“The Other Pies Are Just as Bad!”

It has taken me about 24 hours to stop quivering in rage over that putrid presidential debate last night. I don’t particularly want to think about it or write about it. I strongly suspect that you don’t wish to read more about it either. Alas, engendering such feelings was the entire point of Donald Trump’s participation. He was not acting that way without reason: his grotesque performance revealed the secret to his power. Even if we desperately want to lie on the sofa, eat pastry, and watch Halloween cartoons, we need to instead talk about how Trump’s bad behavior gets him what he wants.

Imagine the election were a pie-baking contest. Biden reads revered cookbooks (& talks to master chefs). He peels peaches, greases pans, mixes brown sugar and white sugar, and creates a bunch of peach pies which are fine, edible pies. Maybe you prefer rhubarb pies or savory pies or whatever, but Biden’s pies are passable and could probably have won in past fairs. Donald Trump however doesn’t open book or switch on an oven. He goes out to the cow pasture and collects heaping bushel barrels filled with BULLSHIT. Then he comes to the county fair where all of the hungry judges sit with their napkins around their necks and he throws the filth everywhere. “I brought cowpies to show how Biden’s ideas are crappy!” he says as he hurls ordure onto everything. Biden’s pies are ruined. So is everyone’s appetite. So is the very idea of pie. After experiencing such a thing (and we have all been experiencing 5 years of it) fair-goers might be excused for not wanting to judge pies, or eat pies, or go to the fair, or to even think about any of it. And thus Trump wins as his brownshirts, proudboys, and religious fanatics vote him to be the greatest master baker in American history.

Trumpkin Pie?

That is what is going on, and even if you feel like puking and never hungering for pie…I mean democracy… again in your life you need to take a deep breath and sit back down at the judging table.

A disturbing refrain which I hear all of the time these days is “Everybody else is equally bad.” Don’t fall for this poisonous lie! That is Trump’s message which lies at the center of his strategy to keep voters at home. It is why he is ruining all of the pies. If all voters show up to vote, Trump will lose in a historical landslide. Therefore he must make democracy itself look bad and call the validity of the entire process into question. Although he is a undisciplined dullard (or maybe because he is an undisciplined dullard), Trump has an unparalleled ability to make everything seem so terrible that it doesn’t seem like participating is worth the bother. In 2016 he steamrolled the Republican party and won the election not by looking good or competent, but by drowning out everyone else’s messages with his provocative and attention-seeking behavior. Voters become grossed out by such behavior and give up on voting. This allows Trump and his enablers to make even more things seem pointless or dangerous and the evil cycle perpetuates itself. Joe Biden had to actually synthesize complicated policy ideas and memorize evidence and do hard work. All so Donald Trump can spit on it as voters squirm and say “I don’t want any part of this: all politicians are equally bad.”

Ever since he won the democratic nomination, Biden has had my vote, but as he goes through this gauntlet with this ghastly bully he is winning my respect and admiration as well. If Biden can deal with a challenge like last night’s, he can deal with other crises and disasters which require steely nerves. Although Biden did not look as good as if he were serving delicious peach pie to grinning gourmets, he did not get steamrolled. He had to get down in the mud with the bully and thus his larger (and finer) points about healthcare, foreign policy, were destroyed by Trump’s distractions. Biden’s nice pies were ruined. He spent all of that time in the kitchen for nothing…last night. But we cannot let a few distasteful episodes make us lose our appetite for true representative government. As long as the kitchen is still standing, we can clean it up and get back to baking wonderful pies for the good of everyone. Keep a strong stomach and a clear head. Everyone is not equally bad. That is what villains say so that you will lose sight of their misdeeds.

If you don’t freak out we can end this national nightmare and, and…come to think of it, I love peach pie! I am going to go make some myself, as soon as I write a check to the Biden campaign.

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