Response to Using the Nineties

(See: Just Above Sunset: Using the Nineties)

I know a lot of people would love to see someone shoot Donald Trump to death, but I'm not even going to bring that up, because I just have too much integrity.

Now I realize that, while some people (who shall remain nameless) may be just smarmy enough to introduce certain subjects into the conversation that they themselves won't even discuss, such as the idea of somebody shooting somebody else, I'm not going to do that, simply because it would just be wrong!

And seriously, except for the not-gonna-go-there part, I actually mean that!

If Trump were to be assassinated, it would suggest that the only way democracy (or what passes for it in this country) can survive the misuse of it by a demagogue such as him is to step outside of itself and just shoot the bastard dead. Whatever damage Trump promises to do to our country if elected, not to even mention the damage he's done already, would be multiplied by his meeting such a violent end. Just think of what happened to the Roman Republic after a bunch of otherwise well-intentioned senators took it upon themselves to use extra-legal measures to do away with their suspected tyrannical leader, Julius Caesar.

Still, there's no doubt the man is a thug. In fact, if there's one thing both sides can agree on is that Donald Trump is a thug; where the two sides differ is on whether or not his being a thug is a good thing. I, for one, am of the opinion that the last thing this country needs is a thug for a chief executive, while others, who imagine the country is in much worse shape than it actually is, think a thuggish president is exactly what we need to get us going in another direction.

Something I've always wondered about ISIS is, what do people see in them? Basically, wouldn't you think most people would be turned off by the stuff ISIS does? Don't people see that this group chops off heads and burns people alive, and that this sort of behavior makes them not look like the good guys?

The explanation, of course, is the all-purpose explanation for our times: Beheading your enemy is a feature, not a bug!

I guess when some people watch a video of a guy wearing a black hood, cutting the throat of some innocent, what they see is someone who has definite ideas on how to deal with problems, and also has the guts to put his theories into practice. Hey, if someone's going to get into a disagreement with these head-chopping guys, you probably want to be on the side of the doers, not the talkers!

Maybe it's just part of the unspoken zeitgeist of our age, but it's hard not to see the similarities here. Nobody thought much of Donald Trump until he humiliated everyone around him, and then, even people who had denounced him and called him every name in the book and said choosing between him and his major opponent was like choosing between dying by gun or by poison, have now joined up with him, in theory because, as bad as he is for the country, the woman running against him -- someone who may or may not have made an arguably bad choice in her use of her email system in some way that nobody can fully explain -- could be even worse?

But no, we all know that's not the real reason to join up with Trump. The real reason is the same reason people join ISIS, and that is, when civilization seems to be losing ground to the bullies, the safest place to be is probably going to be standing behind the toughest-looking thug on the battlefield.