menu_open Columnists
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Being There: Are These People In the Room With Us?

25 0
23.10.2026

These truly-through-the-looking-glass days, it seems the drunk uncle you really didn't wanna ask to dinner is getting worse. Scarily and no longer mirthfully, the befuddled "head" of a GOP blitzed on projection daily spirals deeper into phantasmagoria - slurring words, crafting fictions, renaming oceans, rekindling grievances, losing it over trifles and consorting with imaginary friends as the world burns. A plea from No Kings for the coming election: "Clean Up On Aisle USA," please.

To be clear, Trump was a lying fabulist from way back. In the glitzy 1980s and 1990s, he regularly posed as a successful businessman, savvy dealmaker and cad-about-town who'd infamously call reporters or publicists as "John Barron" to boast about his money and conquests - a ploy he admitted in later court depositions he learned from his Nazi father. In power, like "a pre-teen with a girlfriend in Canada nobody's met," he's long invented "friends," fans, sources who praise him and his dreadful policies, from cultists invariably with tears in their eyes who "thank me for saving the country" to American CEOs and "one of the great people of China, from the highest echelons" who inexplicably extol his disastrous tariffs.

Lately, though, the GOP is reportedly freaking out, watching the line between fact and fiction increasingly blur in Dear Leader's mashed-potato mind as the economy keeps tumbling and vital mid-terms approach. They want him to celebrate (albeit largely imaginary) tax cuts, trade deals, safe borders, winning fights against drag shows and "transgender for everyone" (sigh). Instead, he raves about livestreamed executions, the hotness of GOP candidates, often in the wrong state - "His ass, shit, it's like a pile of muscle" - his bestie Putin who's been "fine on Ukraine," how "not a single" undocumented immigrant has entered America since he took office, how soaring gas and diesel costs are "a small price to pay," though it's unclear for what.

He garbles words or makes them up - "When we had the hurricane...We call it a watercane" - prompting excited patriots to up their expectations: "OK, cancel the Blue Wave, we want a Blue Watercane." Wearily, he jokes about creating a robot lookalike on the campaign trail- "Nobody would know the difference" - so he can stay home and watch TV, his true, small vocation. Weirdly, he fantasizes about trashing other countries: He boasts about "polling higher than anyone has ever polled in Venezuela," which is why "after I finish with this" he'll to go Venezuela, "learn Spanish quickly, it won't take long, I'm good at languages" and run for president there, and yes we are here for it.

Hopefully, Venezuela won't have pesky reporters asking him questions that drive him to melt down in "dementia anger-flare." Because he lacks both impulse control and any trace of decency, he's also lauded Vivek Ramaswamy's grotesque ad against rape survivor and Dem opponent Amy Acton, wherein her estranged, unhinged mother calls her a liar, charging the Fake News "is trying to convince everyone this Ad is bad because it’s so good!...It's called 'hitting pay dirt.’” He adds that if his "legendary" mother "said anything bad about me, (it) would go down as the Ad of the Decade — Maybe the Century!" Vivek should keep the ad up, he says, so people know Acton is "a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!” Killer pot/kettle.

There are more. The racist fraudsters who got rich on corruption - and turned Minneapolis into Fallujah - want us to rat on our neighbors for...fraud under Trump's stammered "Fraud Whistle...Blower Incentive...Program" whereby "Americans (can) report theft of taxpayer dollars," with DOGE "skunk-works" stragglers maybe helping. Turn someone in with $1 billion, you get 1%: "That's a lot of money.” Except the cap is $30K, you probs won't see it, and it's queasily akin to Nazi bounties to catch Jews. Stephen Goebbels was even there to smear phantom Somalis who get $30 million for a fake daycare, buy BMWs or mansions, fly their kids "first class all over the world...living the high life." What a sick fuck. Meanwhile, America urges, "Call in fraud at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Alas, the more loopy he gets, the more openly he flies his violent, racist, crassly unfettered flag. There are more curses and more bellicose AI slop like the video of a macho white guy put in prison with three scary black guys, by one scary black cop, who takes them all down: "Bullies Can’t Break a Strong Man." (So many pots/kettles!) The rallies grow more pugnacious too: In the second assault this month, a South Carolina sheriff's office is investigating an attack on a protester - punched in the head, neck and chest - that Trump cheered on, praising the thugs' "courage." "Who's the guy that threw that punch?" he excitedly asked. "I love that." He also mocked........

© Common Dreams