Mr. Write's Page

But… so… I think… I think it would be… I think it would be very, very… I think we’d have a very, very solid — we would continue what we’re doing. We’d solidify what we’ve done. And we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.

— Donald Trump, when asked to elaborate on his plans for a second term.

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Well, Joe Biden is now the official Democratic nominee for president, and, although I usually tune out both conventions, I watched about half of the Democratic proceedings. The party did surprisingly well. They got creative and made the event enjoyable despite the absence of the usual crowds and hoopla.

As for the Republicans, I didn’t watch a single second of their rubbish. I did some reading, and I watched DVD movies instead. CNN and MSNBC reported the GOP lowlights in great detail, so I was adequately informed about the lies, poison, and alternate reality that Trump’s relatives and sycophants were selling.

You’re aware, I assume, that holding campaign-related events at the White House and other public properties is illegal. You can’t use a government facility as a political prop, so the Republicans were in egregious violation, numerous times, of the Hatch Act. I’m sure the Attorney General will do his job in that regard.

And, always classy, the conservatives sat shoulder-to-shoulder and declined to wear face masks at the GOP events. No surprise there.

No surprise, either, that the two conventions so perfectly highlighted the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Especially in these wretched times, the two parties are as different as the Elves of Lothlórien and the Orcs of Mordor. And we all know which is which.

Consider the following excerpts from speeches by the Trump people, who were in wild-eyed-and-hysterical mode.

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Kimberly Guilfoyle

This election is a battle for the soul of America. Your choice is clear. Do you support the cancel culture? The cosmopolitan elites of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden, who blame America first? Do you think America is to blame? Or do you believe in American greatness? Believe in yourself? In President Trump? In individual and personal responsibility?

They want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live. They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal victim ideology to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.

Don’t let the Democrats take you for granted. Don’t let them step on you. Don’t let them destroy your families, your lives, and your future.

Don’t let them kill future generations because they told you and brainwashed you and fed you lies that you weren’t good enough.

Matt Gaetz

I’m speaking to you from an auditorium emptier than Joe Biden’s daily schedule. But we are a nation of full hearts and clear minds. We see the choice clearly: strength or weakness, energy or confusion, success or failure.

We must fight to save America now or we may lose her forever. Joe Biden might not even notice. Settle for Biden — that’s the hashtag promoted by AOC and the socialists. The woketopians will settle for Biden because they will make him an extra in a movie written, produced, and directed by others.

It’s a horror film really. They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.

The McCloskeys (Who pleased Trump by waving guns at protesters walking near their mansion)

Mark McCloskey: Whether it’s defunding the police, ending cash bail so criminals can be released back out on the streets the same day to riot again, or encouraging anarchy on our streets, it seems as if Democrats no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens.

Patricia McCloskey: They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods. President Trump smartly ended this government overreach, but Joe Biden wants to bring it back.

Mark McCloskey: At this moment in history, if you stand up for yourself and for the values our country was founded on, the mob — spurred on by their allies in the media — will try to destroy you. Trump brought us the greatest economy our country had ever seen. The Democrats have brought us nothing but destruction.

Jim Jordan

The Republican party is the pro-America party. President Trump is the pro-America candidate. This election is about who can preserve the values, principles, and institutions that make America great.

Don’t believe me? Look at what’s happening in American cities — cities all run by Democrats, crime violence and mob rule. Democrats refuse to denounce the mob, and their response to the chaos: “defund the police,” “defund border patrol” and “defund our military.”

While they’re doing all this, they’re also trying to take away your guns. Look at the positions they’ve taken in the past few months, Democrats won’t let you go to church, but they let you protest.

Donald Trump, Jr.

People of faith are under attack. You’re not allowed to go to church, but mass chaos in the streets gets a pass. It’s almost like this election is shaping up to be church, work, and school vs. rioting, looting and vandalism — or, in the words of Biden and the Democrats, “peaceful protesting.”

Anarchists have been flooding our streets and Democrat mayors are ordering the police to stand down. Small businesses across America — many of them minority owned — are being torched by mobs.

Joe Biden is basically the Loch Ness Monster of the Swamp. For the past half-century, he’s been lurking around in there. He sticks his head up every now and then to run for President, then he disappears and doesn’t do much in between.

So if you’re looking for hope, look to the man who did what the failed Obama-Biden Administration never could do, and built the greatest economy our country had ever seen. And President Trump will do it again.

Nikki Haley

Last time, Joe’s boss was Obama. This time, it would be Pelosi, Sanders, and the Squad. Their vision for America is socialism. And we know that socialism has failed everywhere.

They want to tell Americans how to live and what to think. They want a government takeover of health care. They want to ban fracking and kill millions of jobs. They want massive tax hikes on working families. Joe Biden and the socialist left would be a disaster for our economy.

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I repeat: wild-eyed and hysterical.

Too bad they didn’t have time to mention the rampaging pandemic that, on their watch, is killing one thousand Americans a day.

To be clear, I don’t think most Republican politicians are bark-at-the-moon crazy. I think they’re just opportunists and hypocrites. Based on the messaging, however, they do seem to think their followers are hopeless loons. And maybe they’re right.

For a refreshing contrast to the feverish ranting of the Trump people, consider these excerpts from several Democratic Party speakers.

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Jill Biden

How do you make a broken family whole? The same way you make a nation whole: with love and understanding, and with small acts of kindness, with bravery, with unwavering faith. You show up for each other in big ways and small ones, again and again.

We’re coming together, and holding onto each other. We’re finding mercy and grace in the moments we might have once taken for granted. We’re seeing that our differences are precious, and our similarities infinite. We have shown that the heart of this nation still beats with kindness, and courage.

Michele Obama

So what do we do now? What’s our strategy? Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, “When others are going so low, does going high still really work?” My answer: going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.

But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God, and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences.

Kamala Harris

I’m inspired by a new generation of leadership. You are pushing us to realize the ideals of our nation, pushing us to live the values we share: decency and fairness, justice and love.

Years from now, this moment will have passed. And our children and our grandchildren will look in our eyes and ask us: Where were you when the stakes were so high? They will ask us, what was it like? And we will tell them. We will tell them, not just how we felt. We will tell them what we did.

Joe Biden

All elections are important. But we know in our bones this one is more consequential.

America is at an inflection point. A time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities. We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided. A path of shadow and suspicion. Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light.

This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time. Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be. That’s all on the ballot. And the choice could not be clearer.

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Could not be clearer, indeed.

The best GOP line of the week came from Congressman Gaetz, who said, “They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.” I know the quote is genuine because I saw the video clip.

That statement is so absurd, so over-the-top, so Kafkaesque that it warrants special mention. Gaetz deserves a creativity award in the category of histrionics.

This is the way I see it: Democrats are not hard to understand. They simply want to make life better for themselves and others. Liberals are honest and straightforward about their main goal, which is to pool and use our resources for the greater good. No need to lie or obfuscate.

But conservatives are virtually the opposite. For assorted reasons, mostly related to mental and emotional abnormalities, they are frightened, angry, and defensive. Which makes them small-minded and closed-minded.

The Republicans have devolved into cartoon villains, which might be a source of macabre amusement if their actions weren’t so harmful — if they hadn’t saddled us with Donald Trump, an immoral, no-talent conman, cheat, and traitor.

Trump should not hold elected office of any kind because he is solidly under the control of Vladimir Putin. Trump knows Putin can ruin him in a heartbeat by calling in all those decades of shady loans and spilling all those decades of accumulated dirt.

I thank God I’m a liberal. I am so grateful to have nothing whatsoever in common with the conservatives, or with our disgrace of a president, or with the certifiable wackos of the right-wing. (A juicy example: the QAnon nut-jobs who claim Trump was elected to save us from the secret worldwide cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile cannibals. Seriously?)

The right-wingers have been a steadily growing menace for decades. Now, owing to their criminal mishandling of the pandemic, they are literally killing people.

Vote! And for crying out loud, vote for Democrats. We need to let the fresh air back in. We have a mess to start cleaning up.