The World Turned Upside Down

MAGA Goes After Donald Trump

I’ve been on a Hamilton kick lately, largely since I rewatched it around July 4th and the songs are just earworms that navigate into your brain and never get out. Try not singing “Wait for it” or “The Room Where it Happens” 20 minutes after the curtain falls. It can’t be done.

Which is why this past week’s events just remind me of the part immediately after the Battle of Yorktown in Hamilton when there’s a hushed murmur of “The World Turned Upside Down.” The colonials weren’t supposed to win after all; they were up against the British superpower and as George Washington says in the musical, we were… “Outmanned, outgunned, outnumbered, outplanned.” Yet, against all odds, the colonial patriots won.

What events am I talking about here? Well…

To be sure, I genuinely no longer care about Epstein and haven’t for a long time. He was arrested, he was convicted, he was thrown in jail, and he hung himself. As far as I am concerned, case closed. He’s now burning in hell; good riddance.

But MAGA has always had a hard-on for conspiracies, and Epstein contained a myriad of them. He had dirt on the upper echelon of society many assumed. He blackmailed the likes of British Royal Family, Bill Clinton, and many other financial luminaries of the world, for having sex with minors. There was a client list! There were bank records! Good lord, there were videos! But the thing with conspiracies are either they’re true, in which case the information is eventually made public, or they’re not provable, which only furthers the conspiracy as it appears something is being hidden purposefully.

Which brings us to MAGA. The Donald has always stoked the fires of conspiracy. Go back to the Obama years when he was Birtherism Pusher Numero Uno. At the time everyone agreed he was a fraud. He’d claim he had proof but never disclosed it. He claimed Obama should be forced to produce his birth certificate, which Obama did, only for Trump to find quibbles with that as well. But to that crowd who loathed Obama, just the fact he was giving them a reason to hate Obama more endeared them to this orange hobgoblin. When he got elected, next came Qanon, which he latched onto even if not explicitly. To the MAGA faithful, every new “Q Drop” was like manna from heaven sating their every wish. As with all conspiracies, it was farce played out as global comedy/tragedy.

But Trump also played up the Epstein files too. He would mention them on the campaign trail, throwing out red meat to the MAGA hounds, devouring every last morsel. He claimed they weren’t being disclosed to the public because they had details about Bill Clinton and other Democrats in them, Clinton now being out of office for 25 years, and acting as if everyone on the left revered him as a saint (newsflash, they didn’t, not back in the ‘90s and certainly not after #MeToo). But everyone also knew that Trump was an associate of Epstein too; their friendship goes back a couple decades. So when Trump said that if he got back into office he would release the files, MAGA swooned. FINALLY, THEY’LL SHOW TO THE WORLD HOW THOSE DEMOCRATS ARE PEDOS AND TRUMP IS THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS!

Nope.

Instead, Trump got into office and said, “No, sorry, nothing to see here.”

And then MAGA went APESHIT. They turned on their own, the orange gutter knight himself.

You can’t help but laugh and grin when MAGA eats its own. I mean, come on, you play with fire you get burned. Trump seemed to have been immune to fire for the longest time but this weekend was like watching a napalm brushfire sticking to him. Now, he’s trying to find a way to wash his hands of this mess, while not showing too much, because again, everyone knows Trump is in Epstein’s files.¹ How bad was the backlash against Trump? He posted on Truth Social and got BODYSLAMMED with negative comments. I mean, those comments were BRUTAL against Trump on his own platform.

On top of that, polls came out regarding Trump’s Immigration policies.

The TL;DR notes here: Americans LIKE immigration and think Trump is going WAYY too far. Approval in FAVOR of immigration hit an all time high:

The more people hear about “Alligator Alcatraz” the more they loathe the very idea of it. The more ICE appears to be a bunch of brownshirt thugs randomly plucking people suspected of being immigants off the streets and shipping them to concentration camps in the middle of the Everglades, the more people are shocked by what this administration is doing and want to put the brakes on it. And the more random the stops are, and the more offensive the ICE raids get, the more people are appalled by the stories and want it all to stop. All told, 79% approved of Legal Immigration, a polling all time high.

And then finally, Trump did something completely inexplicable— he sided against Putin and Russia, and decided it may actually be in America’s best interests to side with Ukraine. I mean, WOW. On Monday, he threatened Russia with even more sanctions and then agreed to send more arms to Kiev, including patriot missile systems and other advanced equipment. It was like Trump got so smacked around by MAGA over the weekend, he decided to hell with it and called up Zelenskyy saying “OK, you’re on.”

Like I said, the world turned upside down.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

So I saw two things this weekend that got me thinking about how, generationally at least, what we want as entertainment differs. It may be why as I get older I’m turning into my parents wondering why there’s never anything good on.

I am solidly Gen X. I grew up in the ‘80s, went to college during the grunge era and am now on the backend of a career closing in on retirement. Our tastes are typically dark, cynical, and sarcastic. We don’t like heroes, we like anti-heros. Bender from Breakfast Club. Ferris Bueller skipping school. We even root for the villains in slasher movies like Freddy and Jason. It’s why we choked on Superman past 1983 and loved Batman from the get-go. It’s why we prefer Pulp Fiction to Forrest Gump; one’s about a happy “ignorance is bliss” do gooder and the other is about hitmen, drug overdoses and the messes that need to be cleaned up when you shoot someone in the face. For us, it was an easy decision.²

Which is why Dexter was such a hit with us. The story of a serial killer trying to live a normal life, fit in, while he goes on splurges killing other serial killers? Give him a sarcastic inner dialogue full of dark humor snippets to boot? Yeah, sign us up.

Over the years, Dexter has seemed long in the tooth. It hit its peak more than a decade ago, and somehow still continued to meander to one of the worst show finales ever. “No problem!” said the hacks at Showtime, “We’ll just make ANOTHER season where we can fix everything that went wrong with the ending here.” And hence, Dexter: New Blood” was made a few years ago, which was a season focusing on Dexter and his now teen son’s relationship as he essentially trains him to be a serial killer too. It still has the dark humor of the original, and the season’s big baddie was definitely worth it (Clancy Brown!³), even as it traded the beats of Miami to the cold winter of upstate New York. If the show’s original finale was a disaster, this season seemed to rectify all those problems and come to a complete close, with Dexter getting shot by his son.

And……then they realized, “Hey! That was great! Let’s make ANOTHER season!” It’s trying to squeeze water from a rock at this point; for crying out loud, you killed off the main character. Well, they bring him back to life in for a new season of Dexter: Resurrection. Apparently too, all the police that had been chasing him for killing all these people all over the years, including pretty much everyone in homicide in Miami, don’t really seem to care he’s out and about, save for one friendly face. I mean, if “The Bay Harbor Butcher” escaped in real life, it would be front page news across the country in a huge manhunt, would it not? Defying logic was never one of Dexter’s fine points.

Oh well, I did watch the first two episodes and was reluctantly impressed. I enjoyed them. It was like being nostalgic for the old, old Dexter again. Which is why if they ever remake Forrest Gump for my generation, it’s going to feature Judd Nelson, sitting on a bench as Bender, talking to randos about how shitty his life was, how he grunged out in 1994, how he went to Iraq after 9/11, lost his house in the housing crisis and everything was bad until he made millions in Bitcoin and CBD dispensaries, and how he loves to stick it to the others in the Breakfast Club who are all mediocre nobodies.

The other thing I saw this weekend was Superman. Now, Gen Z loves their heroes. Cheesy, naive, barely there character heros. Captain America. Thor. Doctor Strange. Basically, take a good guy, give him an interesting character and outfit, maybe a little backstory, some kind of MacGuffin power and boom, hero. No edge, no bad qualities. Maybe some humor but all in all, nothing too bad. Well then, Superman is this generation’s Batman. Innocent and naive to a fault, this film is a goofy, cheesy, I don’t know what. The best comparison I can give it is to last year’s overhyped, emperor’s new clothes marketed movie, Barbie. It’s a basic story that goes through all the hoops, even if what occurs defies any common sense or logic. It’s got some humor, the characters are likeable, even sugary so. Lois Lane was modernized in a way that was laughable.⁴ It’s got a Super Puppy in it (And who doesn’t like puppies?Awwwwwwww.). But it’s, um, how do I put this lightly…er…ah… dumb. The plot of this is a mess, and its even kind of ridiculous. To be sure, some of the ridiculousness is good— take Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern for instance, which made me eager to see THAT movie. But there has to be SOME stakes, and in a world where a practically invulnerable Super-Man exists, there is actually little to none. Worse yet, for all the good Superman does, all anyone ever does is bitch and complain about him. If I were him, I’d go back to Kansas, kick back with a drink and say to the world “Fine, you’re on your own.” Some people love to point out that the story is a metaphor for the “immigrant experience.” OK, sure. But that alone doesn’t make it good. In real life, if someone saved as many people as Superman does in 5 minutes, you’d be lauding him no matter where they were from, not screaming at him as what occurs here. It’s nonsensical.

And here’s the thing. When it was over and I sat there perplexed at what I saw, as I was walking out all the young Gen Zers were not bashful in how AMAZING that was. I kind of cocked my eyebrow and smirked, thinking they had never seen anything before which was actually good (well, it is PG13, and movies have been getting steadily worse for years, so that actually IS plausible). But it dawned on me that this is just a huge variation in generations. Gen X with it’s apathetic, latchkey cynicism vrs. the naive idealistic spoonfed optimism of Gen Z. Gen X would want a Superman more like Dr. Manhattan, wondering why he should care about a world that does this to itself, and Gen Z wants someone to fix all the problems, some of which are just their own doing.

It’s enough for me to want to watch Saving Private Ryan and witness some real heroes in film for a change.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Lex Luthor is my least favorite villain. He never feels like he’s on the same level as Superman. He’s fighting up. Typically, its the hero who does this against all odds. Villains aren’t supposed to be working their way to being on top, they’re already there.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

“The World Turned Upside down!”

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. Even though to what degree and what is disclosed in them, nobody knows for certain.

2. But we still lost out to the Boomers who loved the nostalgia of Gump.

3. As if to make the point of why Gen X loves Clancy Brown, he’s both the real badass guy from Highlander and Shawshank Redemption, while still doing the voice for Mr. Krabs on Spongebob Squarepants.

4. At one point she goes “I’m Punk Rock!” as if one just glosses themselves and suddenly they are Punk Rockers. No, it doesn’t work that way, particularly when you’re an eager beaver reporter working on climbing the ladder. That’s as not-Punk as it gets.