“Fore score and several years ago our Father who art in Heaven, rammed the manparts, he took the airports, he popped the pop tarts, and it was wow, it was so violent and so evil and there were so many birds, and these were dead birds ok, they were dead, so very dead, almost like nothing has ever died more than they died, maybe in history, which is a shame because you know they kill the birds, the windmills, they kill them horribly, but it was so beautiful in so many ways…”
Ok, no — the orange-dip-ding-a-ling didn’t say that verbatim, what he said about Gettysburg was actually inexplicably dumber.
Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable―I mean, it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways.
I watched that shit go down and I had a lot of thoughts. I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but honestly for me the top line thing of all the things is this — is it really too much to ask that a candidate for United States president (not to mention a FORMER president) not be a goddamn mumbling, bumbling, fumbling motherfucking idiot?
Shouldn’t it be required that the person getting the launch codes be smarter than, oh I dunno, a fucking plastic houseplant?
Shouldn’t the Constitution mandate that our president has to be smarter than a blobfish, a block of cheese or urinal cake?
Is it too much to ask that this person NOT be so mind-numbingly thick that you find yourself wondering if they even have a brain at all or if their words and actions are instead being choreographed by a bunch of day drunk gerbils bouncing around the ol’ cranium pressing lobes and squishing glands at random like it’s a game of whack-a-membrane?
Shouldn’t the occupant of the Oval Office have even the most basic understating of the history of the nation he’s supposed to be like, in charge of? Shouldn’t this person know at least enough to know that Robert E. Lee wouldn’t in fact, have given his troops orders whilst sounding like a Scottish pirate?
Is that really setting the bar too high? Really?
Do we really need to let go of that one itty, bitty standard of expectation? (Again?)
I confess, in my 49 years of life I’ve learned the hard way, or in the super awkward, potentially partly naked embarrassing way, that sometimes you just have to give up on or let go of a whole bunch of unrealistic notions for how you thought things should or would go in life. Of how things should BE.
I’ve been forced to abandon the long-held vision for my life which included me marrying Ewan McGregor (and no, it has nothing to do with the restraining order, I just didn’t find his sleeping position compatible with my own, and yes, he did look totally different when he was sleeping, but I digress).
I had to untether myself from the idea that at 5’4 (and a half) I was destined to be a Rockette, and I really don’t think the issue was my height or that I never learned how to tap dance, but really more of a “them” problem because they were worried my inherent star quality would overshadow the rest of the ladies on stage, and frankly who could find fault with that.
And despite being told by my dad over and over again as a child and as an adolescent that I was an actress so “dramatic” and so profoundly skilled at my craft of “overacting” which I always took as a compliment, that I’d “beat Meryl Streep at the Oscars”, it hasn’t happened yet, and between us, I don’t think it’s going to since I’m not even sure Meryl is making movies anymore (thanks, dream killer).
The point is that I’ve had to jettison a bunch of stuff I thought I could count on because through no fault of my own mostly, the universe just wasn’t vibing with it.
But, if you’re telling me that expecting my president to understand how manual can openers work is foolish because such an unrealistic foreseeability sits outside the realm of possibility, then I’m gonna call bullshit.
If spelling the word “cat” presents a conundrum from the commander in chief, then what the fuck are we even doing here?
And as I’ve been reflecting on his most recent public display of dumbfuckery, I realized that in the sea of evil awfulness that is Donald Trump, I think we often forget just how fucking stupid he is.
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