PARDON THE KRAKEN

A few days ago the Dow closed above 30,000 for the first time. Donald Trump held a brief press conference to celebrate that event. He thanked everybody (those in his administration, at least) for making it happen.

The "sacred" number (as he called it) had been achieved. Nobody knew anything like that was even possible! Amazing stuff, right?

(Trump is adept at telling folks what they know, even when they don't really know it.)

During the last part of the 2020 campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly declared that if Joe Biden won the election, the market would crash. For some reason, he failed to mention this during his 64-second press conference.

Not that he's especially adverse to admitting mistakes. But since it's literally impossible for him to make a mistake (being a genius and everything), admitting he made a mistake is not just difficult, it's forever off the table.

Given his astonishing mental prowess, I'm surprised he didn't make the connection. Not only did the market not crash, it did the exact opposite of crashing—which is proof he'd been right all along.

That position might need some explaining.

Here's how the gears of logic mesh to squeeze out the finest of alternate realities: The stock market didn't crash for the simple reason that Joe Biden didn't win the election.

Get it? The market was weighing in on the hoax election controversy, landing squarely on Trump's side. The surging market backed his oft-stated position that the election was rigged against him by the Dems.

That 30,000 Dow close was proof Trump won the election! You might even say it's the best proof the man has. At least, the best he's produced so far.

In reality, of course, the market was reacting favorably to two bits of news: 1) despite the fact Donald Trump had yet to concede defeat, the transition to the Biden administration had finally begun, and 2) the medical community would be in a position to start inoculations of healthcare workers, first responders, and old folks within the next few weeks.

The medicos have multiple anti-covid vaccines of 95% effectiveness—the best possible outcome at the most desperate of pandemic times. Turns out, that flickering glow at the end of the tunnel was not the headlight of Nick Cage's Ghost Rider motorcycle after all.

This doesn't mean the president is done calling fraud on the election. Despite a great many embarrassing failures in various courtrooms, and the falling away of his legal team (mostly leaving Rudy Giuliani, he of the streaming hair dye), Trump maintains the position there was massive and systematic corruption that led to Biden becoming the apparent winner—but not the real winner (though time will tell).

He says they have proof tens of thousands—maybe millions—of fake votes.

Sidney Powell, one of Trump's previous lawyers (she also represents ex-security adviser Michael Flynn; his recent pardon proves she's good, right?), says she's about to release the Kraken, says she'll be going all Biblical on the election fraud evil-doers. Starting in Georgia, probably. Starting soon. Real soon. Any friggin' moment now...

(Even Fox News has trouble believing this stuff.)

Meanwhile, Trump's own voluminous proof of massive fraud is apparently wedged into the same Resolution Desk drawer as his tax returns and the Republican health plan bill. Unfortunately, he can't get at it just now because the drawer is stuck.

No doubt another damnable plot perpetrated by the Dems!

RUNAWAY EGO

Well, the election is over and it's not clear if we have a new president or not. Or at least, it's unclear to Donald Trump.

Some say the man will never concede, that he'll just fade away to Mar-a-Lago and blister his fingers in maximum-rage Twitter mode, spending the rest of his life in the grievous complaint zone.

Or worse: The 2020 presidential campaign will blend seamlessly into the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump trying another path to achieve his second helping of sickly-sweet political pudding.

And success there might not be a major problem for him.

More people voted for Trump this time than in 2016. A lot more. Not only did the last four years change few minds, a deeper dredging of the American outback pried even more folks out of the muck with whatever it takes to vote for the demonstrably worst president ever.

Unfortunately, we're dealing with human beings here, arguably the stupidest and meanest creatures in the universe. We're the people who think we know things. But this only works because we make up for being stupid by being delusional.

Our first delusion is that we're not stupid at all. We're convinced we're really quite smart. We know lots of stuff, okay? In fact, we're so good at knowing things, we know the Unknowable. With the devastating result that billions of humans around the globe think they know all about God.

(In reality, nobody knows anything about God. Toss your Bibles and your Qurans into that ocean of blood we've been contributing to for thousands of years. We're on our own out here. I did say stupid and mean, right?)

Our second fatal delusion is that everything in our heads is true. Everywhere we look, we see proof. Or so it seems to us. But for that process to pay off, we need to be terminally stupid. Lucky for us, we actually are that stupid, so we're able to set the bar for proof right down there in the gutter. And jump over it with ease. Just don't try to explain how it is you know what you know. That way lies madness.

If few people changed their minds about Donald Trump, the previous few paragraphs suggest the reason: To a close approximation, human beings don't have minds. Instead, we have imaginary minds, where we do imaginary thinking.

Donald Trump's search for non-existent voter fraud is another of his Bizarro World attempts to save the country by destroying it. I understand the Lt. Governor of Texas has offered a million dollar reward for proof of election fraud. Good going!

With a million bucks at stake, I'm pretty sure we'll get some sort of proof of some level of fraud. But not enough to change the the results of the election. Folks would need a much bigger payday to manufacture that amount of "proof." Would you be willing to spend a couple years in prison for $10,000,000?

Stand back for a flood of skeezy applicants.

But it's not all fun and games out here in Endless Election Land. Joe Biden may be substantially hamstrung in his ability to govern this country when millions of Americans are convinced he isn't the legitimate president. And if it turns out he's prevented from performing his job effectively, those same idiots will champion that fact as proof he shouldn't be president.

And maybe they're right.

When all is said and done, we may find we'd have been better off to give the red-faced baby another four years and get it over with. The longer Trump remains a corrosive force in American politics, the worse for us all.

Including Republicans. Especially Republicans.

A recent poll reports three percent of Americans think Donald Trump actually won the election. That may not sound like much, but it comes out to nearly ten million people. You think a collection of pumped-up zealots that size can't cripple this country? Half of them are probably armed. If so, they would represent a population three and a half times the number of active duty US military personnel. (And only a relative handful of those folks hump a long gun to work every morning. Somebody has to push all that paper around.)

Proud Boys, stand by the phone and wait for a robocall from destiny.

Trump is a charismatic sociopath powered by a diseased and over-inflated ego. If that thing ever left his body, there'd be nothing in his footprints but a puddle of hairspray and bronzer.

Some folks find that irresistible.

Update (Friday, noon): Now that all the states have been called in this election, with Biden (unnecessarily) winning both Arizona and Georgia, and Republican legal challenges are fast petering out, Donald Trump has little chance of reelection. Now we just have to hope he doesn't sell the nuclear launch codes to Putin and "accidentally" burn down the White House on his way out the door.