It looks like we’re getting a visit from the hair-hat in chief early next week. Trump will be here in Central New York in an attempt to boost the campaigns of two, maybe three regional republican representatives whose seats are seen as vulnerable in this November’s mid-term elections. I understand he’ll do one of his signature Klan rallies for GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik at Fort Drum in Jefferson County, then shuttle over to some rubber chicken fundraiser for our own Rep. Claudia Tenney, the Alex Jones-style congress member from New Hartford, my old home town. (Full disclosure: I graduated high school with her brother Bob and was a senior when she was a sophomore … so trust me, I know where she’s getting it from.) Maybe he’ll stump for Syracuse area Rep. John Katko, as well, though I don’t know that it would do him a lot of good.
Trump’s fundraiser for Tenney, reportedly, will be private, not open to the public, no lying media allowed. Like most politicians (Tenney included), he prefers a controlled crowd of sycophants to any even nominally open forum. At Fort Drum, however, Trump will be howling and baying his praise of Tenney, Stephanik, and others for co-sponsoring another crap piece of legislation that will pour more money into the base and build a fence around the former installation known as Griffiss, which still houses a raft of military contractors mostly working on high tech. (So, in effect, it’s still an air base, with a landing strip that can accommodate pretty much any military aircraft up to and including the C-5 transport.)
I wonder if some of our local conspiracy theorists and Tenney supporters will make their way over to the Fort Drum Klan … I mean, election rally. Perhaps we will see evidence of the Q-anon movement. Maybe that guy from Oriskany, NY who was flying a klan flag and displaying a black skeleton hanging from a noose will be there. It will certainly be a bigot magnet of the first order, given that Trump is doubling down on his anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric in the run up to the November election, hoping to pump up his base. As Michelle Goldberg said recently, it’s clear now that the key appeal to Trump voters in 2016 was not economics, as many have claimed, but good old fashioned hate. Very refreshing.
So, pull your sheets on, people, and grab the tiki torches: your low-rent fuehrer is coming to town.
luv u,
jp
They have been busy as hell, too. Just this week, the unbelievably clueless energy secretary Rick Perry (about whose idiocy we did an entire album a few years back) was tooling around upstate New York, stopping at the aging Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant, not so very far from where I’m sitting now. Perry, who originally thought the Energy Department was some kind of lobbying job (!), spouted off about how essential nuclear power is and that investing in it is a “national security” issue. He told our dimwitted local media that the only two types of power sources that are “uninterruptible” (i.e. less vulnerable to attack) are nuclear and coal. This being New York, he probably had to duck while saying it to avoid being hit in the head by a wind turbine … which is more “uninterruptible” than either of his examples. Then there’s solar. (Like I said …. idiot.)
There is little doubt in my mind that Trump is a deep-dish racist fuck. His personal history alone is enough to convince any reasonable person, from his early days as a landlord to his vocal advancement of birtherism to his targeting of immigrants, Muslims, you name it. After the attacks in Barcelona, his first impulse was to tweet a reprise of his celebratory comments about General Pershing’s participation in America’s early 20th Century colonial pogrom in the Philippines – the story about killing 49 Muslim resistors with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. What is more bigoted than that? His blood libel against Muslims in New Jersey re the days following 9/11? Perhaps.
Lots of people have taken issue with this reaction, and more than 50 sitting congresspeople elected not to attend Trump’s inauguration as a protest. And this incident is being spun in the media as just another instance of the president-electoral not being able to let any critical comment pass, of being too thin-skinned or too sensitive. I have to say, though, that I think there’s more to this social media rant than just the T-bone’s usual expression of his hyper narcissism. This incident seriously smells of Bannon, which is to say that it’s a strategic tirade, aimed at a very specific audience.