I'm jealous of Tim Walz. All of this stuff, not taking them too seriously, the fail of abstract concepts like democracy, the cumbersome high-falutin-ness of "existential threat to democracy", poking fun at them, the antidotes, joy, happiness, over-intellectualizing them, "politics is sex by other means"--all of it I have written for years.
What I lacked was "the hook". Weird is the hook.
We speak incommensurate languages. I didn't know what "prepping" was, who "preppers" were. I had a conversation with Niece-1 in 2023. For some background; she is a retired D.O. Worked in NYC for years. 9/11 drove her out...all the way to Kentucky! In this conversation, the East Palestine Ohio train wreck had just occurred. She told me about some of her in-laws who had moved from someplace to rural Ohio to escape "threats". They purchased a house on a hill. They had a buffer of tall grass down the slope which they could set aflame at the approach of "threats". They of course had guns. Stored water, canned food. They were prepping. And then Niece-1 told me the train wreck occurred and unmasked their vulnerability still to "threats". I thought Niece-1 was making fun of them. I started laughing. She sort of laughed along to be amiable. She repeated "prepping". "You keep using this term 'prepping', what does that mean?" I asked, genuinely not knowing. "Ah", she replied, in that whispered tone of secretiveness, and then explained.
It was SO FUCKING WEIRD.
Trump doesn't laugh! Another thing I have pointed out for nine years. He is incapable of telling or enjoying a joke or engaging in any light-heartedness. He's always super-serious, dark, ominous about "threats".
I read a book on the Cuban Revolution decades ago...I have repeated this anecdote many times here; forgive me for I art a Boomer...Castro after hours with his cronies drinking good Cuban rum, joking. Good sense of humor, Fidel, could poke delicious fun at others. But when one of those others poked fun at him, the night of fun was OVAH! It is the only thing I remember from that book, don't even remember the title. Fun-poking corrodes power, cuts you down to man-size, renders you impotent if you take it seriously. This is the reason that "weird" has gotten under Trump-Vance's skin. Hannibal Lecter, electrocution vs sharks. Dude, WHAT?!
You remember Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker the senate candidate, not the football player. Trumpie's hand-picked guy. Herschel told a story similar in weirdness to Trumpie's electrocution-sharks story. Used to think this, whatever it was, was worse; now thinks that, something different, is worse. It was a total non-sequitur whatever it was. His MAGA audience didn't know what the fuck the man was talking about.
