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Trump railed at rally in Las Vegas about the danger of shark attacks and batteries

Gillberg
Trump railed at rally in Las Vegas about the danger of shark attacks and batteries

It was a goal-packed weekend for those of us who know the loose and crazy aspects of modern conservative rhetoric. Of course, with the former president* holding an outdoor rally on a lawn outside Las Vegas in 100-degree temperatures, there were bound to be some very big nuggets to be had. Simply put, he was just plain crazy about the heat. In fact, I suspect they could have set up a podium at Ice Station Zebra and he would still have been just as crazy. That was the high point. You can almost hear the synapses in his brain sizzling and snapping like sparks between every other word.

“It must be MIT, my relationship with MIT. Very clever. I say: what would happen if the boat sank because of its weight and you have this enormously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark over there about 10 meters away… By the way, there are a lot of shark attacks lately… Do I get electrocuted or do I jump over the shark?”

I will get back to you regarding this.

Meanwhile at National review, Longtime white supremacist voice John Yoo has once again emerged from the foul fog of memory to fully embrace the former president’s Vengeance Over America ’24 tour. Of course, as he once did with the hypothetical crushing of hypothetical children’s hypothetical testicles, Yoo peppered his bloodthirsty partisan trash stories with quasi-academic gibberish.

“To remedy this constitutional violation, Republicans must follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To prevent the impeachment of Trump from becoming a permanent fixture in the American political system, Republicans must impeach Democratic officials, even presidents.”

It takes a remarkable amount of sloppy arrogance to misquote and misuse what we have all learned as the Golden Rule, and use that as an argument to justify retaliation on behalf of a half-crazed crook of a president.* It appears in both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke.

Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. This is the Law and the Prophets. — Matthew 7:12

And as you would that men should do to you, do so to them in like manner. – Luke 6:31

In neither case does Jesus justify acts of revenge. You must confuse Jesus Christ with The Count of Monte CristoThe more well-known quote from the Gospel of Matthew calls on Jesus’ followers to treat others the way they would like to be treated.

(And it is not exclusively a Christian axiom. Two famous Jewish scholars, Hillel and Philo of Alexandria, wrote something similar. The same view is also found in the writings of Confucius, Aristotle, Plato and Seneca.)

American conservatism is so fragile right now that it’s no wonder the former president* got off so cheap. He always chose distressed real estate.

Portrait photo of Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot Americaand has been working as a journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.

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