The Crazy Season

Why do we spend so much panda on something that drives us up the freaking wall?

A few days ago, on October 21st, Asheville was paralyzed by a visit from Candidate Trump. He came to shake his head at the damage and lambaste the federal response to the disaster of Helene. It’s gratuitous to note Trump’s hypocrisy, of course, but this coming from a man who, on multiple occasions, ordered FEMA to deny funds to Californians whose houses were on fire because Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom weren’t nice to him made for a painful and nauseating dissonance.

It only got worse when you considered his intended audience. It wasn’t deep blue Asheville he was talking to. Rather, he was going out of his way to degrade conditions for disaster victims whose suffering he was converting into support from those watching at a remove.

It’s gratuitous to point out instances of Trump’s cynical opportunism, of course (it is the same as simply pointing at and watching him), but this particular toxic broth was enhanced further, into a brittle cube of Terrible Bouillon, by the knowledge that the Republican-led House refused to meet in emergency session to give FEMA and SBA the funding they needed when it would have counted most.

Finally he spread his usual pollution into the disaster zone to such an extent that FEMA workers had to wait for police escorts to go and do the work they’re paid to do.

Congressman Chuck Edwards (R, NC), just behind the felon’s left shoulder, had been doing a great job combatting right wing misinformation, but he declined to do so in the subsequent Q&A. Photo by Brian Snyder / Reuters

It’s probably bad tactics at this point to observe that Trump is a liar, since it suggests he has a relationship to the truth similar to the rest of us, so I will just add that, needless as it is to say, he “lied” about the federal response while he was here. To our faces, as it were. While we were stuck in the standstill traffic jams prompted by his visit.

Thus you had a candidate for Most Powerful Person in the World dropping in to court the votes of distant lookers-on by spinning corrosive fantasies that endangered Americans hard at work attempting to help Americans in dire need who the candidate was, by his very presence, in the middle of effing over.

Our election cycles are insane, and not in a benign way. The public/private shitshow of Trump’s visit brought this home to me in an immediate and undeniable way. It was like getting deadlegged by a headline. I want to take a break from the ongoing Helene chronicle today to dive into an aspect of our mentally unsound moment that I feel might warrant a little scrutiny. I sincerely hope you’ll join me!