We're Off ... to See the Lizard

Hello.

Because I dwell in Substack full-time now, I can reliably inform you of the thing that most politics-leaning Substackers are writing about these days: Autopsies. They are trying to compete with each other for the best Hot Take on what the hell happened back in November. How could this rotting corpse of a man have won again? I have read analyses confidently ascribing it to things as varied as income inequality, an osmotic southern border, bros, Latinos, transgender inmates, Black men, White women, and my favorite reason for Trump winning: “Harris lost.”

Today I have the answer. I am going to win the Substack Hot Take Contest just as soon as I hit “enter” and publish this.

The answer arrived in an email from a friend. It was cut and pasted from the Internet. It was an answer given by Google Artificial Intelligence to a request for the definition of a certain term that is apparently in common use.

Here it is:

“ ‘Right from the gecko’ is an idiom meaning ‘right from the beginning’ or ‘right from the start,’ essentially signifying the beginning of something immediately. It’s a casual way of saying ‘right from the get-go.”

Because of the conventions of the Google algorithm, that is the very first thing you see when — for whatever reason — you ask for the meaning of “right from the gecko.”

The AI entry then elaborates:

“A gecko is a small lizard, and the phrase likely uses the image of a gecko quickly starting to move as soon as it is placed on a surface.” Really??

Then, helpfully, the entry supplies examples from literature, (possibly Chaucer or Shakespeare):

• "We knew this project was going to be difficult right from the gecko."

• "She was committed to the cause right from the gecko."

Here is my winning Smart Take: We elected Trump because we are a nation of imbeciles and patsies. I am told my prize is going to be a full expense-paid ticket to the 2025 Substack snipe hunt, a safari personally led by famed explorer Lillian Virginia Mountweazel.

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Okay, since this is the Weekend Gene Pool, I need to extend a challenge: What have you recently seen other than the election that best exemplifies the current stupidity of the American public? The odder and more observant examples the better, please.

Send them here, please:

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Many readers cackled at my recent description of Republican women whom I observed at a restaurant. Here is another dose of contempt. Call it a parting shot.

On the the final day of the post-inauguration bacchanalia of conspicuous Republican consumption in D.C., Rachel and I found ourselves at a different restaurant filled with smug revelers. The room was also cheek to jowl, but the atmosphere was different. Tenser. A restive battleground consisting of 1) locals and … 2) visitors.

This was not an upscale opulent downtown steakhouse, like last time; this was a small, homey Thai place in our relatively downscale neighborhood. There was a uniformed police officer on duty, right inside, and he didn’t look happy to be there. He looked about as happy to be there as the Capitol police did on January 6.

Outside, four police cruisers stood at the ready. This restaurant was just a couple of blocks from the prison where the worst rioters were held, until their skeevy pardons. For many, many months, the neighborhood has been serenaded, night after night, by MAGATs singing and chanting and catcalling their support in vigils in the street. This restaurant was sort of in the demilitarized zone.

At one table, there were six people, three in MAGA hats, and one guy in a uniform emblazoned with “ICE Immigration,” only he wasn’t that. He was a big guy with an intimidating bogus uni, and he was getting the stink eye from the cop on duty and a few seated locals.

I counted three other MAGA hats in the restaurant, including one near Rachel, on the banquette seat she was sharing with a guy at another table. He had tossed his crappy cap not far from her, on the seat, like some sort of challenge. He looked like the Brawny lumberjack.

The ladies in the room were not facially engineered, as in our first night. They didn’t look taut, they just looked … I don’t know, peeved. So were we, actually.

And finally, two tables down was a brooch with a woman attached. That’s all you noticed. If it had been a painting by a Dutch master, it would have been titled “Brooch with Woman.” It looked like a breastplate. Afterwards, I found its duplicate online. This is it, roughly life size:

Just a casual night at dinner in the nation’s capital.

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Please understand, D.C. is not usually like this. It is a mostly happy place, and sometimes unexpectedly funny and feisty. Our license tags say “Taxation Without Representation.” The other day, after the departure of the MAGATS, at a local mussels joint named Granville Moore’s, we snapped this off the menu.

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Okay, today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll.

Finally, please donate $4.15 a month to The Gene Pool to help keep these people out of Washington four years from now. We locals would be mighty grateful.

Okay, I am hitting “enter” now.