TGIF: Concepts of a Plan

Readers, I won’t tell you that I haven’t enjoyed my leave. The days and hours are shapeless, and I mean that in a good way. With the yoke of the almighty column off my neck, I realized a few things. Namely, and I mean this in the most feminist way possible, I was built to have kids. I’ve had hangovers that took more recovery than birthing our perfect, giant son. How big, you ask? Have you ever seen a foot-tall sumo wrestler? An infant with the head circumference of a man and no neck to speak of whatsoever, at all? Have you ever had to engage your leg strength to lift your newborn child? I have.

Frankly, if it were 200 years ago, I would be in a wagon, skinning rabbits and cruising across Oregon with my fifteen tiny, alarmingly strong future colonizers by now. But we don’t live then. We live now. TGIF is the rabbit. And so, it’s great to be back. Thank you to all the incredible TGIF guest writers—and thank you to the comments section for ravaging them.  

→ Old man and the coconut tree: So far the two presidential debates have been the best TV I’ve seen in years—more than 67 million Americans watched this week’s Trump vs. Kamala extravaganza. Which means they watched Kamala handily win the night. Sorry, I call them like I see them. She took the moderators’ questions like an Impressionist painter, more as a suggestion of a thing than a thing itself, and launched time and again into sharp talking points. She met Trump’s off-kilter rambles with a bemused smile, which is much more effective than the left’s typical carnal shriek. Sure, the moderators were biased toward her, letting her repeat debunked memes (for the last time, he really didn’t call neo-Nazis “very fine people”). But you can’t always blame the refs. 

Trump tried to do an “I’m talking” moment to, I guess, remind viewers that Kamala had done that four years earlier, but it just came off as petty and weird: “Wait a minute,” he said to her. “I’m talking now, if you don’t mind, please. Does that sound familiar?” Then, for some godforsaken reason, he randomly invoked Viktor Orbán as his primary character witness to prove that he is beloved and respected on the world stage. And then there was Kamala going for the jugular: Trump rally vibes are off. She said, “People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

Give whoever prepped her a prize, a raise, and, since we don’t do ass slaps anymore, a firm handshake. It short-circuited Trump. Lest we forget, Trump once made a grown man—his press secretary, Sean Spicer—hold an entire briefing about how the Trump inauguration was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” The man was president of the United States, sitting in the Oval Office, able to command the greatest military ever assembled, and it’s still just all about the ratings. 

One interesting turn is that some of the wackiest progressive policies, policies that Kamala Harris heartily endorsed in a more exciting era, now come across as crazy and bizarre to even ask about. When Trump said that Kamala Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” he was saying something that is quite literally true (here’s the CNN story on that exact position of hers). But it sounds crazy. And Kamala reacted as if it was crazy (“What is he talking about?” she said, smiling toward the audience). Trans aliens became a meme with BuzzFeed’s headline: “Donald Trump Might Have Said One Of The Most Baffling Things Of His Career In The Debate, And The Internet Is Having A Field Day.” But. . . but. . . she did support that! No, the media says now; no, she did not. Here’s the stately New Yorker with their political analysis of the debate: “His line about how the Vice-President ‘wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison’ was pretty memorable, too. What the hell was he talking about?” We have all been normal moderates all this time, silly goose. What are you even talking about? <Hides the incarcerated and medically transitioned illegal aliens under the bed>

Meanwhile, we’re told that Trump is doing fake news when he talks about Seattle’s antifa occupation. Fact check: false, says The Seattle Times. He said it was big but it was only six square blocks and a police station in a major commercial and residential neighborhood. Not big! Medium! False, the paper screams: 

Trump did bring plenty of random chaos to the debate. He latched onto the viral (and completely unverified) story of Haitian migrants in Ohio stealing pets to eat. On immigration, he said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” How come it’s always the sweet dogs in Springfield and not my own, who I loved but who bit a man who works for State Farm. The dog had to be sent to Pittsburgh and now here I am learning about liability limits? I could have used someone hungry for dog stew. . . 

→ Stewed the pooch: There are plenty of interesting conservative talking points right now. Government incompetence, taxes, things such as that. But the Trump campaign and the right in general have seized upon something much more deranged and also not true: Haitian migrants are eating your pets! In Ohio!

Here’s J.D. Vance on the topic: “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” Not only are they not eating pets, but Haitians are, in fact, not committing a disproportionate amount of crime.

But there is an emotional truth, which is that immigration has soared and people know there are large demographic shifts going on (I’m stealing this from the writer Razib Khan, much like I steal cats to eat). During these years of massive waves of immigration, the line has been that talking about this at all is racist, and anything but open borders is fascism. And that all these new undocumented immigrants need to start voting right away, which will be great for Dems, but also that that is not happening and never will happen, nope. Anyway, here’s some data pulled together by The Wall Street Journal last week:

Now, there is indeed a viral photo of a black man carrying a goose. We don’t know what’s going on there. But I will say: Geese are fair to eat. They’re birds, like chickens. We had a flock of geese in San Francisco, and I would go as a kid with my grandma to feed them old bread, and some of those geese were real jerks, flapping aggressively, stealing the loaf. So as an expert I’ll say: American geese have gotten too comfortable. We feed them bread, and yet they never feed us? Uh, freeload much? If someone grabs one for dinner every once in a while, that’s probably good. Keep them on their little webbed toes.