This May Be A Copout, But Seems Like We’re At A Part Of The Story That Doesn’t Call For A Narrator
By: Eric J Scholl
Tags: Politics, Donald Trump, Ukraine, Impeachment, Elections

This May Be A Copout, But Seems Like We’re At A Part Of The Story That Doesn’t Call For A Narrator

Trump gets caught asking the President of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, if he wants more U.S. missiles. And an invite to the White House. Since then, he’s gone around asking a bunch of other foreign leaders for help getting dirt on Biden in exchange for whatever, as if that will make it normal.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani is mixed up in there somewhere, because Trump doesn’t trust his own intelligence people to chase down the conspiracy theories he wants them to chase, and find what he wants them to find.

The President offers hearty congratulations to China for 70 years of Communism (and BTW, investigate Biden). Trump claims to care more about the military than anybody. But if that’s not a slap in the face to anybody who fought (or have relatives who fought) in Korea or Vietnam, we don’t know what is.

We hate hate hate polls. Here’s a good example how come: Trump’s popularity is up according to polls. Yet according again to polls, a majority of Americans favor impeachment and removal from office. How’s that possible? We don’t know. All we know is Republicans are keeping their wagon hitched to the former, and rolling along with the theory that if Trump was “Presidential” (i.e. was deferential to things like the law) he wouldn’t have been elected President. While we keep saying at some point however much you like Trump busting things up and not caring about sh*t one bit, at some point it’s just too much crazy.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, does Bernie Sanders having a heart attack put him out of the running? (In Vegas of all places, where giant billboards advertise how much wait time there currently is at various hospital emergency rooms.) He seemed so indestructible til now, with a stamina to rival, well, Trump.

Things do seem to be breaking for Elizabeth Warren. We can’t believe all the Trump stuff won’t hurt Biden — fair or not — even though it doesn’t seem to have yet (according to polls).

And she often does seem to have luck on her side, not unlike Trump, and has won races she “wasn’t supposed to”, also not unlike Trump. Is she transformational enough to really inspire the American populace in an Obama-like (or Trump-like) way? We don’t know.

But behind her progressive and well-thought-out stances on many, many things, there’s a real politician. Which is frankly why we don’t like her, even though she’s the Senator from our state, Massachusetts. And no, it’s not because she’s a woman; we love Kamala Harris.

Warren’s widely disliked in Massachusetts, mainly because people feel she had always been more interested in running for President than representing the people of the State of Massachusetts.

We don’t like her because she won’t come out and admit “Medicare for All” will mean higher taxes for all. It’s the only way to do it. Bernie does. Warren automatically descends into “politician speak” about “overall costs.” We really can’t stand that.

But, we’re beginning to think it may work to her benefit: if she’s elected, unless Democrats also retake the Senate, there’s no way she’ll be able to implement a lot of her agenda, and she knows it. She can lay a lot of cornerstones, and she’s very good at doing that. But the fact that in reality she may not be at all as radical as she’s making herself out to be, may make her a better candidate, if she’s able to get that message across.

In that context, why admit to raising taxes when Republicans will never let that happen? It’s risking political suicide for something you’re not going to do, because you probably won’t be able to do. So her stubborn deflection of the question may be the right strategy after all…

Meanwhile, you may have noticed we haven’t published for a few days. We are traveling, for quite a long time. Right now we are in a place so remote we have WiFi for 20 minutes a day if we’re lucky. And we may choose to keep it that way for a bit.

We’re in Iriomote, at the very, very South of Japan. It’s interesting, because people here make it very clear that they want us here, but they also don’t want us here. They are friendly, but also not friendly. They make it very difficult to get around. The Japanese government is pushing for it to be designated as a “World Heritage Site”, but no one we’ve talked to here wants it. That’s because even though that designation is intended for conservation and preservation, they fear that it will in effect put this place on the map, and inevitably lead to more interest and development, not less. Maybe it would protect the endangered mountain wild cat, but maybe it’ll also mean tourists by the busload who will need places to stay and play (golf courses?) One thought occurs to us every time we get into that kind of conversation, which is a lot: Trump would never understand that.