Trolling the libs.
Making liberals tear out their hair is not an accident.
It is policy.
A youthful incident gives me a way to understand the MAGA world. They are teenagers, acting out. They are the team of students versus the adult kill-joys.
At Medford High School in the spring of 1967, the Vice Principal, Mr. Alex McDonald, announced a crackdown on kids smoking in the bathrooms. Some rowdy kids decided to do something about it, to hang him in effigy. One morning there it was, in the oak tree in the parking lot next to the school. There was a sign: "Everyone Run Alex To Hell." ERATH. For a few days the word "ERATH" got knowing nods. It was secret code. People said it in the halls with a snicker. "ERATH."
The rowdy boys thought it great fun.
I came to know Alex McDonald as an adult. He was a sweet, gentle man, who spend a lifetime as an educator. He remembered the incident. He laughed about it. He said it was kids having fun, making memories for themselves, being teenagers, rebelling against authority. "Teenagers do that kind of thing," he told me.
This morning's opening page on the Fox News website is Tucker Carlson saying that Biden failed miserably in dealing with COVID. Why? Because even though most people are vaccinated against COVID, a record number of people are still dying from it and these deaths are a total failure of Biden's policies.
He does not mention that the people dying (currently 93% of people in overcrowded Michigan hospitals) are unvaccinated people who get COVID guidance from people like himself. How dare he blame you unvaccinated people, for getting the virus, he tells his audience. Yet incredibly, simultaneously, Carlson also says COVID is not particularly dangerous and Biden's efforts to deal with it are unnecessary overkill. Didn't he just say hundreds of thousands of people died? Didn't he hear himself?
Of course, one wants to scream.
Carlson does it with a straight face and a tone of unabashed righteousness. He knows that the intransigence of the Trump-Fox-MAGA audience has become a marker of tribal loyalty. He is now the rowdiest of the rowdy boys. You can't stop us from smoking in the bathrooms! It makes Biden look helpless.
Donald Trump, Junior, sends me email advertisements, with the subject "Triggering!" and "This is hilarious!"
Let's Go Brandon. This is sweet for them. It is code for “Fuck Joe Biden” and everyone knows it. The rowdy boys have a way to be naughty but not-naughty by saying something and not-saying something. We have a secret language! ERATH.
Twenty years after the event Mr. McDonald laughed about it. It turned out to be harmless teenage fun, except for the fire danger with the paper towels, and perhaps for the people who smoked in the bathrooms as teenagers because it was really cool to be part of the crowd. Some got addicted to the cigarettes, and died young from something. That consequence is remote and ultimately on them. They took their chances and got unlucky, just like people who don’t get vaccinated and then get hospitalized and die. The other issue, the authority of high school principals to keep order, was never in question. The adults were in charge. Teachers stood guard in the bathrooms. Mr. McDonald kept order. We graduated and went on with our lives.
It is different and worse for Biden. The teenage-style mocking of Biden does put his authority and credibility into question. Biden looks physically and cognitively weak. I wish it were not so. I know I irritate some readers by writing it, but I consider it a reality to address, not one to deny. A presidential leader needs to be able to explain things to the American public and to show them his policies are addressing the needs of the nation. Joe Biden seems incapable to doing it, alas. Biden cannot do an essential element of his job.
Biden is easy to mock, and the mocking sticks, more than it ever did for Mr. McDonald. Biden is being run to hell.