LOSER

I'm not proud of it, but I fantasize about ways to weaponize shame in some way that might penetrate the Orange Turd's seemingly impenetrable defenses. I mean a way that leaves him with nothing but a deep, heart-and-soul realization of what a worthless POS he is.

One such fantasy sees him shackled to a chair in a sound-proof room. No cameras, no microphone, no lawyers. He can't cover his ears, but a large, silvery X of heavy-duty duct tape covers that stupid, kissy-lips little mouth.

And then I play this for him—not quite loud enough to injure his ear drums—on a continuous loop. Over and over...and over again until he says the magic wordl

Donny Boy, you ridiculous little twerp, here's why—despite your obsession since childhood with winning; despite your lying, cheating, boasting, bullying, lawyering up and doubling down—you are what you are:

FAMILY LIFE
It's about as dysfunctional as it gets, isn't it? No signs of love here. You're condemned to the same relationship with your sons that you had with your father, one based solely on business...and fear. You've failed at all three of your marriages. You've repeatedly cheated on your wives—and bragged about it. It's quite obvious Melania's nothing but a showpiece to you. She hates you and sees you for the impotent crybaby you are. If she weren't legally obligated to stay with you, she'd leave you for a real man in an instant. You're so afraid your family will turn on you that you've made them all sign NDAs.
What does this say about you? It says you're a LOSER.

PERSONAL LIFE
You have no friends. Not one. Those who have to interact with you fear you and know very well the relationship hell they're in: Do your bidding, they're in; cross you once and you destroy them. You have no interest in music, art, ideas...hell, you don't even read. With your insatiable craving for attention, the only happiness you're capable of comes from the folks forced to lie about your fake accomplishments.
What does this mean? It means you're a LOSER.

BUSINESS
Born with the proverbial silver spoon in your mouth, you've failed at most of your own business ventures. You've routinely lied to get regulatory passes and financial backing. You stick it to suppliers and assault employees with your chaotic, egomaniacal management style. You're worth a fraction of what you claim, having filed for bankruptcy six times and refusing to disclose your tax returns—as nearly all U.S. presidents have. And you've been convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
What does this prove about you? It proves you're a LOSER.

     You lack any trace of the key elements of intelligence.

POLITICS
Like every other aspect of your life, you've achieved nothing without lying, cheating and intimidation. Your obvious envy of despots like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin proves your weakness. You quickly turned the White House and much of the federal government to chaos. You soiled the reputation of our country, dissing our allies and making us the laughing stock of the world. Obsessed with crowd sizes, hogging the stage and demanding a place in history, you're the poster boy for insecurity. You're one of just 12 U.S. presidents to fail at getting reelected.
What does this indicate? It indicates you're a LOSER.

INTELLECT
Once again, if you're constantly crowing about how smart you are, you're probably not that smart. You were, by all accounts, a very poor student. Otherwise, why would you have gone to such great lengths to keep your school transcripts under wraps? You lack any trace of the key elements of intelligence: curiosity, creativity or discipline. And you have the attention span of a toddler.  
What does this show about you? It shows you're a LOSER.

SPIRITUAL LIFE
Despite an occasional Bible-totin' pose for the Christian right suckers who follow you, you're about as Christian as Attila the Hun. You exhibit not one quality espoused by Jesus Christ. Hard to acknowledge a higher power, isn't it, when you're convinced there is none higher than yourself. You're a pitiful, spiritually empty little man doomed to suffer your own private hell.
What does this mean? It means you're a LOSER.

        Hey, you know what they say about small hands.

PATRIOTISM
You're a draft-dodging coward. You called true American hero John McCain a loser for his five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war. You've debased other veterans and the very idea of military service. You've consistently expressed admiration for our country's—for Democracy's—most brazen enemies. You've sought to undermine America's democratic institutions and instigated a deadly, armed insurrection in your failed attempt to overturn your election loss.
What does this reveal about you? It reveals you're a LOSER.

MASCULINITY
You exhibit classic behavior of someone who's extremely insecure about his manhood: bragging,  degrading women, obsessing over symbols of masculinity: big cars, too-long neckties and that oversized, over-bold signature that any shrink will tell you is just a long row of tiny erections. Beneath all your desperate efforts to compensate, you're an impotent wuss. Hey, you know what they say about small hands.
What does this tell us? It tells us you're a LOSER.

PHYSICAL CONDITION
You're a pale, flabby little doughball. Despite your constant posturing, you're a weakling with no self-awareness or discipline. Your much-parodied diet is that of someone who, deep down, hates himself. Your idea of fitness is having the help drive you around a golf course (where you kick your ball out of trouble so often that your playing partners call you Pele). No wonder you refuse to release the results of your physicals.
What does this disclose about you? It discloses that you're a LOSER.

      You're a textbook narcissist, a pathological liar.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
You have the temperament of a spoiled-rotten four-year old. You lack four of the five components of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Beyond your flaccid ego's constant need for affirmation—and your rage at those who know you don't warrant it—you're utterly incapable of emotion.
What does this say about you? It says you're a LOSER.

PERSONALITY
You're a textbook narcissist, a pathological liar. You possess not one iota of curiosity, empathy or honor. You've never had a real friend. That's because a) you care only about yourself; b) you can't stand anyone else getting the slightest attention; c) you're a user; and d) you have absolutely nothing to offer a friend. No intelligence, no wisdom, no kindness, no generosity...hell, there's nothing at all even interesting about you.
What does this mean? It means you're a LOSER.

(... and REPEAT) 

What do you think? Should we add a visual element to the verbal shock treatment? Maybe some images of his gross, doughy body? His face without makeup? Some powerful people mocking him? Testimonials from women who've witnessed his inadequacy? Other ideas?

CUT HIM OFF – Breaking the Media’s Trump Addiction

Here's a piece I recently submitted to the Opinions Editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune:

Donald Trump is a con man the likes of whom we’ve not met in my generation.

Among his many tricks, he knows that outrageousness, no matter how sordid, sells. And the media—including the Star Tribune—have been all too eager to buy.

It’s no merit whatsoever that’s earned him his notoriety; it’s simply the media’s weakness for his fools-gold patina of fame, his winners-and-losers style, his lies, boasts and grievances. That is the only thing that’s elevated Trump to his role as a cult leader and, preposterously, to his recent status as one of the most powerful people in the world.

As the next presidential election looms, it cannot be overstated how vital it is for the future of our embattled Democracy that, this time around, you in the media reclaim your discipline, your journalistic integrity, in the way you cover this simpleton.

PRESIDENT BUTTHEAD?
If Trump should somehow manage to win the 2024 election, of course you’ll have to keep reporting on him, even if he presides over nothing but chaos. (Hell, you’d have to cover the presidency even if the post were held by Beavis or Butthead.)

(That said, you must avoid normalizing—“sane-washing,” many are calling it—Trump’s absurd comments and behavior as many of your media counterparts have in their efforts to be even-handed. Let your readers see and read exactly how unstable the man is.)

But if he loses—again—I urge you to take a hard look at how—and why—you might want to continue covering Donald Trump. Consider letting his second defeat be the end of your love-hate addiction to this charlatan. Do a reset, work the Twelve Steps and leave this silly, shallow little man alone to the fate he most fears and has always deserved: oblivion. 

PHOTO: The Atlantic

BACK TO REALITY
All it will take is what it would have taken back in 2015: honest, principled journalism, not the yellow kind. Guarding the distinction between news and sensation. Realizing that covering the ravings of a narcissist and pathological liar is no more news than is the reality-show world that begot him.

Yes, we know Trump’s MO for failure: deny, play the victim, accuse others, double down; he will simply not accept defeat. And we know he’ll rally his MAGA base to once again attack the officials and democratic institutions he blames for his short- comings. This will be hard to resist. Maybe you’ll need to wean yourselves gradually.

If, for fear of losing a few readers, you just can’t resist the bait, at least put this trivia in Faces, your page-two entertainment column, or in the Variety section. Just not with the hard news.

Better yet, bite the bullet. Let Donald J. Trump end up where he belongs, back on reality TV. Please!  Just let him go.

PHOTO: Pool / Getty

Given the topic's surging presence in social media, I suppose by now you've heard of Project 2025.

That's the right-wing Heritage Foundation's vision for a second Donald Trump presidency. This vision is so out there, so frightening, that even the Trumpublican party's poster boy is claiming to know nothing about it. 

Right. 

The cretin is mentioned by name 240 times in the document. And CNN found nearly 140 former Trump aides and advisers who have contributed to Project 2025, including six former members of his Cabinet, four of his ambassadors, and Republican National Committee members appointed to their positions in coordination with the Trump campaign.

It's hard to think of an adequate way of responding to such a blatant anti-Democracy, fascist intention. Millions of our countrymen and women have fought and died to defend our country against such ambitions. And this one's taking place right here at home, right under our noses.

PHOTO: Mediadrum Images / NARA

Lacking a military option, we should be facing the threat with whatever weapons we do possess. Writing about it. Sharing it with friends. Flooding social media with it. Taking it to the streets...

...and calling to task major news media for what to date has been their paltry coverage of this existential threat to our democratic way of life.  To wit the letter to the editors I just submitted to the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

To Star Tribune editorial department:

Why is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 once again not front page news today? Why is it not every day?

This 900-plus-page document is chilling in both scope and detail—nothing less than a manifesto for a fascist, Christian nationalist Trump regime.

From a wholesale dismantling of hard-won environmental and consumer-protection regulations, to blurring the separation of church and state, to undermining longstanding safeguards against abuses of executive power, to supplanting capable public servants with regime loyalists, to gutting our government’s vital checks-and-balances design, to suppressing dissent, Project 2025 is a blueprint for the destruction of Democracy.

How much more disturbing would this ultra-right-wing playbook have to be before
the Star Tribune gives it the urgent coverage it deserves?

I urge you to consider Project 2025’s newsworthiness in light of other events and issues which would surely capture front-page, banner-headline coverage in your paper. Like a nationwide power blackout, a major airplane crash, or the U.S. Capitol being overrun by an angry mob of the same kind of traitors who would find new empowerment in Project 2025.

Please, I urge you to pick up whatever weapon of expression you possess and use it to expose the shocking reality of Project 2025. Your voice, your feet, your wit, or, as I have, your pen.

Our precious Democracy—the peace and freedom most of us have enjoyed all our lives and that we so dearly wish for our children and grandchildren—is at stake.

ILLUSTRATION: Norman Rockwell

THE REAL ENEMY – Overcoming Apathy In the Defense of Democracy

Less than five months from now we, the people of the United States of America, will either have affirmed our country’s precious values…or we will have trashed them, dishonoring the brave vision of the nation’s founders and the sacrifices of the millions of our countrymen and women who have fought and died defending those ideals.

        I implore you to take stock,
        take heart, take action.

The term “existential threat” is losing its potency for overuse, but that’s exactly what we’re up against. A large minority of our fellow Americans have renounced our democratic institutions and lent their blind allegiance to a man who’s all but promised oligarchy and dictatorship, and who clearly admires our worst adversaries’ ruthless rulers.

Yet, if we think this deranged man, this misguided movement, is our worst enemy, we must think again. Our greatest concern should be not for things beyond our control, but for our own lack of focus, the possibility that, while we Democrats and Independents waste our time venting our outrage, the MAGAts are quietly, methodically working their strategy to win (or at least proclaim victory) in November.

We must recognize and solve the problem of indifference, especially among younger voters— one of the voting blocs most essential to Democrats’ success. This isn’t an abstract threat; polls repeatedly show that Trump devotees are far more motivated, far more likely to turn out at the polls than Democrats.* And that many young people feel voting is an exercise in futility.

But we—we Americans who still believe in Democracy and this country’s “shining light on the hill” mantle—are not powerless. There are things every single one of us can do, and do right away.

So I implore you to take stock, take heart and take action.

We know they have cheated, are cheating and will cheat.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
Here’s what we must do:

First, we must know our adversary. Realize they’re unlike any political—and I’m inclined to say moral—affliction ever to infect this great country. 

Unswayed by proven facts, the glaring contradiction between their candidate’s pretentions of patriotism and Christian virtue and his actual behavior, or even the man’s unanimous felony convictions, they’ve fallen into lockstep with his march to destroy Democracy. In fact, the more proof of the man’s corruption, the stronger their support.

It’s not by accident that the new right in America has become a force. First, nothing brings and holds people together like fear. Like a common perceived insult. Like a common enemy.

Donald Trump and the brown-nose toadies who enable him have been very effective at stoking these emotions among a class of Americans who believe less in helping those not in their “tribe” than in controlling them. Immigrants, assertive women, non-straight folks, racial minorities, smart people...I could go on.

We know they stick together. We know they now control a significant pseudo-journalistic media network. More disturbingly, we know that they’re being helped by some of our nation’s sworn enemies—China, Russia, Iran and others—all of which desperately hope to turn their most feared adversary into their ally—something the Little Orange Man has all but promised them.

And we know they have cheated, are cheating and will cheat.

            More and more potential Democrat voters
            have simply given up.
 
OUTRAGE TO ACTION
So, knowing what we’re up against, what can we do to save our country from this dimwitted wannabe dictator and his groupies completing the butchering of democratic institutions they began in his first term?

First, I suggest, we need to turn our negative emotions—anger, frustration, discouragement—into a positive vision. Let us imagine how it will feel to restore our nation’s soul. To once again be respected by other nations. And then let us turn that vision into action.

Unlike our opponents’ fear-driven fervor, we progressives are motivated by hope. But let’s face it, hope isn’t quite the motivator that fear is. These people vote.

It’s no secret that, with the demoralizing impact of a polarized populace, a dysfunctional Congress, leaders no longer able to conceal their hypocrisy and corruption—not to mention a democratic candidate who, despite his undeniable policy successes, fails to inspire—more and more potential Democrat voters have simply given up, disappointed with both candidates, or unsure of whether their single votes could make any difference.

Our own personal resolve to vote is a good start, but it’s not enough. As our adversary continues to coalesce around its fears, how do we mobilize those progressive-minded, but disillusioned voters around hope and get them to the polls?

  They’ve persuaded somewhere between one and three
  percent of letter recipients to actually get out and vote.

A MORE EVOLVED AMERICA
For as long as I can remember, the go-to method for Jane or Joe average citizen to help get out the vote has been “door-knocking,” going house to house, talking with folks, asking them to step up on election day.

But for those of us too thin-skinned to face all the possible rejections—or even rancor—of face-to-face appeals, I’ve discovered the perfect alternative: Vote Forward.

VOTE FORWARD is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization empowering grassroots volunteers to send heartfelt, handwritten letters to unregistered and low-propensity voters in key districts around the country encouraging them to participate in our democracy.

The effort, which just before the last presidential election delivered some 6,000,000 such letters to potential progressive voters in key districts across the country, is evidence based. Analysis of Vote Forward mailing campaigns show they’ve succeeded in persuading somewhere between one and three percent of letter recipients to actually get out and vote. In direct mail that’s a remarkable success rate.

       I figure at least six of my letters proved to be
       the impetus some reluctant Biden/Harris voters
       needed to step up and vote.

10,000,000 LETTERS
Whenever a news story or a negative thought about the existential threat looming over our Democracy starts raising my blood pressure, I just reach for a pen and my stack of Vote Forward letter forms and start writing. More than good therapy, it’s a way to actually make a difference.

                            

And writing letters spares me the stress of having to face strangers on their own doorsteps. I can do it on my own time, day or night; I can do it while I’m traveling; and I know it’s effective.

Prior to the 2020 election I wrote and mailed 600 letters. Of those I figure at least six proved to be the impetus some reluctant Biden/Harris voters needed to step up and vote. That’s probably about six more than I could have convinced in months and months of preachin' to the choir on my blog and in social media rants.

This summer, I’m aiming for at least another 600 letters—so far, to people in Pennsylvania and Michigan. (If Biden’s chances take a big hit, I might just have to up that to 1,000.) And, overall, this year’s much anticipated Vote Forward Big Send (October 29, the day they instruct all of us letter writers to drop our boxes of letters at the post office) aims for a flood of 10,000,000 letters.

Please, won’t you join me? Check out the Vote Forward website. Start out with a list of just five or ten potential voters. If you like it, you can download 20 or 100 at a time. You create your own nonpartisan message describing why voting is important for you. You hand-write a salutation and that message onto the sheet, fold and insert it into an envelope which you then hand address, stamp, seal and store until the day of the Big Send.

C’mon folks, the stakes are literally life or death. But we are not powerless. We can do this!


* In much of the country, most experts agree that Trump is currently ahead. Even here in staunchly Democratic Minnesota, Biden currently holds just a five percentage point lead.

GUILTY! But Not Gone

I told myself if this slimy bastard got tried and convicted of multiple felonies, I'd mix up a batch of my famous mango margaritas and go dance in the street.

And today, Thursday, May 30, 2024, the jury in the Orange Turd's New York hush money trial handed down its verdict: guilty on every single one of the 34 charges in the indictment. As CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell slowly read off the verdict on on each count, I felt a chill of relief and, dare I say, delight.

This slam-dunk outcome shines a glint of hope in a world that seems to be seriously considering if fascism might be the way forward. Hope that there's still a cross-section of people in this country who can think for themselves and actually believe thoroughly documented, damning evidence, even against the conman of our generation.

But that's really all it is, a glint. For we all know this creep. He's a cockroach, and cockroaches are really tough to catch and squash.

                      Each and every decent American…
                      must make a solemn commitment.

IT’S NOT OVER
Before the cretin even leaves the courthouse he's pulling out all his tattered cards. Poor me! Rigged. Conspiracy. Travesty. And, of course, he'll appeal…for as long as any court—some of their judges hand picked by him--will hear the case.

So yes, I'm enjoying my margaritas, but I'm not dancing in the street. Because this isn't over.
But a taste of justice, even if it's just on paper, should inspire us to start and continue the hard work of making sure this vile little man can no longer pretend to lead this great country toward the collapse of our Democracy—a way of life that’s the envy of the world, and which millions of our countrymen and women have fought and died to defend.

Each and every decent American—those of us who believe our president should defend and bolster Democracy, not sabotage it; those of us who think it’s about hope and helping people, not fear and controlling them—must make a solemn commitment.

                 During the last campaign we mailed some
                 6,000,000 letters…with a phenomenal success
                 rate ranging from 1% to 3%.

TAKE THE PLEDGE

We must pledge not just to vote come November; that’s the easy part. We must also find ways to encourage others to vote, especially those who might otherwise be unlikely to do so. Maybe they don't believe their one vote can make a difference. Maybe they find both candidates lacking. Could be they're just worn out by the vitriol that Donald Trump has stirred up in our politics.

I've taken that pledge. I looked for a way to turn my outrage into action, a hands-on way of turning out potential progressive voters who might need a little encouragement to speak up for Democracy. It had to be something I knew I could stick with and that would bear results.

What I discovered was VOTE FORWARD, a 501(c)(4) non-profit that empowers grassroots volunteers to send handwritten letters encouraging fellow Americans in key districts to vote. During the last presidential campaign we mailed some 6,000,000 letters—600 of them were mine—with a phenomenal success rate ranging from 1% to 3%.*

This time, we’re aiming for 10,000,000.

PIECE OF CAKE
It's easy. I craft my own (non-partisan) message. I can write letters just about anywhere and in my own time. And it risks none of the face-to-face, slamming-door rejection one encounters with that old reliable get-out-the-vote go-to: door knocking.

Let’s make sure this charlatan, this proxy hoodlum for a generation of bloated billionaires and bitter Billy-Bobs, never again controls anything more than his own miserable, fools-gold life and those of his NDA-muzzled spawn.

¡Salud!

* Vote Forward impact

FOOL YOU ONCE…

I really thought Pop This Boil would be winding down by now, after the inept, chaotic first term of the worst president in U.S. history mercifully came to an end. That the guy would run out of obnoxious stunts, fade from the headlines and disappear into the trash can of irrelevance.

Alas, Donald Trump—the only person ever to ascend to the presidency of the United States of America with not one redeeming quality—is running again. Incredibly, even after deeply embarrassing intelligent Americans and even inciting insurrection, he continues to command the blind allegiance of a significant minority of my countrymen.

Whether from an intentional ignorance of history, a warped sense of entitlement, a need to vindicate some dystopian vision, or out of sheer spite, these fools somehow still see this utterly unimaginative little man as the answer to their prayers. As giving voice to the thoughts they so staunchly believe have been stifled by those fucking liberal elites—thoughts that reflect their worst instincts.

What these poor folks don’t realize is exactly how badly they’re being conned.

OUR BULLY
It’s like the old adage: What do you get when you marry a man who cheats on his wife? In this case, what do you get when you elect a man who’s spent every waking hour since he was ten cheating, lying and bullying?

But that’s okay, they must figure; at least he’s our cheating, lying bully.

But do they really think, after the Brat Man demolishes all the hard-won laws enacted to protect the rest of us from tyrants like him and the insatiable tycoons who fund and flatter him—and that restrain Joe Sixpack from four-wheeling through nature preserves and beating the missus—that he’ll stop there?

Do they believe this Putin groupy who’s touting the ruin of democratic institutions will keep acting that out on their behalf? That his aggressions will target just those they fear or hate? That’s where my  Shame on Trump turns to Shame on you, MAGAts!

     …he’ll turn on you like the self-
     obsessed, loyalty-or-death Kim Jong
     Un wannabe he is.

HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY
What he’ll really do—he’s as much as promised it—is establish himself as a virtual dictator. And then, as every such autocrat in history has done, he’ll turn from controlling those you fear to controlling you. Eventually, he’ll ask something of you you don’t want to give. And then he’ll turn on you like the self-obsessed, loyalty-or-death Kim Jong Un wannabe he is.

And there you are, knowing you threw our precious Democracy away, trashing the sacrifice, soiling the honor, of all our courageous countrymen and women who’ve fought and died defending it. And all for your little “pick me or I’ll steal the ball” tantrum. Hope you’re happy.

OUTRAGE TO ACTION
If you want, as I do, to turn your outrage with this traitor into action, please consider volunteering with VOTE FORWARD. Vote Forward is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit empowering grassroots volunteers to send handwritten letters encouraging fellow Americans to vote.

Vote Forward’s considerable, evidence-based success hinges on their brilliant mailing list, which targets people deemed unlikely to vote, but who, if they were to vote, might tend to vote blue.

It’s the perfect opportunity for introverts like me to avoid that ol’ reliable get-out-the-vote effort, the door-knocker, and still make a difference. It’s easy; there’s zero risk of face-to-face rejection; and we can do it where and when we like, even in pajamas.

For more information and to download your first list of recipients, visit VOTE FORWARD. And, if you like it, tell your friends.

        “Democracy means not ‘I am as good as you are,’
          but ‘You are as good as I am.’”
              REV. THEODORE PARKER