Junetwentieth

I was channel surfing over a late lunch yesterday while the lead-up to the debacle in Tulsa was on the "news." I was flipping among CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and a recording of the Korean baseball game from the night before. (I lost a dollar on the moneyline, but won 77 cents with the under.)

The American cable "news" folks were beside themselves with glee, in that the crowd at the Trump rally filled only about half the arena, and the elaborate outdoor setup for an overflow crowd was already being taken down. There were giant video screens going, with nobody around them, and the bulletproof glass on the outside stage was being hauled off, as it wouldn't be necessary. There were only a half-dozen people out there.

When the time finally came for Orange Caligula to enter the arena, the screen on MSNBC was downright comical. Donnie was shown on the left, okay, but in the upper right they had Al Sharpton, dissing him unceasingly. Al Sharpton! You gotta hand it to that guy; he has really milked it. How the IRS didn't get him into an adjoining cell with Wesley Snipes, I'll never know.

Anyway, when Donnie started to speak, MSNBC gave him about 30 seconds before they cut his audio off. They continued to show his spray-tan mug blathering away, but the audio was all Al and the "news" guy, Ali Velshi. Velshi was teeing them up for Sharpton, and the two of them were stomping all over the Prez. Plus, they made sure to have on the screen, at all times, images showing big sections of empty seats. Caligula was lucky if he had 12,000 people in there. Will he have a new campaign manager on Monday? Ha! Ha! High fives all around on the peacock channel.

After about a minute of this, I pressed the button to go to CNN. And over there, I could not believe my eyes. They were running a commercial for the ASPCA! A long one. One really sad, abused or neglected pet after another. Now, that took guts, I thought to myself. Not only don't they give Donnie a live audience, but they don't even show his face while he's talking. Some serious punching back by the fake news.

Back I switched to MSNBC.

But I couldn't resist one last look at CNN.

Something about this juxtaposition struck me as funny. Laughing out loud over my Costco enchilada, I felt guilty. But hey, these days one takes what laughs one can get.

When the chuckling subsided, a sadness crept in. Here were 10,000 idiots risking their lives and those of their loved ones to show their support for this despicable hate-monger. They see their America slipping away, refusing to admit, or maybe not even realizing, that it's already gone, long gone. The goon in the red tie could care less about any of them.

On the day he was inaugurated, I told the kids, "A lot of people are going to die before we're rid of this guy." Little did we know.

And viewed in the light of the next day, maybe there is a connection between animal abuse and Trump followers. Here's what they say:

Why would anyone be cruel to animals?

There can be many reasons. Animal cruelty, like any other form of violence, is often committed by a person who feels powerless, unnoticed or under the control of others. The motive may be to shock, threaten, intimidate or offend others or to demonstrate rejection of society's rules. 

Let's hope this aspect of our current nightmare is over soon. Despite all the encouraging events of last week, it's not a lock. People were laughing four years ago, too.