My take on the question, so you won't have to wait

The Column: 07.01.24

The debate was a joke, a cruel joke. Trump was the drunk in the corner saloon, sailing on vodka martinis, and Biden was a serious man attempting to frame an argument in response to unreality and in so doing he searched for the right words, as any normal person would, and so the journalists said, “TRUMP SHOWS ENERGY, BIDEN APPEARS HESITANT,” and suddenly working reporters gauge the popular mood and see Trump winning the night. This is silliness. “I am the greatest,” is a boxer’s brag. It’s nothing a president would ever say, it is unhinged. Muhammad Ali said it but he had to actually get in the ring and hit a man and be hit by him, risk having his brains scrambled, he couldn’t just raise a half-billion from friends to make himself famous even among ferrets and armadillos.

Nobody actually admires Trump; half the people loathe him on sight as a New York loudmouth and phony who’s won the favor of Christians even though his ordinary speech is laced with obscenities. Preachers don’t talk in obscenities, not where I come from, but some of them did some fancy gymnastics and joined the cult. It’s fascinating but not admirable. Trump degrades everything he touches. That’s why there is no Trump University and there’s no Trump Library, they are contradictions. The Republicans sucking up to him now will go down in history as suck-ups, whether they think so or not. It will be a blot on the record. Their biographers will have to work their way around it, like a conviction for embezzlement or marriage to a cousin.

There is such a thing as history. Politics, believe it or not, is not all unreality. It does have an effect on the world around us and Trump knows this. He does his shadow show so that he can tinker with the government according to his passing moods. He is a moody man and his tirades, as printed verbatim in actual newspapers, are worth your time to read, it’s like seeing a great horned sloth in a cage at a filling station in Memphis: you never knew any living creature could be so ugly and smelly and devour its own fecal matter.

In the Presidents Day survey of 154 historians who’ve studied and written about the office, both liberals and conservatives and in-between, Trump winds up near the bottom, with Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan who’ve been at the bottom for a long long time. Biden is ranked in the top third, though surely there is disagreement. But this is a survey of people who did the homework, not the opinion of fools.

The country is in a crazy place right now and if you love your country, you know this. Say all you like about the crazy progressive left, go right ahead — I am aware that the rudeness is remarkable — but the American people are not about to elect one to the White House, so calm down. You can imagine that Trump is riding a rural revolt against city elite, but the man is a fool. He doesn’t know the Morrill Act from the Immorrill; in Roe v. Wade, he doesn’t know who was rowing and who was wading.

No Democrat can take pleasure in the demise of the Grand Old Party of the Heart of the Country by a queen from Queens. You don’t run around the Midwest talking about your greatness; you’re talking to actual farmers who know manure when they see it. When Senator Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton in 1996, he didn’t claim to have won it. One difference between him and Trump, and also he did the homework and spoke softly though he was a war hero and he is still admired widely today by those who met him. He was genuine.

In Minnesota we’ve come to the sad realization that corporations don’t have souls. Our beloved 3M has done wretched things and poisoned its own people and lied about it, which no human being you respect would do. Trump is a corporation, he is not a genuine human being. He is not vermin, he is apparently sensate and responds to commands, but he has conquered his own soul and a soulless man does not care. That is not a quality one seeks in a leader. A Shakespearean tale is unwinding and it does not appear to me to be a comedy.

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Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion return home to the Fitzgerald Theater, St. Paul.

It’s the old radio show back where it started in St. Paul in 1974. Guy Noir, Duane’s Mom, Powdermilk, American Duct Tape, Amalgamated Coffee, and the little town that time forgot, except it hasn’t actually. With Rich Dworsky and a fine band, Pat Donohue, Sue and Tim and Fred (honk honk), Heather, Christine, and GK. The three shows are sold out, but you can see it streaming close up, the elderly host singing with women who were not yet  born when the show began and talking about his hometown and the pleasures of life as we face mortality.