AS I WRITE THIS, Donald Trump has occupied the Oval Office for 134 days, each of which has resembled Watergate on meth, tequila, and Pop Rocks. And said days feel longer than that funeral you attended for the neighbor you didn’t really like in the first place. Trump’s venality is such it shatters the space time continuum and, six and a half months after the election, his entire presidency is a lucid fucking nightmare.
So, each pencil-chewing halfwit who insisted, “You’ve got to give him a chance!”, how’s that working out for you?
I hope you breathe smoke and shit fire for eternity.
But just as Trump insists on two scoops of ice cream for dessert, I reserve an additional scoop of contempt for Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Wisconsin’s sentient red Solo cup who knowingly and willfully helped usher in this madness. That he slathers his hair in what looks like Astroglide is, for our purposes today, beside the point.
In recent months, myriad psychologists and psychiatrists have broken the so-called “Goldwater Rule” that prohibits members of their professions from diagnosing a public figure they don’t treat. The reason they violate this portion of the American Psychiatric Association’s Code of Ethics and risk legal repercussions? The “duty to warn” clause, which legally binds them to call the authorities if they reasonably assess a person is an imminent danger to themselves or others. They’ve put forth different hypotheses regarding Trump’s mental health, but they agree it’s dangerously impaired. Everywhere from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Vox, they’re stating unambiguously: he’s completely fucking nuts. Which doesn’t lessen or excuse his venality, of course, but seems to augment it.
But here’s the thing: they don’t say it about Paul Ryan. Why? Because Ryan is sane. Ryan knows right from wrong. Ryan isn’t a paranoid, thrice-divorced sexual assailant who “jokes” about banging his daughter and compares the intelligence community’s treatment of him to the Nazi’s slaughter of Jews.
Which, in a roundabout way, MAKES PAUL RYAN SO MUCH WORSE.
I firmly believe that Ryan knows Trump is a monster. He just doesn’t care, because he wanted to be Speaker of the House with a Republican POTUS. So, when Trump impugned the professionalism of a Mexican-American judge during the campaign? Ryan called it “a textbook racist statement,” but didn’t withdraw his support. When the now infamous “pussy-grabbing” tape broke? Ryan blathered on about being appalled or some shit, but continued to endorse Trump. As the bearer of a beav, I can attest this isn’t something a man does when he actually values the health and safety of women. And when Trump became the first major party candidate in our nation’s history to mock the disabled? Ryan pitifully whimpered, “Quit it!” and sat there with his thumbs up his ass.
During the interminably long Election 2016, Ryan had SO many opportunities to publicly state, “Donald Trump is morally and ethically reprehensible and violates laws with the thought most people give to choosing a sandwich meat. This is wrong, I know it’s wrong, I’m a functioning adult with a moral compass and I’d rather lose my seat than further the rise of this misogynist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, ableist, rabid miscreant who has never held prior elected office nor given a damn about anyone or anything but himself, his eldest daughter’s rack, and Vladimir Putin’s ego.”
Would it have cost him his job as House Speaker? Probably. But it also would have given ground cover to other Republicans who might want to show spine along with the dicks they’re so fond of waving. If enough of them had spoken out, perhaps more voters would have understood the enormity of the crisis at stake. And Ryan would have made a fortune on the lecture circuit with his newfound status as moral leader of a bolder, re-branded Republican party. He had absolutely nothing to lose except his selfish grip on power for the sake of power.
As it stands, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord and literally imperiled the life of the planet.
Tomorrow, my friends and I are attending Seattle’s March for Truth, one of dozens of marches nationwide demanding a special prosecutor and a thorough investigation of the Trump’s campaign’s collusion with Russian emissaries.
All of it is as tragic as it was preventable.
As is clear, I loathe Paul Ryan with the force of a meteor shower. I mistakenly thought it’d be cathartic to kick the crap out of him in print.
But it turns out it’s tug-at-your-soul, tear-at-your-heart saddening.
Because with all the words at my disposal, I can never loathe him as much as he’s shown himself to loathe you and me.
