Don’t just get outraged, get active!

I just received these mailings regarding the vote (51/50) a few moments ago by Republican Senators to ensure the deaths of millions of Americans through the murderous “Trumpcare” plan. Don’t just sit there and watch your grannie and your sick child die from lack of affordable health care. GET UP and get rid of these murderous millionaire Senators who have their own every health need and other financial need met by the taxes we pay to cover their extensive salaries and benefits. These are heartless thugs who don’t care a dull penny about you and me and whether we suffer and die from their greed and selfishness. GET them out of office!  

NO DESPAIR

Anna Galland, MoveOn.org Political Action <moveon-help@list.moveon.org>

Today at 2:44 PM

I’m as angry as you are after watching the GOP vote to advance Trumpcare a few moments ago. Their plan is heartless and cruel. Today’s vote has sent a cold chill down the spines of those who stand to lose their health care or face higher premiums if Trumpcare actually becomes law.

Dear MoveOn member,

I’m as angry as you are after watching the GOP vote to advance Trumpcare a few moments ago.

Their plan is heartless and cruel. Today’s vote has sent a cold chill down the spines of those who stand to lose their health care or face higher premiums if Trumpcare actually becomes law.

We’re going to fight like hell this week to defeat this historically unpopular repeal, and that means we need to show vulnerable GOP senators who are up for reelection in 2018 that there will be consequences for voting to take health care away from millions of us and our brothers, sisters, and friends.

Can you rush an urgent contribution of $3 TODAY to help us accelerate our electoral organizing strategy in states like Nevada and Arizona and fuel our grassroots resistance to Trumpcare? Help us send a powerful message that if you vote to take away people’s health care, then we’re going to vote to take away your job.

Trumpcare has been a political nightmare for Republicans planning to run in 2018, with Democrats leading in swing states by a whopping 10 points.

A 10-point lead could turn the tides in a midterm election year, which is the kind of thing that might scare Republicans into doing the right thing on health care.

On top of strengthening our electoral strategy targeted at vulnerable Republican senators, we’re doing:

• Emergency alerts to activists with Republican senators. Over the next 24 hours, we will use advanced analytics and phone technology to empower volunteer teams to email, call, and send text messages to millions of folks who are represented by a Republican senator—and urge them to keep the phone lines of those Republicans ringing off the hook. We will also invite them to in-person rallies and events outside Senate offices.
• Emergency video production and online ads. We will produce rapid-response digital advertisements targeting vulnerable senators—like Republican Dean Heller of Nevada—and run online ads to make sure that their constituents know what’s happening.
• Save Our Health Care rallies on Capitol Hill. We are rallying outside the Capitol to focus national media on the grassroots opposition to this bill.

The hard truth is that we’re heading into the fight of our lives—but one that we can win if progressives come together right here, right now to create a massive backlash against Trump and Republicans for this catastrophic bill.

Will you rush a donation of $3 today to help us fight back and defeat Trumpcare, while showing the Republicans there will be consequences for their votes come 2018?

This is not a moment to despair. It’s not over yet. We need to keep calling, writing, marching, and shouting until the Republicans stop trying to take away our health care.

Thanks so much for all you do.

–Anna, Ilya, Alex, Gabby, and the rest of the team

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump’s agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation’s pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?

Click here to chip in $3, or whatever you can afford.

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PAID FOR BY MOVEON . ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

 

from Daily Kos:

Senate Republicans just voted, 51-50, to move forward with their plan to repeal Obamacare. We expect a final vote on their bill within days.

If you are angry about this and want to take action, but don’t have any Republican senators you can call, here’s what you can do.

At Daily Kos, we have created a fundraising page where you can give money to the Democratic nominee running against the three most-endangered Senate Republicans in the 2018 elections: Dean Heller of Nevada, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Ted Cruz of Texas. All three voted to move forward with the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare.

Whoever the Democratic nominee running against these endangered Republicans ends up being, your money will go to that candidate.

Contribute now in to defeat Republicans Dean Heller, Jeff Flake and Ted Cruz for voting to take health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans.

The final vote on the Senate bill is expected in a few days. We have to make a statement, loud and clear, that any endangered Republican who votes to repeal Obamacare will lose their next election.

Please, chip in $3 to defeat Republicans for voting to repeal Obamacare now.

Keep fighting,
Chris Bowers
Executive Campaign Director, Daily Kos

Daily Kos, PO Box 70036, Oakland, CA, 94612.

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Tomorrow – celebrating the Divine Feminine

Tomorrow, Wednesday July 26, 2017, the annual astronomically-based (solar-lunar) special features of the day this year, as observed in the ancient Vedic calendar, include two concurrent, overlapping auspicious “holidays” or holy days of special spiritual observance and celebration. Dozens of gathered groups in India and around the world, each consisting of thousands of traditional hereditary Vedic pandits personally trained by His Holiness Maharishi, will engage in ancient Vedic yagyas, ritual ceremonial performances of chanting and thanksgiving-offerings conducted with the sincere, deep intention for enhancing world peace, and for the fulfillment of collective and individual well-being on all levels of life. The special qualities of natural law that are particularly lively on this day are especially conducive to the following qualities in our human life:

26 July • Madhusrava Tritiya • Day of Mother Divine

Quality of Natural Law: Helping to restore the perfection of life, which is life in bliss consciousness

• Life in bliss
• Fulfillment of desires
• Peace of mind
• Improved finances
• Perfect health and recovery from illness
• Improved possibility of finding a suitable spouse
• Harmony and stability in married life
• Removal of resistance
• 26 July • Vinayaki Sri Ganesh Chaturthi • Day of Ganesh Quality of Natural Law:
• Removing obstacles
• Freedom from limitations
• Removal of serious problems
• Elimination of psychological fear
• Gaining knowledge
• Harmony in married life
• Good fortune
• Wealth

To derive maximum benefit from the auspicious influences of natural laws lively on this day it is best of course to engage in one’s regular daily routine of morning bath, and morning and evening meditation, yoga and breathing, yoga-sidhis practice, and personal/household puja – all with the particular intention of aligning oneself in harmony with the evolutionary laws of nature specially lively on this day. Additional benefits accrue from attending and/or sponsoring Vedic yagyas performed on this day, and even from dedicating one’s intentions to support for this wonderfully evolutionary activity passed on from the Himalayan rishis and maharishis of India’s ancient Vedic civilization. In traditional Vedic families, members who are able will also observe the special vrat involving fasting and special prays for the welfare of others and of all beings.

https://www.maharishijyotishprogram.eu/vedic-calendar/july.html

 

This day is particularly significant to the women of traditional Vedic families.

In many traditional cultures, not entirely unlike in our modern western societies (U.S., etc), women have their own private lives, semi-independent of, and concurrently somewhat parallel with more public lives. However, in cultures such as those of traditional India, Hindu and otherwise, this means that women often have their own individual and communal private spiritual/religious practices and activities largely independent of, and mostly semi-hidden from men. These “women’s-only” spiritual paths provide women with a chance to enjoy a rich means of spiritual growth and celebration in freedom from many of the gender-discriminative restrictions of public religious life which is so often dominated by male figures, male clergy/clerics, male attitudes, prejudices, superstitions, ignorance and indifference, etc.

Among traditional Indian households, especially Hindu, but also Parsi, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, or other, this private, semi-“secret” life of women’s spiritual practice and understanding is passed down orally from generation to generation by elder members of an extended family. For the most part the women will also devoutly follow the teachings given by revered male figures as well, but when away from the view of male members of the household and community, they will carry out special ancient practices preserved within their matrilineal tradition, both alone and in groups. The point isn’t that these spiritual paths are secret, just that they are mostly “private” — for women only (though witnessed to some extent by young boys still under the hour by hour care of their mothers and older sisters and aunts and grandmothers, etc; after a certain age, boys are no longer included in these activities and observances).

The ancient Vedic tradition is held to be the underlying basis not only for much of Hindu practice and understanding, but also for much of the Parsi religion (Zoroastrianism), Jainism and Buddhism, and through aspects shared from later Hindu expressions, also for many spiritual aspects of Sikhism, and Islam as practiced in India, especially Indian Sufism. Traditional forms of Indian Jewish and Indian Christian spirituality are also influenced by ancient Vedic teachings and outlooks absorbed earlier into Hinduism and the other religions of India. The women’s-only features of each of these religious groups share many parallel and sometimes identical features in their internal and external spiritual practices and expression in the form of meditation, contemplation, prayer, fasting and purification procedures, ceremonial rituals, etc.

According to the Vedic calendar of annual daily spiritual observance, the astronomical day that this year falls on July 26 (tomorrow, Wednesday), has a number of features particular to traditional women’s practice. Among other features, this involves traditional household puja ceremonies (thanksgiving offerings) performed by the women of an extended family and also special women guests, prayers chanted and offered for the benefits listed above, and other observances.

Here are some images of some of the ceremonial/devotional aspects of this day as observed in previous years by some Indian women. Enjoy.

 

 

http://www.hindu-blog.com/2010/08/madhusrava-tritiya-madhu-shravani-teej.html

http://hindupad.com/madhushravani-tritiya-2011-madhusravani-vrat-2011-date/

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GOD’s dice game, a Nepali folktale

This one’s for my fellow lovers of Nepal.

From Ears on Fire: Snapshot Essays in a World of Poets, by Gary Mex Glazner (2002).

Nangi

Gurkha God Dice

Three young girls peek out from under their shawls. Behind the girls lies the Dhaulagiri mountain range, filling the sky with white. We ask for Mr. Budhe Pun.

The girls’ mother yells in Nepali, “He’s in his cowshed.”

We are in the village of Nangi, in the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. The village is in a valley ringed by 15,000 foot plus mountains. This morning, the sky is cloudless with a sting of cold in the air.

The night before I had read a book of folk tales produced by the village school and one of the teachers has agreed to introduce me to Pun, a storyteller and ex-Gurkha soldier who served in the British army for 30 years. The Gurkhas are legendary fearless fighters, with incredible strength gained as children playing up and down mountain trails.

On the way down to the cowshed, the teacher tells me the school has a website with all the folk tales. We have walked for three days, six to eight hours a day, gained thousands of feet in elevation and now I learn I could have stayed home and read the stories on my computer!

We walk down a cobble path to a small stone house with a black slate roof. The teacher calls out. No answer. He goes around back and returns saying, “Pun is milking his cow and will be right out.” A few minutes later a short, slight man, not the warrior I had imagined, rounds the corner. We shake hands and I ask if he has time to tell us a story. He laughs and rubs his head, he as been drinking raksi, the local rice brew, and doubts if he can remember any. Then a boy brings out a straw mat, and we all sit down. Within minutes, Pun is telling a tale. Surrounded by chickens and cows, sitting on the ground outside the simple house, it feels as if we have slipped back hundreds of years. The story goes like this:

“Many, many years ago there was a poor boy without parents. He lived in an old straw hut. He was very hungry but could not get any food. One day the boy went to the cliff and hanging down on the side of the cliff among some rocks was a plant that the boy could eat. He climbed down the cliff and began to eat. When he was finished eating, he realized the trail was too steep to go back up and too steep to go down.

He didn’t know what to do, and then he found a cave in which he could take shelter. He went into the cave and began to weep. He knew he would die. How could he get out? He cried even louder. As luck would have it, God was passing the cave and heard the boy crying. God asked why the boy was so full of tears and sorrow.

The boy said, “I came here to eat the plant but now I cannot get down or up and have no parents. Surely I will die here.” So God took pity on the boy and helped him down. Then God said, “Would you like to play a game of dice? You can have three rolls and whatever number comes up, you will be granted that amount of things you have wished for.”

The boy rolled a seven and he imagined a palace. Suddenly a great palace appeared with seven floors. He rolled again and the dice came up three. He had imagined riches and there were three piles of gold, silver and jewels. His third roll he wished for love, and six beautiful women appeared. He was as rich and happy as any king.

In the village where the boy lived there was a rich man who had heard of the boy’s new wealth. The rich man went to visit the boy. He asked him how he became so wealthy. He told the man of how he went to the cliff to find food, how God had helped him and of the rolling of the dice. The man wanted to play the dice game. God came down and gave the man the dice. The man went home to his wife and told her about the game and asked her what he should wish for. His wife didn’t believe the man, so she cursed at him and turned away in anger. The rich man was so mad he threw the dice down, cursing back at his wife. He became his curse, turning into a giant penis, covered with hundreds of smaller penises.”

(Mr Pun stops speaking. The four men and women and five children who have gathered roll with laughter. This is not a story told in mixed company. Embarrassed, he begins the tale again).

“The rich man throws the dice and wishes all the penises away. But he forgets about one thing and when he turns back into a man, his own penis is gone. Now he has only one roll left, and he wishes his penis back.”

The moral of the story: beware of gods bearing dice.

 

Gurkha God Dice

This story took place on a twelve day trek on the Annapurna trail. We had an entourage of porters led by one guide, Mansingh. While talking about our families we told Mansingh the concept of “time-out” in disciplining children. I believe I may be the first person put in “time-out” in the Himalayas.

Story translated by Mansingh Gurung & Gary Mex Glazner.

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Michael Moore warned us good

I Warned You Trump Would Win

By Michael Moore, Michael Moore’s Facebook Page

24 July 17

 

ne year ago today I wrote this open letter trying to warn my fellow Americans that Trump was going to win the election that was less than four months away — and that he would do it by winning Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Needless to say, I didn’t do a very good job convincing those who were sure Hillary would win and that we had nothing to worry about with Trump the Idiot on the ballot.

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Friends:

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, ‘cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: “PRESIDENT TRUMP.”

Never in my life have I wanted to be proven wrong more than I do right now.

I can see what you’re doing right now. You’re shaking your head wildly – “No, Mike, this won’t happen!” Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this!

You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts – “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!” – or logic – “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” – is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, “oh, a tire just blew out,” or, “wow, who’s playing with firecrackers?” because you don’t want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It’s the same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said “a small plane accidentally flew into the World Trade Center.” We want to – we need to – hope for the best because, frankly, life is already a shit show and it’s hard enough struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We can’t handle much more bad news. So our mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the curb: “Watch out!,” they shouted. “There are people on the sidewalk!”

Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen – and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.

Don’t get me wrong. I have great hope for the country I live in. Things are better. The left has won the cultural wars. Gays and lesbians can get married. A majority of Americans now take the liberal position on just about every polling question posed to them: Equal pay for women – check. Abortion should be legal – check. Stronger environmental laws – check. More gun control – check. Legalize marijuana – check. A huge shift has taken place – just ask the socialist who won 22 states this year. And there is no doubt in my mind that if people could vote from their couch at home on their X-box or PlayStation, Hillary would win in a landslide.

But that is not how it works in America. People have to leave the house and get in line to vote. And if they live in poor, Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, they not only have a longer line to wait in, everything is being done to literally stop them from casting a ballot. So in most elections it’s hard to get even 50% to turn out to vote. And therein lies the problem for November – who is going to have the most motivated, most inspired voters show up to vote? You know the answer to this question. Who’s the candidate with the most rabid supporters? Whose crazed fans are going to be up at 5 AM on Election Day, kicking ass all day long, all the way until the last polling place has closed, making sure every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Bob and Joe and Billy Bob and Billy Joe and Billy Bob Joe) has cast his ballot?  That’s right. That’s the high level of danger we’re in. And don’t fool yourself — no amount of compelling Hillary TV ads, or outfacting him in the debates or Libertarians siphoning votes away from Trump is going to stop his mojo.

Here are the 5 reasons Trump is going to win:

1. Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.  I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich.

   From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!

   And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

2. The Last Stand of the Angry White Man. Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch! There were warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender traitor, imposing Title IX on us, the rule that said girls in school should get an equal chance at playing sports. Then they let them fly commercial jets. Before we knew it, Beyoncé stormed on the field at this year’s Super Bowl (our game!) with an army of Black Women, fists raised, declaring that our domination was hereby terminated! Oh, the humanity!

   That’s a small peek into the mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are done. This monster, the “Feminazi,”the thing that as Trump says, “bleeds through her eyes or wherever she bleeds,” has conquered us — and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around? After that it’ll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted human rights and a fuckin’ hamster is going to be running the country. This has to stop!

3. The Hillary Problem. Can we speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me state, I actually like Hillary – a lot – and I think she has been given a bad rap she doesn’t deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me promise her that I would never vote for her again. To date, I haven’t broken that promise. For the sake of preventing a proto-fascist from becoming our commander-in-chief, I’m breaking that promise. I sadly believe Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military action. She’s a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump’s psycho finger will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done.

   Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don’t like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8^th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird seat.

4. The Depressed Sanders Vote. Stop fretting about Bernie’s supporters not voting for Clinton – we’re voting for Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will vote for Hillary this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in ’08 who then voted for Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm that should be going off is that while the average Bernie backer will drag him/herself to the polls that day to somewhat reluctantly vote for Hillary, it will be what’s called a “depressed vote” – meaning the voter doesn’t bring five people to vote with her. He doesn’t volunteer 10 hours in the month leading up to the election. She never talks in an excited voice when asked why she’s voting for Hillary. A depressed voter. Because, when you’re young, you have zero tolerance for phonies and BS. Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly having to pay for music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of those big-ass portable phones. They’re not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her  — and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket – that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote.
5. The Jesse Ventura Effect. Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s one of the few places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there’s not even a friggin’ time limit. You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad. And in the same way like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like. Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do this because they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could. Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump.

Coming back to the hotel after appearing on Bill Maher’s Republican Convention special this week on HBO, a man stopped me. “Mike,” he said, “we have to vote for Trump. We HAVE to shake things up.” That was it. That was enough for him. To “shake things up.” President Trump would indeed do just that, and a good chunk of the electorate would like to sit in the bleachers and watch that reality show.

(Next week I will post my thoughts on Trump’s Achilles Heel and how I think he can be beat.)

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