“Parasite (n): organism that lives on or in another organism (its host) and benefits by taking nutrients at the host’s expense.”
Such life-sucking lifeforms are the topic of today’s commentary.
One in particular.
Not so fast. In this case, I’m not talking about the external, barnacle-style parasite, like the tick, the flea, the chigger, or the 47th president of the United States.
The latter has Wonka-ized his end of the White House and bulldozed the other end. He spent $60 million of your tax dollars so UFC goons could knock themselves silly on its grounds — our grounds. He’s sold golden gewgaws and gimcracks that cheapen and debase everything American — most damagingly the presidency.
Yes, he’s a parasite. However, in this case, let’s contemplate the internal, mind-eating kind.
The organism in question is not to be confused with the notorious water-born amoeba literally known to destroy the human brain. Microbiologists know that as naegleria fowleri.
No, we speak here of the mysterious political parasitic strain: MAGA-gleria profusei.
Sufferers appear to have normal, operative brains. They eat, drive, use the TV remote.
When it comes to the parsing of crucial data about the governing of a nation, however, they are crustaceans in a net.
Only a communicable, mind-disabling malady could explain why when the man in the White House prattles about “rigged” elections, anyone pays him any mind.
As MSNOW’s Rachel Maddow says, “Bad-faith attacks on the integrity of our system really depend on the idea that people are stupid.”
That’s harsh. This may all come down to microbial pathology — victims who let an amoeba do their thinking.
Who’s calling them stupid?
CNN elections analyst Harry Enten does.
He calls the president’s claim that the Los Angeles mayor primary was rigged to keep his favored candidate out of a runoff “the dumbest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard.”
Enten owes his expertise on this to the fact that he can count.
This president can’t. He claimed “they” — the Dem vote-counting machine — conspired to keep reality-show bro Spencer Pratt out of the runoff.
Instead, Democrat Nithya Ruman made it.
To say Bass wanted a fellow Democrat in the runoff, said Enten, is beyond stupid. No way would Bass want to split her party’s Dem vote. If she was “fixing” the election, she would make it “us” vs. “him” — Pratt — in a heavily Democratic city. Now she and Ruman will scrape and claw for Dem love.
Let’s take a moment and think about who makes this claim — a man who, in his first electoral loss, the 2016 Iowa Caucus – to Ted Cruz – claimed the vote was rigged.
Even after the Electoral College gave him the presidency with fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton, he claimed without any evidence that her numbers were boosted illegally.
The dependability of the vote was a non-issue in this country until that man — a serial liar (and felon for fraud) — told Americans their elections were rigged.
Only a person ravaged by MAGA-gleria would swallow the 2020 “stolen election” claims without thinking: If the Dems rigged the 2020 vote, how did Republicans win House and Senate races?
Those who still buy the Big Lie and who say elections must undergo draconian restrictions (“End mail-in ballots!” “Ban voter drop boxes!”) have one reason: the parasite in their brains.
There’s another reason this brand of parasitism still flares.
Another election is approaching, and it doesn’t look good for the forces of parasitism.
After that will come the 2028 general election in which a successor-to-be christened by the Chief Parasite, and MAGA’s assault on American norms, will be on the ballot.
In both instances, we will hear what he and his followers who have lost the ability to think will be told to believe.
It will be what commentator Jennifer Rubin calls, “the fever dreams of losers desperate to excuse defeat.”
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
