If You're An Authoritarian Peckerhead Who Keeps An Enemies List.....
If You're An Authoritarian Peckerhead Who Keeps An Enemies List.....
......Then put me on it
Editor’s Note: Have a question about whether Matt, if tapped to serve in Trump’s cabinet, will say “yes”? He won’t. His conscience, such as it is, forbids it. Unless he was put in charge of fisheries as Secretary of the Interior, so he could privatize all streams for his exclusive use to catch-and-release trout until his arms grow sore, with no outside interference from killjoys or over-pressure from PowerBaiters, who should not be allowed to fish, period. (PowerBait is a crime against nature/good taste.) But alas, the president-elect has already awarded that post to North Dakota Governor/apple-polisher Doug Burgum, likely so that he can turn our national parks into fracking sites and/or luxury condo developments. If you have any other questions about Matt’s dashed hopes and dreams, send them to askmattlabash@gmail.com.
Dear Matt,
I fear you are now on Trump’s enemies list. How far down this list do you think you are? Behind Drudge and ahead of Jim Swift? I need to know, to decide if I should renew my subscription.
Tom G.
Of course you should renew your subscription, as an act of philanthropy, if for no other reason. (Good lawyers don’t pay for themselves.) And besides, even if I get sent to journo internment camp, I expect they’ll have serviceable WiFi (they’re not total savages, and Trumpsters are a very online people). So I’ll be filing one whale of a prison diary: Food reviews on how they make us eat overcooked beef pucks slathered in ketchup, in the Mar-a-Lago culinary tradition. Gruesome descriptions of how they wear us down with psychological torture. (Making us watch future Defense Secretary/serial philanderer Pete Hegseth’s deepest thoughts from Fox & Friends Weekend on a continuous loop.) Instructionals on how to fashion a prison shiv from a toothbrush, in case I need to stick Trump’s co-president, Elon, when he inevitably falls out of favor for being too much of a narcissist (there’s only room for one at the top), then gets assigned as my cellie, coming at me with lust’s impure light in his eye after having not impregnated anyone in at least three months. (In fairness to Elon, I will be fairly desirable/shredded from consistent workouts with my prison-yard trainer, Mad Dog Mattis.)
If I sound unserious, it’s only fitting when writing about the unserious people now poised to staff the Trump administration (unless Republican Senators stand up to Trump — though you have a better chance of winning Powerball than that happening): from the anti-vaxxer brain-worm guy who thinks the Jews might’ve been in on COVID, to the Putin-puppet who is now trading in her religious cult for a secular one, to the hydrocephalic-looking human skid-mark who has been accused of everything from having sex’n’drug orgies to conducting “voter outreach” with a 17-year-old girl (he denies it, a purported eyewitness’s attorney doesn’t) – a man who has pulled off the once-impossible feat of being too scummy even for the House of Representatives, but not too scummy to helm Trump’s Revenge Machine as Attorney General.
Trump and his prospective cabinet of misfit toys have made lots of noise about keeping an enemies list. Which, fine, if you’re an authoritarian-wannabe, I suppose. I shouldn’t say this, in the interest of not getting audited (my wife and accountant will hate me), but if Trump or his goons are keeping an enemies list, as they’ve indicated, go ahead and put me on it. Because if you’re the kind of un-American peckerhead who thinks the machinery of government should be used to punish people solely for having dissenting opinions and/or to carry out your revenge fantasies, then count me in as your enemy for life. Mind you, I recognize that Trump is democratically elected, which I honor, because I believe in democracy. (Even if Trump and his MAGA media minions didn’t do the same while trying to overthrow our government/perpetuating four years of false voter-fraud claims.) But that said — and this isn’t a very Christian thing for a self-professing Christian to say, though I’ve asked J.C. for advance forgiveness — fuck them with a cherry on top. It’s my country, too. And I’m not going to let them ruin it without a fight.
And despite all the premature capitulation going around from captains of industry to media titans lately, this shouldn’t be considered an act of bravery, but of preserving one’s own self-respect. If Alexei Navalny could face a Siberian prison camp at the direction of Trump’s man-crush, Vladimir Putin, Never-Trumpers can surely withstand nasty memes from Trump’s bootlicking bros on Russian payrolls, or dark noises from crazy-eyed Kash Patel, who if he were the gangster he pretends to be, would likely be Fredo Corleone’s unpaid intern.
But I don’t flatter myself that I’m a high-value target. After all, I’m just a lonely one-man band here at Slack Tide. And Trump has so many detractors —hard-earned on his end— that if the enemies list does indeed get officially ratified by his Project 2025 commissars/low-sloping-forehead’ed henchmen I’m not that worried, even if I’m on it. They can only punish so many people at a time, and if they go by alphabetical order, by the time they get to the “L’s,” Trump will likely have keeled over from old age or Quarter Pounder clottage.
Do I sound insubordinate? Like a mouthy little prick? Good, that’s the entire point of this exercise. My late friend, Christopher Hitchens, who loathed totalitarians in any and all forms, used to like to say, “Do something every day against Bastards HQ.” If ever, as an American, you feel your right to pop off to power is being jeopardized, that’s precisely when you should exercise that right with even more vigor than usual.
And never underestimate the salutary effects of well-deserved ridicule. As the 17th-century French playwright, Molière (no stranger to the tragicomedy) had it: “The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.”
We are, of course, only in the opening ceremonies of the Ridiculousness Olympics. So pace yourselves. The self-preservation balance you’ll want to strike is to engage with the obvious evil, without being consumed by it. But neither, by my lights, should you resign yourself to it, as so many seem to already be doing.
After nearly ten years of dysfunction and perpetual axe-grinding from all sides, the desire to completely disengage is wholly understandable. I ran into it just this past week in an email-exchange with my old fishing buddy, The Cool Refresher, a politically astute IT-type, and also a history buff, who has lost any desire at all to speak of politics. When I broached one domestic current-events atrocity or another (there are so many to choose from at the moment), he begged of me:
I’m literally throwing my hands to heaven…..I’ve asked about 75 times since mid-summer to not get too involved in the political discussion. Admittedly, I dance in from time to time, and I won’t make that mistake going forward. I like talking about Jerry Dennis, sending pics of bluegills I caught {C.R. likes to torture me with photos of small fish since I don’t believe in fish pictures}, funny TV shows that involve Danny McBride, and making fun of the latest celebrity fuck-up, but I really don’t enjoy the political debate that you and your journalism friends engage in. You think it’s the most important conversation that can be had; I think it’s arguing whether the color blue is better than the color red. History is looking backwards, while political debate is totally speculative.
I feel his pain. Even as a writer at a political magazine for over two decades, I mostly did everything to change the subject to anything other than politics, which I always found to be a dreary backwater populated by people too dumb to make it in finance or too ugly to make it in reality television. I even once half-heartedly toyed in print, back in my Weekly Standard days, with launching an apathy support group, though I didn’t care enough to head it up.
But seasons change, people change, as the ‘80s poetesses/thinkfluencers Exposé once sang. And as the stakes have been raised and run-of-the-mill political creeps have grown noticeably creepier, my interest, too, has grown more pronounced. For a truly stable democracy encourages apathy in the best possible way: it’s easier to not be a backseat driver when you aren’t concerned that the car is going to run into a ditch. But when the driver is an unstable drunk who likes to steer with his elbows, or worse, is Matt Gaetz as AG, it might be time to pray that Jesus takes the wheel before your head goes careening through the windshield.
So I wrote Cool Refresher back, telling him that before this speculative political debate he speaks of becomes history, we first have to live through it — even doing our small parts to affect it — pushing back a little here and there against Bastards HQ. For C.R. knows enough history to know who history is written by (the victors), and that the eventual outcomes weren’t always inevitable. I long for the luxury of once again not caring. Of having elected officials who are more rooted in the Constitution, than in how they can usurp it while visiting vengeance upon their enemies list. But as Pericles (the Exposé of his day) supposedly warned: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
Bonus Track: I’ve been living with this glorious rocker, “Never Aim To Please,” for three decades. It’s from the none-hit wonders, Bash & Pop, a side outfit founded and fronted by Tommy Stinson of The Replacements, after the band broke up. I’ve never understood the words enough to make heads or tails of what Stinson intended. But songs are meant to take on their own strange shapes in the ears and minds of their listeners. And for me, mood-wise, this one has always made me feel feisty, while doing the trick as an anti-authoritarian anthem: