What Is Trump's Mystery Ingredient?
A Wonkvestigation!
What is Trump’s je ne sais quoi, that charismatic cult leadership that compelled 24 percent more veterans to vote for draft-dodger Trump over Kamala Harris? To paraphrase Maya Angelou as quoted by his old pal Oprah, people forget the things Donald Trump does or says, but not the way he makes them feel. Like a thousand points of entitled light, they are his special little sleeper cells. He hardens their peens, and smootheth the crooked paths of their Karening.
Anyway, so there we were this weekend in Stanley, Virginia, about two miles from that there flag above. Not intending to be going on some kind of Cletus safari, but for the son’s birthday and Appalachian spring. He loves the mountains, and I’m not about to get on a plane these days, so I used one of the many vacation days and some of the salary my wonderful communist job generously provides me for an AirBnb for him, his friend, and our energetic large dog at a secluded cabin at the end of its own half-mile drive, three hours southwest from Baltimore city near Luray, to let them all run free in the budding spring.
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The new lighting in the caverns is beautiful! The stalagmites/tites are translucent when you shine light through them, with any greening is from the heat of the old, hot light bulbs. And Luray Caverns’ Stalacpipe organ is the world’s largest instrument, though it will only play “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”
So then we returned to the cabin, and lo, a jacked pickup truck in the drive, with no official markings, then we hear men’s voices talking in the woods. I message the owner to ask if I should call the police and right then JESUS CHRIST, a white man pops out of the woods, not 25 feet away, and stands facing us and the house, with rebel-flaggy-coded forearm tattoos.
Hain’t scared! I’m from Baltimore! It’s not the first time being confronted with a male interloper on my property. I squared up all 5’ of me, here they come to snuff the rooster, opening with the line I always use, delivered in the sharpest mom tone, “May I HELP you?”
He could have been my cousin, only a few inches taller than me, bantam with dark brown hair and light blue eyes. My Scots-Irish people have been intermarrying one another around the USA southparts since 1750, so probably somehow kind of way. My people, estranged! I have a cousin-in-law with forearm tattoos of an iron cross and the Tasmanian devil waving a Confederate flag who is the sweetest guy you could ever meet until he gets going about Mexicans.
The man said he was Scott the tree guy, there to cut down a poplar in the middle of the woods that was leaning down the hill in a bad way.
“Well,” I said, as the kids and dogs watched from the deck, though my drawl had already kicked in at the first gas stop, so it came out whay-ull, “nobody told me, and y’all really should have some kinda markings or ID, you know, people out here in the woods might have a gun.”
“I’m not worried about that, I got that in my truck. Wanna see?” Did he mean his ID, or his gun? I realized then he was holding a skull-smashing sized hammer. In the moment our respective senses of entitlement faced off, I saw it all. Could I get to the hammer handle first, if I maybe feign for the groin left then sweep the leg right? Would the children call 911 when we both went for the hammer head and not panic? Could the dog summon a taste for human flesh long enough for me to get to his truck first? He had a tool belt, but so what, who does this? Certainly not my tree guy in Baltimore city, not one single unannounced, non-consensual toe without a vest and written signoff from the neighbor.
I felt him from the sole of my Sanuk to the back of my neck as a metallic buzz, our evil light-blue eyes force scanning and zapping at each other then both looking at his hammer. He felt me too, my bullshit fake concern-trolling for his safety, with my Protect The Chesapeake Maryland license plate and slip-on shoes with soles made out of recycled yoga mats, my drawl as insincere and shifty as Nicole “I merry you” Kidman’s in Cold Mountain. I was an interloper on Scott’s turf, and no big-city Karen armed with a bossy mouth would prevail here.
“That’s okay, I believe you,” I muttered in retreat. “Stay safe!”
Scott, first of his kind to defeat my bitchy domination! And not even an apology! He was not sorry for scaring us, he was hard for it.
By the time I made it back to the deck, the owner confirmed she did have a tree guy named Scott who came around to trim stuff. She apologized, said he hadn’t told her he was coming either, or else she would have said so. I locked the doors and heard buzzing begin, and later in the woods found he and his buddy really did fell a tree. Was I the asshole?
Everyone else was sweet as pickled beet eggs to us in Stanley, even the couple running the trail riding barn, with Papaw handing the children Baptist coloring books and clucking how some people had rudely turned them down, and Mamaw’s anecdote about a Chinese tourist who had tried to wash her hands using the port-a-pot’s urinal cake.
“Mother, PLEASE DO NOT.”
“…Real nice, but some of ‘em get real confused. Not all of ‘em, but some of ‘em.” How a white liberal mother and her children do sigh with relief when an invitation to either be quietly complicit in some racism or draw a line comes with a trapdoor!
You can’t say that the folks of Stanley are ignorant about the government. Family farms, brought to you by commie subsidies! Plenty of Trump signs (and Confederate flags) never came down, and now STOP THE STEAL, NO ON APRIL 21 signs have sprung up on the hay bales next to them too. Fox News plays on every restaurant and gas station dinette TV, and every other man’s XXL T-shirt and/or truck is festooned with some MAGA-signaling variation of flag / eagle / Punisher skull / KILL YOUR LOCAL PEDOPHILE. Gas prices to fill up all those trucks and tractors may be shooting up, but good news, Governor Abigail Spanberger and the Democrats have achieved a full trifecta of government there, so now the local disaffected working salt of the earth have someone else to blame besides Biden for all Trump’s many incompetent, deadly fuckups, past, present, and future.
Now the old men in veterans’ caps won’t have to vary the refrain one lamented to the Goodwill cashier while counting out his change to buy some used drawers: “No matter who’s in charge, everything’s always going up, and nobody in the government cares about the little guy.”
“Haint thayt the truth,” all of us behind him in line drawl-recited back as I waited to pay 50 cents for a souvenir AMERICAN BY BIRTH, SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD coffee mug, wondering who else’s lips might have touched it.
OPEN THREAD!
[The Revolving Door Project / View From The Wing]
Monday Bear is just gonna stay in this tree and hide from the world for a bit.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-231964050?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
@ChrisO_wiki
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14h
It's now being reported that the fire on the USS Gerald R. Ford was so severe that the ship could be out of service for as long as 12-14 months. That's going to be a big loss of capability for the US Navy at a potentially critical time.