Crime and no punishment

I need to rant a bit today. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

“Washington DC is at its worst point.”

So said our authoritarian wannabe dictator, attempting to justify his Federal takeover of law enforcement and his deployment of Federal agents of various agencies and the National Guard in the nation’s capitol.

Taken in isolation, this is one of those times when the Grifter-in-Chief tells the truth while he’s lying—he’s trying to convince people that DC is a hellhole with constant citywide shooting sprees and muggings and break-ins with phrases like “crime is out of control.”

Of course, it isn’t. The rate of violent crime in DC is the lowest it’s been in decades. Yet, Washington, DC, is at its worst point and crime is out of control. In the White House. In Republican congressional offices. In the Supreme Court. The rampant criminality in dire need of law enforcement is committed on a daily—nay, hourly—basis inside our governmental buildings, not on the streets.

In declaring a state of emergency based on a made-up fantasy of terror amongst the citizenry, President Felon is trying to create terror amongst the citizenry. It’s not about crime; he cares nothing about crime except as it pertains to himself, in which case he’s all for it.

Rachel Maddow did a segment the other day that deftly illustrated how all claims of being “tough on crime” and the like out of Tyrant Don and his minions are completely without merit, but somehow, despite the obvious evidence in front of all of us, the Cult of Trumpism guzzles down the gaslighting like it’s their morning coffee, something they can’t effectively get through their days without.

Mind-blowing, isn’t it.

I had started to think that possibly, hopefully, please let it be, that the Cult was starting to wake up and see reality. Even MAGA mouthpieces like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens were openly speculating about why the regime wouldn’t release the Epstein files, why the neo-führer had thousands of agents combing those files for mentions of his own name and redacting them. What was the president trying to hide? He campaigned on releasing the Epstein files! He promised the pedophiles would be punished! Why is he now protecting them?!

I had hoped that, having been confronted with the paradox of being fed the conspiracy theories for years about pedophilia being rampant among liberals and the Epstein files would reveal so many important names as being heinous abusers of children, and then being told that there isn’t really any scandal here and that we can’t release the files because “innocent people” might “get hurt,” there might be a reaction other than drinking more metaphorical kool-aid.

The Cult messiah said that in response to a reporter’s question about why Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spent two days meeting with Epstein’s literal partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell at the Federal prison she was being held at (before she was transferred without merit to a minimum-security “Club Fed” facility in Texas in a blatantly corrupt move): “We’d like to release everything, but we don’t want people to get hurt that shouldn’t get hurt.”

The Cult had been screaming for years, egged on by the MAGA propagandists, that innocent people had been hurt, loads of them, mostly children, and that the perpetrators must be brought to justice. Now their Dear Leader is saying people named in those incriminating files are possibly “innocent people” who “shouldn’t” be held accountable.

Was this finally the tipping point? Was this finally something that would penetrate deeply enough into the Cultists’ collective psyche to make them realize that their leader was a lying piece of shit that has expertly manipulated them by utilizing the favored tactics of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, including Accusation in a Mirror? Would they finally figure out that whenever Donnie Two Scoops and his regime levels an accusation at someone it is an admission of their own behavior? Shouldn't that be enough to make at least some of the cult fritz out in their version of "Norman, coordinate?"

It may still come to be. I remain hopeful, though less so than a week ago or two weeks ago or three weeks ago.

Distractions work. Especially a distraction like the Federal takeover of DC, which our demented head of state most likely sees as a twofer: A big story to distract the media from tying him to Epstein and a move forward on the actual agenda item of punishing Black people for existing by falsely declaring the 50% African-American city to be a hotbed of “rising violence” and one of “the most dangerous cities in the world.”

Of course, to borrow a phrase from Cliff Schecter(?), Trump always makes things worse for Trump, and this DC fiasco may well blow up in his face and cause more political trouble for Dictator Donny than he started with. And at least some reporters are refusing to let go of the Epstein mess, plus people in the White House keep threatening lawsuits about it which will simply keep the whole thing front and center no matter how many times they throw something shiny at the idiots in a press gaggle.

But eventually this will all come out. Eventually we will see evidence supporting if not outright proving that the current holder of the title President of the United States not only knew all about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking of minors, but that he participated in it. That he himself abused children, that he himself is the “innocent” person that he says “shouldn’t get hurt.”

Whether that comes to light before this human stain is dead or not depends on American journalism, so, you know, odds aren’t great. But it does still seem like this might be the thing that brings him down.

The fact that every other fucking atrocity he’s committed hasn’t already brought him down is another problem.