Desperation

How desperate is Donald Trump in his bid for re-election against Joe Biden?

Let's examine the evidence:

• Trump tried to stop his niece Mary from putting out a book about what a soulless sociopath he is.  It didn't work.  Mary Trump was barred from granting interviews about her book, but that didn't last long.  She's been all over TV promoting her book.  It sold a million copies in a day.
• Trump banned hospitals from sending information about COVID-19 to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and ordered that the date be sent directly to the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington in an apparent effort to control the new flow about the disease. One thing he can't control, however is the rising number of deaths from it,which are expected to reach a quarter of a million by the end of October.
• Trump demoted his campaign manager, digital-media wunderkind Bill Parscale, in favor of former Chris Christie confidant Bill Stepien in an effort to reverse his slide in the polls.  This happened even as a new Quinnipiac poll showed Biden ahead by 15 percentage points, 52 percent to 37 percent.
• And now Trump says he may not accept the election results if he loses.

Like any wild animal, Trump is vicious when he's merely wounded.  He'll do anything to win at this point.  He could let the Postal Service shut down to discourage mail-in voting. He could get the Russians to hack voting machines.  He could make a statement designed to gin up the stock market.  He could find a way to resurrect Tara Reade in the news media or find some other woman to make a sex-assault accusation against Biden.  And one thing I could definitely imagine him doing is getting some crazy rapper to run for President to dilute the black vote, but we all know that's not going to work out.

Oh, wait . . . :-O     

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

I've been so busy commenting on the 2020 presidential election campaign (which, alas, is still very much in progress) and other issues here that I haven't found any space for any one of the numerous rebellions against the established order in so many other countries around the world.  I had always hoped to get to the unrest in one country or another, but I never did.  There were simply too many distractions.  Now, I realize, after having struggled for something trenchant to say about Hong Kong, Lebanon, or some other place like that, I realize I don't have to. Because the takeaway is obvious.

The whole world has gone mad!

Actually, it went mad decades ago, but for the first time since World War II, the madness has gone beyond the pale.  In Venezuela, there's a situation not unlike our own - a fundamentally flawed leader with backing form rank-and-file military members - Nicolas Maduro - refuses to step down despite growing opposition to his rule.  The standoff between him and opposition leader Juan Guaidó continues, but the American media lost interest in the crisis months ago - and not for reasons you might think.  They've since been distracted by other hot-spot stories around the globe, such as the protests against the cost of living and economic strain in Chile and in Iran, the fragile, corrupt government trying to mollify angry citizens in Lebanon, and the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong against its Chinese overlords, who want greater control over the administrative region even as Hong Kongers resist any threats to the autonomy granted to them by Beijing back when we Westerners were still calling it Peking, when the deal handing over Hong Kong from Britain to China was negotiated.  

And Iraq?  Well, as the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, democracy is messy!

Perhaps the world isn't really all that mad.  Perhaps this is an extension of what we have seen in America in the form of the rise of Trump, in Britain with Brexit, and with France with the yellow vest protests. People are getting sick and tired of the elites screwing things up to the point where people's futures are uncertain and they act out as a form of protest.  For the most part, as with Trump and Brexit, this has only made the problem worse, and in places like Iraq, all anyone is accomplishing is contributing to climate change by burning all of those tires.  Heck, in Israel, the system is so paralyzed that even after two elections, no one has been able to form a government, and there might yet be a third election that resolves nothing.  Still, the people of all of these various countries are onto something here - nothing is working for them, and they're making a desperate effort to get things to work right for a change.

Just don't expect anything to be sorted out any time soon.

Except, maybe, in Hong Kong, were pro-democracy council candidates won power in a free and open contest.