The Time Is Now!

Hello.

Above is a real watch I bought for Rachel. There is no movement, but it doesn’t need one. It was made to order by Edward Compton of Ecker’s Clock and Watch Shop in Bethesda. I asked for it because Rachel maddeningly refuses to wear, or threatens to immediately lose, any watch I give her that only tells time and does not measure her heartbeat, blood pressure, exercise rates, rectal temperature, etc. I got this watch because I knew she would not be able to resist it. Rachel will be tickled by the comments it is sure to get, but she also is a person who always lives in the moment; she simply can’t make plans more than one day ahead. If she is forced to schedule something, say, five weeks in advance, she won’t even write it down because on some basic, elemental level, she doesn’t believe the future is real.

However. It has recently occurred to me that this watch has also become a spot-on metaphor for our times.

(suggestion: if you are reading this in an email, click on the headline so you get the latest amended, emended and addended version.)

In this era of political trash and tumult, time seems to have no real meaning anymore, in that things are happening so fast and furious that there is no coherent timeline. No news lingers because something else — often something wild, and wildly contradictory — lurks just minutes around the corner. To make even a modicum of sense of it all, we can only focus on the immediate. You know, like dogs.

Consider (alas, you must; it is germane) Donald Trump. For years, Trump has developed a certain comical mantra. He promises he will do something definitive, or spectacular, “in about two weeks.” The Web is full of it, as it were. This time frame never varies. Why does he do this? Because he knows two weeks is beyond the limits of our current collective memories, given the assorted other chaos that he will drown us in during the next fourteen days. Virtually none of his promises come true, but no one remembers.

This is all around us. Remember when Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill was doomed — in dire, deep-shit trouble due to expected mass defections from the right of the right? Neither do I; I had to look it up. It was about six days ago. Remember when Trump lost his base because he bombed Iran? They’re back. Remember when the Epstein files were on Pam Bondi’s desk, ready for release? That was two weeks ago! Now she says they don’t exist and never existed! But now Trump is saying the files that don’t exist and never existed were written by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama! Trump is losing his base! Ohh, they are pissed. Oh, wait, they are not! Coming next: There never was an Epstein!

Trump is embracing Russia and abandoning Ukraine, which will steer that country into defeat and enslavement. No. Now Trump is calling Putin an asshole, and is sending Ukraine munitions. Ukraine is saved! No, wait…

We are running fast, but going nowhere in space or time. We are Wile E. Coyote, six feet past the edge of the cliff, legs windmilling in the air, just before he realizes his predicament, and, given that knowledge, plummets.

All we have is Now, folks. Get used to it. I bet Edward at Ecker’s will make you one of those watches, too.

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Here is a rare combination of true news and an excellent aptonym. Adam Zyglis, Pulitzer-prizewinning cartoonist for The Buffalo News, is getting doxxed and physically threatened by MAGAmorons over this recent cartoon lampooning the right’s insistence that less government is better government; Zyglis examines this against the Trump-reduced-budget skeletonized FEMA, and its crisis in delivering aid to Texas flood victims.

The threats against the cartoonist were so vicious and so specific, Zyglis felt he had to hire bodyguards. The nuts actually had been quiet for two days after the cartoon first appeared, until they were hooched up by the Chairman of the local Republican Party, who tweeted that Zyglis was “mocking Texas families who lost loved ones in a tragedy, just because they might’ve voted Republican.” He said the cartoon was “twisted, vile and shameful,” and demanded an apology.

That is when the nuts went nuts.

This demagogic southern pol’s name? Michael Kracker.

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Okay, today’s extraneous Gene Pool Gene Polls:

Okay, that’s it for the day. I’ll be in Charlottesville tomorrow and much of Wednesday. Might be filing, but might not. In either case, The Invitational, and your real-time Q’s and A’s, will happen on Thursday.

Please, let’s get back at the MAGAmoron tinpot tyrants by arming me with munitions for a mere $4.15 a month. My aim is true.