You Want Trump? This Is How You Get Trump.

[art by Hal Hefner]

To my friends in the UK:

I buy you a pint.

I give hugs.

I offer a couch to those who need to crash in a different country for a while.

To my friends here in the US:

I don’t pretend to entirely understand what just happened in the UK. For that, I’d point you toward Charlie Stross and Lee Harris, who both wrote on Brexit today. I do get the general sense that we are looking at a situation where bloviating dickheads used bluster and lies to dominate media cycles in order to spread easy-to-swallow misinformation and lead the country toward a nasty disentanglement from the EU — which has already kicked the UK economy right in the spotted dick. At present, I’m told the British pound is worth less than a foil-covered chocolate coin. You’d need a sack of them just to start a game of Galaga.

And the wind blowing from London right now is like a threat over all of us — a song of prophecy and rot carried on the growing breeze. We have our own bloviators here, and of course we have King Bloviator himself, Donald Trump the Drumpflord, who says little and lies a lot and knows next to nothing and it matters little. He continues to do his smug yelly-smelly thing where he bleats whatever he has to bleat in order to convince us to reclaim our identity as AMERICA, as if our national identity is something he can control or claim for himself. MAKE AMERICA GREAT. BRITAIN FIRST. DEUTSCHLAND ERWACHE.

Trump is of course an attention-seeking, tantrum-throwing human one-star-Yelp-review who has less devotion to truth and sanity than your average Kindergartener. And we think, ah ha ha, he can’t win. He can’t. He’s just too absurd. It’s a show — a shit-show, admittedly, but it’s all a con, a reality program, a donkeyfucking performance of the lowest order, and soon he’ll bow out or poop the bed or run out of money and that’ll be that. And yet, he clings like a tick. So many of his businesses have failed he should no longer be allowed to run a single business, and yet, he does. He shouldn’t have won the primaries, and yet, he did. Warnings upon warnings come our way. Darkness crawls from Mordor. Long shadows cast by the black gaze of Sauron himself. The orcs are on the March. The world shudders.

I’m blowing the horn of Gondor, folks. I’m lightning the warning beacons.

This is how you get Trump.

The same way you get Brexit, I fear.

You get a media more interested in entertainment and controversy than in news.

You get politicians who come in and dominate that format — because they are better at the circus.

You get xenophobes and fear-mongers working off one another.

You get people willing to vote against stability, fed on the fantasy that they will somehow get to reclaim their country and keep the enemies at the gate all while creating a REVOLUTION.

Never mind that it’s a lie.

It’s an illusion — or a delusion — ginned up by people who are very good at telling you exactly what you want to hear and have no interest in telling you what you need to hear.

What I’m saying is: America, get your head on straight, and while you’re at it, screw it on real tight. It’s going to be a long and stupid election cycle. Longer and stupider than it’s already been. Turbulence is ahead but we must not let Donald Trump take the White House. Better yet, we need to vote out the obstructionists in Congress who have no interest in compromise and every interest in ideological posturing. Vote. Vote! Yes, yes, blah blah blah, lesser of two evils. Listen, first, I don’t agree that we’re in that situation — I like and support Hillary Clinton, I’m glad she’s our nominee, and I think she’ll do a dutiful and crafty job as president. But at this point, even if you think this is a contest of two lesser evils — well, I’d submit that a punch to the gut is better than BEING REPEATEDLY DUNKED IN A TANK OF ANGRY, SPHINCTER-SEEKING SCORPIONS. Before voting for Donald Trump I would vote for a mason jar decorated with googly eyes and filled to the brim with my own urine.

Vote. And it’s not just you that needs to vote, is it? Drag everyone you know to vote. Demand participation in this democracy of ours. Trump’s people? They’re gonna vote. They’re invested. They bought their tickets to the circus.  You need to vote, too. Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Keep America from trickling down through the sewer grate.

Vote this election.

Vote next election.

Vote, vote, vote, vote, VOTE.

And do not vote for Donald Trump. Unless you want to tank our economy. Unless you want the Orc Horde of Mordor to run rampant over the country you claim should be ‘great’ again.

(Related: Bernie will vote for Hillary in November.)