There must have been some saloon owners marching for Abolition. Not for cynical purposes, either: they were believers. The screechers outside abortion clinics get abortions all the time; shit, they’ll go in for a quick D&C when they’re not even pregnant, they love abortioning so much. Monday morning, though, they’re right back on the sidewalk with their placards and their coats they bought at the outlet store. There’s gotta be a vegan butcher or two. We know these things because we’re speaking of humans, and humans are alone in the animal kingdom in that they are able to hold two mutually exclusionary beliefs at once.
Which brings us to Trumpheads. There have always been Republicans on the bus, ranging all across the right-wing spectrum: from “libertarians who wanted to be left alone to smoke dope and carry machine guns into the mall” to “rich kids who voted GOP because they were from that sort of family” to “just here for the sub rosa racism.” There were “Rockefeller Republicans,” which today are called “Democrats,” and “Reagan Republicans,” which today are called “Democrats when the Dems run someone with more charisma than rotted pork.” None of these Republicans were Trump Republicans. These differing crops of Republican were not based in cruelty. Their actions produced cruel results, don’t get me wrong, but the barbarism wasn’t the point. You’ll remember that the greatest political sage of our times, ‘Ye, didn’t say “George Bush hates black people” because that wouldn’t have been true. Dubya didn’t hate black people, he just couldn’t give a fuck about them. If incarcerating and redlining ’em got him votes and made him and his buddies money, then that’s how the pretzel crumbles. He didn’t care about Jews, either, but it was politically and financially rewarding to be nice to them, so he was.
But this, this Trump thing, this is new. He is not Dubya, nor is he Reagan; he is certainly not Ford. The facile comparison is to Nixon, but the analogy only holds up if you know nothing about history or current events or how to read a personality or anyfuckingthing else. People who compare Trump to Nixon should have church pews dropped on them. There are no points of similarity between Basketball Head and Eisenhower. Hell, I think Eisenhower–if deposited in 2018 via Time Sheath–would straight-up shoot the greasy thief within five minutes of meeting him.
(Afterwards, Eisenhower would make safe his sidearm, relinquish it to the next-ranking officer in the room, and submit himself for arrest. His only defense at his court-martial would be “It needed doing” and he’d be found Not Guilty and then he’d go and build us more highways.)
No, this is new. The President is a giddy liar, a blatant thief, stupid as a dog’s dick, lazy as a dead dog’s dick, and a serial abuser of women. He desires the approval of Billy Bush. He has appointed the worst collection of nitwits, bedshitters, and robber barons–some of whom he is not related to–to his cabinet and staff since Grant hired all his drinking buddies. He shakes down America’s allies and sucks off her enemies. The Piss Pasha lays there in bed all day, eating his cheeseburgers and tweeting at the teevee. He tweets out an alternate reality wherein Hillary Clinton is all-powerful and murderous, like if Thanos hadn’t campaigned in Wisconsin or Michigan. Where Obama personally set fire to white children in the Oval Office. Where huge swathes of Europe are No-Go Zones that feral Muslims have claimed for their own. Where everyone’s lying but him.
And yet Deadheads still follow him. (I will not accuse them of “supporting” him, as the relationship must now be assessed via the viewfinder of the cult: Trump has followers.) Why? Because like I said: human beings are capable of holding two mutually exclusionary beliefs at the same time. Our brains are couple thousand years worth of reasoning wrapped around a whole lot of reptile: we do things we don’t understand, you have to understand. There are men (and Anne Coulter, but close enough) who went to dozens of shows when Garcia was alive, and continue on with all the splintered legacy groups; they surely must have made Deadhead friends during those years, been accepted on the lot.
Like this asshole:
That’s Michael Stoker, and he’s an agriculture attorney. He mostly worked for oil companies, though; I didn’t realize oil counted as a crop, but it comes out of the ground and I didn’t go to law school, so what do I know? Stokey will most likely be working for oil companies again shortly, but for now he’s the new honcho for the EPA’s Region 9. (That’s Hawaii, California, Nevada, and Arizona.) This is the EPA that is still, because we are in hell, headed by Scott Pruitt, who bought a $43,000 soundproof masturbatorium–you didn’t believe that bullshit about “it’s a phone booth,” did you?–and, let’s not forget, keeps trying to sell the National Parks to oil companies. Like, one would suppose, the oil company Michael Stoker used to work for.
What can we do, Enthusiasts? Well, we can vote. Protesting works, sometimes. The lawyers among us may tie him and his land-raping pals up in court forever.
Or you could call him an asshole right to his face. That’s Irvine Meadows. Maybe he’ll be back this year. Don’t drop a church pew on him, at least not anywhere there’s a camera, but you can call him an asshole. First Amendment and all that. You could even–after you’re done calling him an asshole–explain to your friends who Michael Stoker is, and why he’s an asshole, and encourage them to contact their local politician. You could even tell strangers! No one’s really a stranger at a Dead show, are they?
Except for this asshole. Make this asshole feel like a stranger.
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