Yesterday I woke to learn that white christian presidential candidate Don Trump had blown his mic stand.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

I did this for the simple and direct reason that it was true. I bet most parents have stories like this. I bet most people who were once children have stories like this. It's pretty standard stuff. I reckon it's a part of the way children develop empathy, if they do.

Some don't. They're out there.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

Let me change the subject.

I saw a story last night in Newsweek about how women are refusing to date men who support Trump, and how this was a big problem for men. I'm not linking to it. There'll be another one of these stories today, and another tomorrow and 3 more next week.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

The loneliness of men is a big problem for women to solve. The loneliness of women isn't the subject of many articles.

Let me change the subject.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

I see TRUMP/VANCE 2024 signs on lawns around my neighborhood, and when I see them, I know there is somebody inside that house who on some fundamental level cannot be trusted, who is either eager to bring menace and death to others, or is willing to allow such things to secure an unnatural advantage.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

And I know there might be some people inside that house who quietly fear that person with good reason. There are tens of millions of such people. It's a bad feeling.

Why am I telling you these things? I don't know. It's election week, and Trump blew a mic stand.

Let's dig in.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

Gobbling his mic stand is not even the 1000th most repugnant thing Trump has done, but it's notable given that his crowd is a gang of mostly white christian supremacists demand the exclusion and persecution and death of trans people and other queer people.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

They claim this is is because they want to protect their children from sexualized imagery and abuse and pedophiles. Never mind, though, their hero sucked off his mic and they laughed and clapped and cheered.

Speaking of pedophiles: turns out Jeffery Epstein was indeed Trump's best bud. News at 11.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

If the pattern of the last decade continues, none of this is going to change the manufactured media narrative that Trump is a normal candidate running a normal campaign; none of it is going to damage Trump's support with his supremacist gang of christian nationalists.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

And sure, this reveals yet again that what MAGA wanted was never to protect children or prevent trafficking or any other rationale: they just want to bully and kill queer people. But that was already known. The murderous intent is as par for the course as is the hypocrisy.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

Every day brings another dozen examples, clear evidence that the Trump cult known as the Republican Party cares for nothing except for its own supremacy, the domination of its whiteness and its maleness and the violent domination of a blasphemous religion they call "christianity."

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

A small city in Pennsylvania had a Halloween parade that featured a Kamala Harris effigy being led on a chain from the back of a truck. Ho-hum, white supremacy and political violence with overtones of lynching and slavery. Par for the course.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

And the TRUMP/VANCE 2024 signs dot my neighborhood. Maybe they dot yours.

And the prodigal son stood isolated from the party of life because he held himself superior.

And children who are never taught empathy grow up to be adults who do not know empathy.

They're out there.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

I don't think the human mind was meant to deal with this level of pure horseshit and hypocrisy and lies and menace—or at any level. I say this because dealing with this shit seems to be traumatizing, evidenced by the fact that we're all traumatized.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

There's so much repugnance coming from the Republican cult, a desire to control our bodies and lives and subject us to hard use, a determination to roll back any positive progress simply to demolish progression, and open glee at the fear, terror, and trauma this creates.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

There will be more today. There will be more tomorrow. The zone is flooded, and eventually it's all just more shit floating by.

I just want to make an observation: all of this is absolutely unacceptable in a decent society.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

Here's what I mean when I say all of this is absolutely unacceptable in a decent society: It cannot by definition be permitted in a decent society, because a society that permits such things cannot be considered decent.

And yet our society does permit it.

So we know our society is not decent.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

Yes, we tolerate the intolerable. More than tolerate it; we enable it. On Tuesday maybe (hopefully not) we are going to give it limitless power.

Yet it cuts against the dominant social narrative to say we need to fight the white supremacist cult; this, because our society is supremacist.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

When you name the Republican Party as the white supremacist cult it is, there's a standard response.

"We can't just get rid of them," it's said. "We have to learn to live with them."

We.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

It's not so popular to suggest that white supremacists have to learn to live with everyone else.

It's not so popular to suggest that the answer to white supremacy is for white supremacists to change their behavior.

[juliusgoat@mastodon.social]

It's far more popular to say we need to heal the white supremacist cult.

It's far more popular to issue reminders that we need to leave paths open for the white supremacist cult to find redemption.

And who could be against redemption? Who could be against healing?