The arsonist blames the wind, the building, the alarm & anyone who dares to douse the fire.

Crying burn victim while still holding a lit match.

When the news broke of whatever we want to call the latest incident involving Trump, a white guy who voted for him and a weapon of war we’ve been trying to ban, I was at a little league game. And another parent, with whom I don’t exactly align politically, asked me if I felt bad for him.

“Do I feel bad?” I asked.

“Yes, the poor man can’t even leave the house.” She continued.

I took a deep breath before replying. I’ve always been very careful to keep political debate separate from my kids sporting events, so I knew I had to take this one nice and slow.

You guys know me pretty well by now, so I’m sure you can guess what I wanted to say.

“Poor man?!? Did you just call that traitorous, rapist, business fraud, sexual predator motherfucker a poor man? The piece of shit scumbag waste of human life sociopath who shrugged and struck golf balls while friends of ours were burying their parents alone? The psycho who couldn’t handle being fired by 81 million of us and couldn’t find a motherfucking mountain of Addy big enough to crawl into to help him cope so he plotted a coup and sent a violent mob from places like our very town to kill our lawmakers!?? You want me to pity him? To feel sorry for him? That sick fuck who has been calling his foes “vermin”, immigrants “animals” and the January 6th terrorists “patriots”, you want me to cry for him because some nutjob got his hands on a fucking machine gun and stood in the woods pulling his pud while Donny Tampax-ear bragged about being under par? Fuck that. You wanna know who I feel sorry for? I feel sorry for the Capitol Police Officers who died in the wake of that attack. I feel sorry for Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss because their lives were destroyed over that fuckstain’s lies. I feel sorry for all the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and sons who will forever face an empty chair at the dinner table because the son-of-a-bitch who was SUPPOSED to protect them was too busy musing about motherfucking Lysol cocktails. So, to answer your stupid fucking question as succinctly as I can in a way you just might not need a language arts class to understand, I do not feel bad for him. I feel bad for America. I feel bad for the reality of violence he has created. For the culture of vengeance he has curated. I feel bad for every brain-rot addlepated dumbfuck who isn’t wise to the delusions he cultivates every single fucking day of their sad, stupid, small lives. And I really, really feel bad for the kids of those lobotomized lemmings who have never ever challenged a single fucking thing they’ve ever been told. That’s who I really feel bad for.”

But I didn’t say that.

And believe me, all of that was sitting right there on the tip of my tongue. My fingertips were tingling, my heart was racing, the sounds of bats and balls and cheers disappeared all around me. In through the nose, Jo. Watch your chest rise, Jo. Do it again. Ok, one more time, you’re almost there…

“While I will take issue with your description of him as a poor man, I do not wish harm on anyone. No matter who it is. Even if he so often does the opposite.”

The handful of Dem friends I have at these games seemed to exhale in relief in unison. And I went back to cheering for my son.

It wouldn’t have helped for me to say what I wanted to say in that moment. And it wouldn’t have changed any minds. But boy did it feel cathartic to finally get it out just now.

Because here’s the thing, Trump and his cronies want us to feel bad for him.

He is the arsonist who’s been working tirelessly to burn this whole house down, and now that he’s gotten scorched or near scorched or whatever the fuck it is since we still really don’t know, he wants to blame everyone and everything under the sun for his boo-boos, all while holding the match that did it.

It’s the wind’s fault it did what wind does to fire when on the receiving end of the bright orange bellows that’s been blowing on it.

It’s the building’s fault for being made of materials that tend to burn easily when drenched in the fetid fuel of vitriolic hate.

It’s the alarm’s fault for warning the building’s occupants, calling the fire department and pointing to the one who set the blaze.

And it’s the firemen who are to blame for trying to put it out when that’s clearly so insensitive to the feelings of the arsonist who has so enjoyed watching it burn.

Donald Trump has been stoking this blaze for a very long time. In fact, other than getting rich, staying out of jail, and opining about banging his daughter, it might be the one endeavor he’s never abandoned in his life.

Incendiary is his middle fucking name. The guy would make Hitler blush with some of the bigotry that spews out of his big fucking mouth.

And as per usual, he’s trying to gaslight us all.

To make the Democrats feel so “bad” for him they stop talking about him truthfully.

He didn’t get maybe shot at maybe once and maybe whatever the other one was because we’ve been accurately identifying him as a threat to democracy.

Day one dictator IS a threat to democracy, and it’s the very essence of democracy to say so.

And while I disavow political violence in any form, I will not cede this space to accommodate his desired outcome.

I will not stop talking about how devastating Project 2025 will be for America. I will not stop talking about how under Trump miscarrying women are dying because doctors are afraid to provide care. I won’t stop calling him a traitor and an adjudicated rapist. I won’t bite my tongue like I did at that baseball game.

I won’t remain silent when confronted with the deluge of lies designed to whitewash all of the truth away.

No Democrat should. We have the truth. And we must cling to that with both hands. No matter what.

That threat to Democracy wants us to be quiet about the threat he poses to Democracy. And if we do that, then we are only helping him in his cause of dismantling Democracy.

We aren’t the ones who keep stoking and poking that fire. And we aren’t going to hand the fucker who set it a S’mores setup to cook over the flames.

He can blame whoever he wants. There’s one person to blame for the boo boo burns on his widdle fingers.

And that’s him.

The end.