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At a recent event hosted by Univision Kamala Harris was asked if she could list three virtues of her political rival Donald Trum. Like Hillary Clinton before her this question stumped her with Harris only managing to pay some services to Trump by saying she believed that he loved his family, a safe statement that would enrage no one.

The story got me thinking, what if we matched the seven cardinal virtues with Trump? Would we be surprised by any of the answers? Each virtue traditionally has a corresponding vice, so for each I think the test is which better fits the know personality and action of Trump, the virtue or the vice?

Chastity/Lust

Well, this one’s pretty much on the vice side. A man who has been adjudicated in court of sexual assault, criminally convicted for covering up sexual affairs, and who boasts his personal Vietnam was not getting an STI. This virtue cannot be listed as one of his.

Faith/Idolatry

Again, there is no question. He sells bibles but displays them proudly upside down while calling for violence the man has shown no interest in faith and not only idolizes himself but expects others to do so. This virtue too cannot apply.

Good Works/Avarice

There are no good works that can reasonably assigned to Trump and his lust for money may very well exceed his lust for flesh. Even when it came to his own protection detail, he charged the government for freight for his expensive hotels unwilling to lose a single dime. Avarice it is.

Concord/Discord

It is a virtue to have an agreeable nature and a sin to be pointlessly disagreeable. Again, Trump nature makes this an easy call. A man known for his screaming and demanding nature while expecting subservience from everyone else can hardly be called ‘agreeable.’

Patience/Wrath

His anger at even the slightest perception of an insult is well known. Trump routinely calls for violence and harm upon those who he perceives as enemies, without every showing the slightest ability to forgive or even delay his own gratification. Wrath wins.

Humility/Pride

Well, a man who slaps his name is giant letters on everything he can and who has never ever admitted error, and who cannot, in his mind, ever lose only be cheated raised Pride to levels rarely seen.

Six virtues so far and not one can be credibly associated with Trump. Is this going to be a clean sweep?

Sobriety/Indulgence

Here’s one we can actually give to Trump. He is sober. The loss of his older brother to alcoholism apparently affected him deeply and he is known to be a non-drinker and non-intoxicating drug used.

1 out of 7, clearly a failing grade.

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On the subject of School shootings Senator Vance advocating for ‘hardening’ of the targets as the preferred solution saying, ‘But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger.’

This is sheer pedantic word play. For one thing the Senator is far too bright to not know that the money simply doesn’t exist to harden every forking school and pre-school in America.

Set that aside, though. Say we could wave a magic wand and instantly fortify every school like a well defended hardpoint on the battle line. Does that actually solve the problem? Does the would be shooter, now denied the school as a target, just lay down his arms and assume the post of a responsible peaceful citizen?

Of course not.

The shooter driven by rage that has been fueled by agony moves to a softer target. Perhaps a park, or a supermarket, or a shopping center, or a sport game. Or even just a forking busy street out in the open. The school isn’t shot up but someplace else is. Then what? Harden that next target, and then the next and the next until all of America is locked-down self-imposed prison calling itself the land of the free?

The truth of the matter is that Vance proposed no solution, and he knew he proposed nothing. He wanted to cast the illusion of someone that cared while maintaining for his base that solid commitment that no amount of a slaughtered children or people would ever justify even the slightest impediment to their hobby.

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When the story broke that the MAGA and Trump backed candidate for Governor of North Carolina Mark Robinson, a pol that frequently rants about pornography, was in fact a loyal customer of porn shops in the 1990s and early 2000s I had little interest. The story struck me as merely another example of the blatant hypocrisy so often seen in crusading extremist politicians. But then one detail came to my attention, not only did he visit these shops five or more times a week, but he was a regular customer of the booths.

Now, for several years in the 1990s I worked in a adult shop selling toys, magazines, and renting out porn to the customers. Like any business we had our regular customers and for someone to shop there five or more times a week would certainly be memorable. Also like nearly all of the adult shops we had the ‘arcade,’ a dozen or so closet sized private booths. A couple or the booths were fitted so that someone could rent a video, we’d load it into the player, and they would watch it in the booth, but that was not the majority of the booths. Most played an endless loop of porn on a number of channels and the customer just fed money into the machine and cycled the display to what struck their fancy.

But the real purpose of the booths was not to watch porn.

After all this was the 90s, video tapes players were in nearly every home, rentals were easy, and a cramped stuffy booth was hardly comfortable. Anyone interest in the porn would be far more comfortable at home.

No, the booths were for cruising.

Cruising is anonymous sex in public and semi-public places. Public Parks at night, airport bathrooms, and video store booths. Men, and it is always men, make their discreet eye contact and then follow each other into a booth, feeding the machine for the privacy to engage in sexual activates, afterwards going their separate ways.

Mark Robinson, in addition to his rants about pornography, his holocaust denial, and other unpleasant public stands is also blatantly homophobic.

I do not know that Robinson cruised the booths but it would hella shocking for someone that dedicated to the booths to not have.

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The conservative side of the political divide is upset because the ‘JD Vance is Weird’ line sticks to their vice-presidential candidate like napalm to an innocent civilian.

The ‘weird’ descriptor gained a lot of traction when it was deployed by a Democratic governor and then amplified by a political group that governor headed. From there is has taken off with other surrogates and just plain people on Twitter. Vance’s people have yet to find an effective counter and I think it is unlikely that they will, but it is also unlikely to the dispositive in the election. It sticks because it fits like a key in a lock to many people’s perception of Vance.

One of the minor fake controversies surrounding Vance and that surface before he was picked for the number two slot was that he used eye liner make-up. I have no idea if the man utilizes that particular form of facial make-up, but his eyes are striking in a manner consistent with that use. It adds to his appearance feeling ‘off’ in a way that doesn’t quite rise to intuitively obvious but noticeable.

Vance also exhibits a lack of stage presence or charisma. This is not a new phenomenon. in the 2022 election cycle that elevated Vance to the Senate the Republican Governor in a red state beat his Democratic rival by 25 points but Vance in the same environment could only manage a 7-point victory over Democrat Tim Ryan. Even among Republicans affection for Vance is lukewarm.

These observations made Vance particularly vulnerable to the label ‘weird.’ Bill Clinton gave the impression of someone willing to tell you whatever you wanted to hear, to a smarminess that made the description ‘slick’ stick. During the Regan administration there was a skit where Regan showed his old friend Jimmy Stewart about the white house with Regan kindly but slightly befuddled. Once Stewart left Regan turned into a cold, brilliant calculating man commanding ever officer with sharp orders. That skit is forgotten because it found no cultural fire because that image of Regan, the brilliant mastermind, was at odds with the popular perception. Narratives stick with they line-up with preexisting perceptions.

After McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 the Alaskan governor came under national scrutiny that she was ill-prepared for. When asked what sort of foreign policy experience she brought to the ticket she answered that as governor of a state that was close to Russia this gave her foreign affairs experience. Just as Rick never said, ‘Play it again, Sam’ in Casablanca Palin never said, ‘I Can see Russia from my house.’ That was a satirical performance on Saturday Night Live. But because that performance fitted perfectly with the impression because of Palin poor performance under intense press scrutiny that image of her stuck.

When a single Twitter user posted a joke tweet reporting that in his memoir Hillbilly ElegyVance confessed to having sex with a couch the visual raced to the top of the political environment. The joke about the couch stuck to Vance for a few reasons, firstly because he already had a poor charismatic image, his already well-known and extremist views on sexual matters lends itself to sexual perversions, and finally because anyone slapped with the label ‘hillbilly’ is suspect in American Culture.

JD Vance no matter the outcome of this election is going to remain stuck with the ‘weird’ couch screwing image until he managed to fully shatter it with a wholly new one but that is a monumental task.

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I will grant you that Trump has a feral innate cunning when it comes to publicity. A nature endpoint for this celebrity obsessed culture.

However, the assassination attempt on Saturday was not some staged master-plan plot to sway the election. Ford had two assassination attempts and still failed at reelection. Such a thing does not generate sympathy for an already unpopular candidate.

And tell just how does this plot actually work?

There’s no way Trump stood there and let someone shoot withing inches of his head. Even Trump isn’t That stupid. So that would mean the shooter was just a decoy, a distraction.

Did they persuade the shooter to get up on that roof as an act of suicide?

Shots were fired and people were injured and killed. So that would have to have two or more shooters. Who are they? Where were they? Why take extra shots and kill people if the whole idea was to injure Trump and promote sympathy? You could do that with one shot.

How are the people remaining silent? The fatal flaw in nearly every ‘vast conspiracy’ is that it requires numerous people to maintain a perfect wall of silence. People just don’t do that.

No.

We have a young male shooter, acting in all likelihood irrationally, and whose exact motivation may never be known.

That’s it.

The world is often chaotic and unreasonable and this is just another example.

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Yesterday, July 13th, while delivering his usual lies, threats, and promises of vengeance Presidential candidate Trump was nearly assassinated by a gunman.

I have nothing but contempt and antipathy for Trump, the man who has more to damage our political system than anyone else. Should an artery in his diseased and putrid brain burst tonight causing him to assume room temperature I would not only not lose a moment’s sleep over it I would consider it a stroke of good fortune.

That said, and as I have said before, there is no room in our system of government for political violence. Full stop. What transpired yesterday is terrible for our nation, terrible for our culture, and terrible for our future. Here, in no particular order, are some thoughts on the matter.

1) When you normalize and excuse political violence you get more it and you will not be in control of it. Be it street level violence ‘punching nazis,’ mocking and inventing fantastical conspiracies following a brutal attack on political spouse, or an entire political party proclaiming violence insurrectionist as martyrs and hostages, the result is more violence and the degradation of our political life.

2) Grand conspiracies are fantasies no more real that the armies of Barad-dur. It is a deeply human thing to believe that order and reason move the world but love gunman are the rule and not the exception. Overly complex plots to employ ‘false flag’ are the stuff of bad thrillers not reality.

3) Early reports have a terrible error rate and rushing to judgment on them is an act of foolishness.

4) Today people are dead who were not dead Friday. Have some considerations for those killed and injured before you go

5) No one know how this will move the electorate or if it will at all. This election is so ahistorical we have no comparable past to judge it against by which we can make any reasonable assumptions for the future.

6) The elected officials and parties are revealing who they are. Some are coming out with sentiments of consolations and wishes for speedy recoveries while other are quick to deploy attacks and manipulated the event for their partisan advantage. Take note who is doing which.