the Naptime edition

NINE Facts, ONE Lie
Issue #32

1. See, here's the thing. Joe Biden WAS way too old (77) to run for president the first time. But he was a safe, normal guy who had endless connections after 36 years in the Senate and was pretty much the anodyne to the Donald J. Madness of the previous four years.

2. Joe Biden had many flaws, including age, public speaking, forgetfulness, an over-dependence on his advisors, a tendency to pander to the Identitarian Left, a tendency to be cowed by the Lunatic Right, bad taste in Vice Presidents, bad taste in sons, an appalling border policy, and a lack of decisiveness in immediately sending more support and weapons to Ukraine. Among other things.

3. I'm not sure if it's an actual crime, but it is genuinely criminal that the people surrounding Biden went to such lengths to hide his obvious infirmities despite them already being obvious. He never should have been allowed to run for a second term. When he finally was forced to step away, there should have been an open convention. If Kamala Harris won then, fine, but she wouldn't have, and Josh Shapiro would probably be president right now.

4. See, there is common ground between the Left and the Right! Really, the biggest problem with America, which mainly falls in the adult-diapered lap of Rupert Murdoch, is that we have been cynically deluged with decades of propaganda insisting we are enemies, and told a story of how Republicans and Democrats are each trying to cartoonishly "destroy America". This division is not only the first step in the playbook of Fascism, but a blank check for Kleptocracy, which we now watch in real time every day. Also, "America" is not a thing, it's a concept.

5. When a reasonably noble conception becomes two entirely opposite and ugly conceptions shared by one people (group of monkeys), it's called Terminal Schizophrenia.

6. Your MAGA uncle is not your enemy. Your Trans son is not your enemy. I am not your enemy. Unless you're Pete Hegseth, you are not my enemy. In the end, everyone's just trying to get through another day hauling around the wheelbarrow of bricks that is life, both an honorable and delusional pursuit. Some wheelbarrows are heavier than others, some are manufactured, and Jeff Bezos pays brown people to haul his bricks for him. In the end, having different notions as to what direction to aim for the best version of America possible is not grist for Civil War, its Civility.

7. As cornpone as it may seem, compromise and teamwork are the reason that our species, Homo Sapiens, even exists in 2025, let alone retains the option to destroy the raft we all communally float upon on out of pique. There's a good chance that, being swifter and smarter, our ancestors worked together to hunt, kill, dominate, and probably eat Neanderthals and Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus and Denisovans and the rest of them. Hey, protein is protein. We are ONE species, despite what con men tell us daily.

8. If you read anywhere between four to six pages of history, going all the way back to the Byzantine empire, the Ultra Wealthy stayed wealthy, at least until their civilizations collapsed, by setting the poor/slaves/wealth-aspiring middle class against one another.

9. And then, during the Black Friday Walmart distraction, toga-pocketed everything not nailed down or stigmata'd to a cross.

10. No Senator or Congressman or President really has any clue what's going on. The better informed are generally ignored, since pessimistic appraisals have been a messenger-killing offense since Xerxes, but really there are just too many of us, government is too unwieldy, very little is actually predictable, and it may be just as true that running huge deficits is good for the economy as it is bad that China owns the paper on our huge deficit. Talk to Alan Greenspan. Or don't.

11. In the end, all you can really hope for in your elected officials is non-dogmatic competence.

12. Which currently is a near-impossible ask. Dogma and incompetence now seem a prerequisite for election in the age of phone-addled culture basing its preferences on a combination of fact-free rage and AI comfort food.

13. No party or executive order or court justice or policy position or swamp-drain is going to save or destroy America. It's all frosting on the shitcake of inevitability, and everyone has a varying tolerance for cake made of shit, although there's a reason Kash Patel always looks like he needs to get busy with the toothbrush.

14. That said, Donald J. Trump is 79, soon to be 80, and he is falling asleep a lot. In public. While people next to him are speaking. Can we pound a stake into the heart of partisan thinking by collectively admitting that it's true? And how it's exactly the same or worse as what a multi-billion dollar cable platform just spent four years screaming about?

15. Many Americans, correctly, complained that Joe Biden was too old to be president. You may not want to concede that he also pulled us out of the covid disaster culturally and economically, that the predicted debilitating inflation never happened, that he passed an essential infrastructure bill that every Republican is still cashing in on in their own districts despite voting against it, that there is no alternative republican health plan, and how, like him or not, Sleepy Joe generally calmed things down on the world stage simply by appearing relatively sane and predictable.

16. Why can we not all concede that what Donald J. Trump is doing, or at least sleeping through, on camera, every single day, is very definitely happening on camera every single day?
17. There should be an age limit for the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Presidency. I suggest that any candidate's final term has to be complete by 74, at which point they are ineligible or gently retired.

18. Sleepy Don has never looked more haggard, flaccid, tired, petulant, cranky, fleshy, moist, and incoherent. There are, of course, other factors in play, including a lifetime of giddily displaying many of those attributes for all assembled, but mainly it's because he's REALLY OLD.

19. How can a country ever run, regardless of party, wealth, status, celebrity, profession, ethnicity, country of origin, or musical preference if 50% of us, at all times, are trained to reflexively deny what is inconvenient while conveniently defending what is obviously untrue?

20. Vladimir Putin, for example, would love to destroy America. Adherents of either party almost certainly prefer a highly functional America that more directly serves their personal interests. Those two intentionalities are not equal.
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21. If you look closely at the picture above, you can tell that Donald J. Trump is dreaming about rape.