GET A LOAD OF THIS

Here’s my Rachel Maddow-style wind-up. As Rachel would say, “Stick with me.”

In the 1940s, movie stuntman and actor Dave O’ Brien became the primary focus of the hilarious one-reel comedies called Pete Smith Specialties. The hapless O'Brien would personify everyday nuisances: dealing with pests at the movies, demonstrating pet peeves, tackling hazardous home-improvement projects, and other problems with which the audience could identify.

O'Brien's scenes were shot silent, compelling O'Brien to express his satisfaction or frustration entirely in visual terms as narrator Smith offered get-a-load-of-this commentary.

O'Brien knew the format so well that he also directed many of the shorts, under the name "David Barclay." He staged many of the sight gags himself, taking stupendous pratfalls for the camera. Many of the laughs generated by the highly ironic voice overs were delivered by Smith himself. His somewhat nasal, matter-of-fact vocal style was imitated and parodied.

I woke up this morning with a Pete Smith style vision.

I saw myself clear as day, falling off a ladder, which sent a full-to-the-brim can of paint into orbit, making a perfect landing on my noggin, slathering me from head to toe in Sherman Williams semi-gloss.

And from that one, single pratfall vision, I heard the voice of Pete Smith, who said:

“Get a load of this guy. Hey dummy, why the heck are you bothering to argue with a Trump Supporter for? Do you not get that you cannot win?”

And thus spake to me, in one, perfectly nuanced slapstick moment, the truth of our current one reel-ality existence.

When you attempt to find common ground with Curly Howard or try to prove your point with either Laurel or Hardy, armed with a mile-high stack of documented fact-based evidence, I guarantee that you are going to either slip on a banana peel or get a creampie smashed right into your puss.

Because in the gag reel world of the Trump Supporter, the truth is both distorted and MAGAnified. They filter any kind of logic or information through their fun-house mirror quality looking glass and emphatically turn left into right, up into down, black into white the exact same way that their leader, the crooked crowned Hunchback of Notre Don (or Don Chaney, Jr.) deals with the truth.

The difference is, Trump’s manipulation of the truth, is an Abbot and Costello, Vaudeville quality con game that he has played for his entire life. It goes like this.

Immediately after blundering, failing or being caught (which has been the story of his entire life), you claim that the evidence is a hoax, then you immediately blame someone else for what you are being accused of or cite them for doing the exact same thing (or worse) and then you quickly wonder out loud why they are not being indicted. You cap it off by saying this is unfair. You are a victim and that the liberal media, with their liberal agenda, is the enemy not of you, but of the people and that the only way to stop this one-sided warfare is to body slam your opponents into submission until they back away from sheer exasperation or exhaustion.

And routine scene.

It isn’t any deeper or more complex than that.

He is actually that Captain Obvious and that transparent. This is a man who appears in public every single day covered in Sherman Williams orange, with white dark circle clown eye cream topped with a bleached blonde hair-do that looks like the icing swirls of a Cinnabon and we are supposed to believe that he is authentic, truthful and real? On the bridges that I could sell you.

Trump is either spectacularly brazen or just an idiot. I can’t figure out which. I would go with both because he keeps right on filter free going.

His language of choice reveals everything about him: fake. Liar. Rigged. I love Wikileaks. Part of the thrill for him is clearly seeing how much he can get away with.

Everything that he accused the other guy of doing on the campaign trail, for example, is precisely what he is doing every single day. He accused Obama of golfing too much and has now golfed so many times that his link visits have literally bankrupted (like every single one of his failed businesses) the Secret Service. He is using an unprotected private phone. He filled his cabinet with Goldman Sachs graduates. He spilled sacred intelligence directly to the Russians IN the Oval Office. He has been to Hell-sinki and back, taking a Kaeper-knee to Putin. He has professed love for other murderous thug dictators. He has publicly ridiculed women, even surviving his boast about grabbing them by the genitals.

And who loves him? That would be his followers, who have been granted permission to act just like him. The stupid, the clueless, the repressed, the racist, the bitter and the extremist, who is scared to death that the minorities are going to overtake them.

The Republicans have long pandered to the Gullibles who subsist purely on bullshit, promises and blind faith.

They have turned Christianity, which our founding fathers specially said should be separate from the state, because having just staged a revolution against tyranny, they knew full well what happens when the two have meshed. Henry the 8th had a blast bringing the two together, while he decapi-dated all the hot chicks in his life.

Here in modern-day, America, by Gorilla gluing church and state together is why GOP is now spelled GOD and Patriotism is spelled NRA.

After all, it’s all about you now.

Trump’s entire ascent has been based solely on the illusion, that when he speaks to you in your duck-taped, beer stained, La-Z-Boy, he is not talking to millions. He is talking only to you and if you listen carefully he will tell you how to be a success just like him and any other private jet/mansion owning TV evangelist. Don’t trust politicians. Trust the king of the pretend boardroom. And if you call right now, you can get another red cap for free. Just pay pure profit built-in “handling and shipping charges.”

Welcome to the QVC Presidency.

A hundred years ago, way back in 2016, watching Cruz and Perry and Trump “praying” before a debate made me howl in laughter. These are men of God? Well, by wearing this year’s fashion: GOPhlock yourselves wolf clothing, with invisible priest collars, simply by creating the optics of faith is all you need to get away with O.J. Quality murder.

It’s just like when they cleaned up Robert Durst for trial.

Even though he admitted, in a Texas courtroom, that he cut up a body and disposed of it in the river and then disguised himself as a woman to duck the authorities, he was still found innocent. And then what did he do? He went right back into the murdering business because after all, that is exactly what rich New York real estate tycoons do. Just like every single member of the Trump family who has been granted permission to rape and pillage just like dear old dad.

Even soft porn shots of our First Lady posed naked in bed with another naked woman escapes judgment because, Trump, who is bringing back the favorite flavor of the month: right-to-life vanilla, gets all the passes he wants because in a perverse way he is doing the Lord's work.

Full of contradictions? Ya think? I mean these are the very same folks who believe is the sanctity of the fetus but have no trouble with Sandy Hook and Parkland children from being slaughtered like pigs with military grade weapons.

Right to life evidently comes with an expiration date.

So what is the solution? How do we survive this duplicitous, logic-free insanity?

I suggest that we who know better, return to my Pete Smith analogy and return to the world of comedies shot in silence,

Because words today mean absolutely nothing.

There is no discourse to be had, no debate.

Today’s political discourse is the equivalent of extreme cage fighting. It’s about watching two raging human beings pummel each other into bloody stumps with both sides claiming victory,.

With that, disappearing from our everyday behavioral menu has been such popular items as civility, kindness, decency, and empathy. Life-saving science is ridiculed because it represents higher education and higher education is the single biggest threat to faith because when you turn to logic and complex thought, your need for miracles, fairy tales, superhero movies and winning the lottery begin to fade and Hollywood and the Catholic Church, who are world famous for their own duplicity will have none of that.

There is too much prophet to be made.

The kind of mob mentality rallying that we watch, and partially pay for every single day, is what has created the division in our country. It mindlessly pits us against them and I promise you, despite all your best efforts, you are going to get the business end of a wood beam straight to the kisser if you even bother to try to get a Trump supporter to listen to reason.,

If the MAGAbomber had turned out to be a Democrat, they would have been swollen with pride and full of empowerment because their baseless conspiracy theories turned out to be true. Miracle/fantasy achieved.

The fact that he is a MAGA, Trump/Cult flavored Kool-Aid whack job is already causing many to claim that the van is a fake and that Hilary and Obama sent those bombs to themselves, while others are saying that since no bomb went off, it is a misdemeanor crime. Trump in pure Trump fashion is saying this is the equivalent of Steve Scalise shooting, with the biggest difference being no one specifically told the shooter who the targeted enemy of the people was while giving him full permissions to take them down, including CNN.

“CNN sucks” was actually chanted in the White House. Let that image linger for a moment.

A casual constitutional reminder:

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, to petition for a governmental, redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

Which your president has taken an oath to defend.

I guess you’d have to be an actual patriot to read, respect and follow all that.

So.

Go silent, sane America.

Not amongst yourselves, just with the deaf, dumb and blind who can sadly hear, think and see.

Enter the world of Pete Smith Specialities and create your very own kind of one reel-laity existence called, say, “Me and the Ballot Box” which is the single loudest sound that you will ever, ever make and ultimately force every single American to hear.