Thrashing and crashing

Like the prehistoric animals that ventured into tar pits and couldn't get out, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump provide a fascinating spectacle as they struggle in the residue of their own narcissism, hubris and crime.  History is full of other examples, all of which they thought they could ignore or never even bother to learn.

These two happen to share a background in family wealth and careers in buffoonish dishonesty, an irresistible combination for resentful, maleducated voters and a spectacle-hungry media.  What kind of puritanical pedant could fail to find their shamelessness enchanting?  To shift metaphors, try to look away from this bloody road accident.  You can't.

And it helps that they're fat guys with silly hair.  

While Trump was alternately minimizing the covid-19 pandemic and calling it germ warfare waged by "Jyna," the adults in Johnson's government were imposing stringent lockdown rules that restricted gatherings by non-family members, shuttered most businesses and ruined the Christmas holiday for millions -- and this in a country that Christmases like there's no tomorrow.  As befits a privileged Etonian, however, it seems Johnson himself had no intention of letting a deadly disease ruin his fun.  As reports began to accumulate of jolly alcohol-fueled gatherings at No. 10 and elsewhere, Sue Gray of the Cabinet Office was charged with investigating "partygate" and filed her preliminary report yesterday.  She supplied 300 photographs and 500 pages of documents to police, who have the power to fine revelers.  After weeks of claiming they were just BYOB work meetings, Johnson apologized to the House of Commons (something Trump would never do) but immediately went on the attack in the sleaziest way possible.  He accused Labour leader Keith Starmer of refusing to prosecute celebrity pedophile Jimmy Savile while Starmer headed the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013, subtly hinting that Starmer must also be a pedophile.  For this the Speaker issued a rebuke (it's like censure).  The slur apparently originated on a far-right Facebook page which also likes to slander Asians.  As Trump would call them, "very fine people."  Nor is this the only scandal sticking to BoJo like used loo-roll -- there are still those who think the expensive redecoration of his Downing Street flat was a tad unethical.

Trump has also become more reckless in recent weeks, as female civil servants close in on him (Fani Willis and Letitia James, to be precise -- those "radical racist vicious prosecutors."  And probably on the rag, am I right?).  Over the weekend Texas knuckle-draggers turned out to hear him rave about how Mike Pence failed in his duty to "overturn" the election by rejecting electors from swing states; how loyal Trumpanzees should riot in the event of indictments in New York or Atlanta;  how he will pardon anyone who continues to defy the January 6 commission; and always the bleat of fraud, theft, illegal voting.  The thought of this creature ever again being in a position to carry out his threats is appalling.

Subsequent to the two-hours' hate we learned more fascinating details about the four-year crime spree:  The plot to have the Defense Department "take control" of voting machines in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and elsewhere, later extended to the Justice Department and finally Homeland Security, the pretext being an "attack" by China or Iran or Venezuela or some other random place.  The failure of said plot when unlikely characters like Bill Barr and Rudolph Giuliani suddenly remembered they were officers of some court somewhere and refused to participate.  The concern by Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller that Trump not be able to get his hands on actual troops during the January 6 putsch.  

We've known for years that Ubu Trump used to tear up documents which annoyed him and throw them away in violation of the Presidential Records Act (when you break one law, it gets easier to break the rest).  A couple of staffers would quietly retrieve them and tape them back together until Trump fired them.  The National Archives turned over boxes of papers ripped as small as confetti to the Thompson Commission and many were never reconstructed.  After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, volunteers in the US Embassy in Tehran spent months restoring documents which had been shredded by the staff, so it can be done.  But why bother?  There is already a Denali-size mountain of evidence of conspiracy, sedition, election tampering and incitement to riot.  What we need now are arrests.

Indictments.

Trials. 

Long, long sentences.

Postscript:  Garrett Soldano, chiropractor and would-be Trump of Michigan, opposes abortion especially when it results from rape.  "How about we start inspiring women in the culture to let them understand and know how heroic they are and how unbelievable they are that 'God' put them in this moment," he enthused, probably thinking about that Galilean virgin who was raped by a dove.  (Shockingly he's also a spreader of anti-vax bullshit.)  "They don't know that little baby [sic] inside them may be the next president."  You sure that's an argument you want to make, Doctor Back-cracker?

The comic book world has come alive in defense of Art Spiegelman's Maus and children's right to read it.  Leading the charge is Ryan Higgins in Sunnyvale, California, who will ship free copies to anyone in troglodytic McMinn County, Tennessee, who requests it.  Cartoonists all over the country have also heard the firebell in the night.  Higgins set up a GoFundMe.  Go fund him!