Joe Biden and Dark Shadows
The political goofs among us have made some pretty crazy accusations in our time. But at least nobody of any national significance has, to my knowledge, ever accused a major party presidential nominee of being a Communist...
Oh, wait. Of course, they have. I worked full-time in the McGovern campaign. How could I have forgotten?
Well, a Nazi...
On second thought, I guess lots of folks did suggest that Donald Trump was a Nazi. That, of course, was silly- even if Richard Spencer did end a far-right rally by leading the attendees in a chorus of "Hail, Trump!" during the 2016 campaign while they all gave the Nazi salute, and even if his supporters did post memes of Trump in a German uniform in the act of gassing Bernie Sanders and (wait for it!) Ben Shapiro- and another of Shapiro, now a Trump apologist, in a concentration camp inmate's uniform, supposedly taken at "Camp Trump."
As I've always said, Trump is a self-obsessed nationalist authoritarian, but he doesn't share Hitler's malignant insanity. He isn't out to kill anybody. Perhaps he's the Cheeto Benito, the Mango Mussolini. He's an authoritarian, a bully, and something of a clown. But he's no Hitler.
In 1800, believe it or not, a supporter of Thomas Jefferson called John Adams a "hideous hermaphrodite." Wow.
An Adams campaign leaflet, in return, accused Jefferson of being "the son of an Indian squaw" (the writer apparently considered that a bad thing; Elizabeth Warren, for one, would have relished the accusation). Stephen Douglass called his 1860 opponent, Abraham Lincoln (aka "The Original Gorilla") "a horrid-looking wretch with an ungainly mass of legs and arms and a hatched face" (Lincoln was invulnerable to insults about his looks. When an opponent once accused him of being "two-faced," he responded, "If I had two faces, do you think I'd be wearing this one?").
A substantial portion of the American public still believes- heaven knows why- that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Granted, his middle name is Hussein, but that was his dad's idea- the dad who really was born in Kenya and really was a Muslim. My gorge always rises a bit when I hear Democrats repeat Michelle Obama's statement, "When they go low, we go high;" Mr. Obama's re-election campaign in 2012 was one of the most vicious and unfair in modern history, painting Mitt Romney as a heartless cross between Ebeneezer Scrooge and Homer Simpson's boss, Mr. Smithers. An Obama-supporting PAC (in fairness, neither the Democratic Party nor the Obama campaign had anything to do with it) even accused Romney of being responsible for a man dying of cancer!
That sort of thing is sad. But it's also very much a part of America's political tradition. A college friend and fellow history major reminded me during a recent presidential campaign that as juvenile and nasty as the personal attacks being tossed back and forth between the campaigns might have been, they were nothing compared to some of the smear campaigns of past years. But still...
Both of this year's candidates have been accused of criminal sexual misconduct. Joe Biden, an old-fashioned, back-slapping politician throughout most of whose career what today is increasingly considered inappropriate touching of females was a socially accepted practice for politicians, has never shied away from hugging, kissing, and touching women- and is now facing the consequences. One former aide, Tara Reade, has accused him of out-and-out digital rape. President Trump, besides having admitted on tape to being a serial sexual harasser, has been sued twice by a woman claiming that he raped her when she was 13 years old at a sex party hosted by Mr. Trump's friend, Jeffrey Epstein and that she was forced to perform lesbian sex acts for his entertainment. She also filed an affidavit from a second woman who claimed to have been an eye-witness to the incident. The suit was dismissed because of filing errors the first time and withdrawn by the woman the second time because she claimed to be receiving threats against her life. A second woman who claims that the President raped her is suing him. He's just gotten the Justice Department somehow involved in his defense and had the case transferred from state to Federal court.
In a pattern that seems familiar given the erratic Mr. Trump's questioning of the condition of Biden's mind (!). Trump supporters on social media seem unaware of their own candidate's vulnerability when unhesitatingly referring to Biden as a "rapist."
Mr. Trump himself jumps the shark pretty much every time he opens his mouth. His accusations are generally absurd and nearly always laughable. Imagine Mr. Trump, of all people, calling Kamara Harris (or anyone else) "nasty!" Mr. Trump expresses pleasure that his fellow conspiracy theorists in QAnon, who believe that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Pope Francis, and the Dalai Lama are involved in a child trafficking ring through which they kidnap kids and sell them into prostitution before finally eating them to obtain the benefits of life-extending chemicals in their blood, "like" him. Rumors of Hillary's involvement in this scheme, somehow being run through a network of pizza parlors, played a role in the 2016 election. I don't even want to think about the toppings on those pizzas!
I have to admit, though, that a couple of recent statements by Mr. Trump enter territory I never expected. First, in Ohio, Mr. Trump said this about Biden:
He's following the radical left agenda.Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He's against God, he's against guns, he's against energy, our kind of energy.
I don't think I've ever heard a politician suggest that his opponent wanted to hurt God. It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Trump thinks that Biden would try to do that. since God is almighty, which would likely make it difficult to hurt Him without His permission. Mr. Trump must think that Joe Biden is awfully powerful. Or awfully persuasive.
But no, it seems:
People that you haven’t heard of. They’re people that are on the streets. They’re people that are controlling the streets. We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend, and in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms with gear and this and that. They’re on a plane.
Joe Biden- and the streets, it seems- are being controlled by thugs wearing black uniforms and gear and this and that, on a plane. People that have something to do with a 1970s Gothic soap opera. That explains everything. Angelique Bouchard, one of the characters in Dark Shadows, was a witch. Nicholas Blair, another character, was a demon. Presumably, they would have been against God, too.
But how would they go about "hurting the Bible?" A Bible, perhaps. But the Bible?" Maybe one of them would stand in front of a church and pose for pictures while holding a Bible upside down? I'm not sure how that would work.
But Dark Shadows! Scary stuff!
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