At the beginning, years ago, it seemed a great bandwagon to jump on, and it was packed with voters who liked the overt racism and the sense that long-nursed wrongs were finally being righted. Their guy hurt “the right people” which helped ease the pain he was inflicting on them. And then a real crisis came and they saw that the Great And Powerful Odd was just a mean old man endlessly whining in the corner with a bunch of semi-serious adults who kept his bowing ball out of the gutter.

Then he led an insurrection attempt and the courtiers realized things had gone too far.

But the desire to boot lick isn’t satisfied by anything other than, well, boot licking, and as the years went on they all concocted and refined their rationale for getting the band back together. And having a Black woman running for president reminded them of the awful years they spent having to suffer the authority of a Black man in the White House, so they went back to their people. This time they were armed with his long list of grievances and their voters were ready.

There was a problem though:  lots of them really hated him themselves. They hated his stupidity, his boorishness, his impotent anger, his constant belittlement of them (for they knew he was their inferior in every way), his pettiness, and most of all his pathological need to be at the center of everything. But they believed the new set of circus clowns around him had better ringleaders this time, and they committed to selling him to us. They honestly believed that the people who now funded their activities were Ubermen, capable of doing things that no one else could do.

It became clear that Ubermen were just weirdos with good PR departments and a press that increasingly covered for them as they bought up all the media outlets. But a large swath of us remained unconvinced, so they degraded themselves in televised meeting after meeting glorifying their Duh Fuhrer and hoped the repetition of nonsense that got him reelected would work on the rest of us.

Once it was clear it wouldn’t work they stepped up their efforts:  his face on a coin, his face on banners outside of government buildings, his name on beloved institutions as he tried to steal love and respect to fill his empty self. When we didn’t love him, he got mad and knocked down part of The People’s House. During this time one of their weirdos died and they tried like hell to make us to love him too, this time as a martyr, but we didn’t.

At the same time, the circus clowns around him began dropping their juggling balls. We found out that his involvement in a pedophile ring wasn’t just a fringe conspiracy theory. Elections all around the country at the smallest to largest local levels moved toward the Dems. Then he began his unlawful wars and attacks on other countries, on unarmed fishermen, and on Iranian school girls. The price of everything went up during a stupid trade war, and then gas prices started to rise for no reason other that he needed a quick hit of dopamine, the kind of quick hit that only raw violence could satisfy for him. And we recoiled further.

He began to become physically damaged as well, with a skeevy rash on his neck and puffy black hands, a kind of Bizarro World Dorian Grey. And then he decided he needed to fight with the American pope, which was a ham-fisted way to crack his Catholic constituency. Never bet against an American pope.

Which brings us back to Saturday. And the courtiers found out the truth:  no one really cared. No one cared what might happen to him, or to his circus clowns, or to his ringmasters, or (most frighteningly) to them. And their efforts to fuel The Great Outrage Machine failed. The Build The Ballroom mania met with resounding ridicule over the clumsy way it was rolled out. They found out that the whataboutism didn’t whatabout this time:

They tried to make Jimmy Kimmel the villain again, but even their own supporters weren’t buying that:

The Megyn Kelly Wrap-Up Show follows Kelly’s show each day and features podcaster Emily Jashinsky answering questions from listeners. While some callers agreed with Kelly’s indictment of Kimmel, calling the joke “wrong” or “egregious,” others countered her interpretation. 

• • One caller said, “It pains me to say I did not get offended by the joke, and I thought it was kind of funny.” The caller added, “I want to say that it’s egregious. I really do. But that particular joke, I mean, I’m sorry, maybe it’s dark humor, but it’s kind of funny.” 
  • Another caller said that the joke was “in poor taste,” but added, “Do I think he should be fired?  No. I don’t.”
  • A third caller said, “I actually thought that joke was exactly what it was. It was a joke. Our president tells jokes all the time.” The caller continued, “I thought it was a really funny joke. He is old and she is with somebody that’s more than half her age, less than half her age. I mean, that’s a joke.” 
  • A fourth caller said, “You could think Jimmy’s funny, you could think he’s not funny. I don’t think ABC should cancel him over this.” The caller added, “I mean, the violence knows no side.  So we all need to do a better job and toning down this rhetoric.” 

So if their voters aren’t buying it, why should we be?

I’ll leave you with this: