Can You Feel the Magic?

 

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Imagine if Bruce Wayne was really Donald Trump. We would've gotten the 145 minute-long speech with which the sheared attendees were afflicted. It was all about grievance and vengeance, which, granted, was what got the Dark Knight started as his alter ego, Batman. Young Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered in a mugging gone horribly wrong and about 15 years later, the Dark Knight Detective began striking fear into the hearts of Gotham City's criminal element.

    But Batman restricted his vendetta against just those people. Donald Trump vowed vengeance against anyone and everyone who ever looked at him cross-eyed. He essentially sounded like the Caped Crusader with a brain tumor, even going after Ron DeSantis, who, to be fair to Miami Mussolini, has yet to declare a run for the White House.

     Infamously more sensitive than a skinned clitoris, Trump tried out his new nicknames for Florida's Governor like a teenager who just saw his first Don Rickles video on Youtube. It was long, nasty and brutish, exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from Trump at a major venue or wherever he's the keynote speaker. "DeSantis is in New Hampshire?! To the Batmobile!"

     And, to play Devil's Advocate once again, Trump did receive thunderous applause. He won the CPAC straw poll yet again with 62% of the vote, even though CPAC's straw polls are about as scientific as the methodology behind the Salem Witch Trials. And, really, the people who were stupid enough to pay the hundreds of dollars to hear Trump piss and moan for two and a half hours about his self-perceived victimization, the ones giving him the most full-throated cheers, display a mindset not very dissimilar to Cotton Mather and the rest of the Salem Witch Trial judges who were all too eager to see duplicitous evil at every turn.

     At one point, they were denouncing DeSantis, who really has no political power beyond Florida, as a "traitor" even though, again, he has yet to announce his candidacy. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former US Secretary to the UN, got tepid applause at best. The only real applause lines she had that were worth delivering were when she crowed about the Trump administration's "accomplishments".

     The ones who aroused the crowd were perpetually angry lunatics like Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Tinder) and former Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro who, of course, also pissed and moaned about his election loss and, like his BFF Donald Trump, the Mussolini of Mar a Lago, warned the attendees of what a cesspit the world will soon turn into when non-Nazis are in charge. Kari Lake was there who, incredibly, denied and pissed and moaned about her election loss. To give her credit, she did deliver the best joke of the conference when said she couldn't be Trump's VP and the Governor of Arizona at the same time.

     But, to the more perceptive and to veterans of past CPACs, there was something... missing. Was it energy? Was it hope? It was difficult to put one's finger on it. Again, any mention of Trump or Trump himself resulted in screaming and wild applause. But it was the kind of applause you'd hear from 70 year-olds at a Three Dog Night reunion benefit at the local Ramada Inn, throwing keys to their retirement community and support hose up on stage.

     Maybe it was a lack of certainty and conviction that they would achieve world domination under their umber champion, Trump, who will be 78 come election day next year. Or maybe it was the recent scandal that CPAC's boss, Matt Schlapp, that outed him as a closet homosexual. More than one person had revealed to the media that they feared the higher prices were going to Schlapp's legal defense slush fund.

     The one good thing that came out of CPAC was when Nick Fuentes tried to crash the event early on and was kicked out of the hotel. His infamous Mar a Lago dinner with Trump, which earned him plaudits from him ("I like this guy. He gets me".) made him an equally infamous celebrity and sharp-eyed right wing operatives can now identify him on sight.

     But mark my words- By next year or maybe 2025, Fuentes will be an honored guest, because that's where the GOP is headed.