for Kamala.

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