We laughed when Trump supporters walked by wearing “Kick the Doofus” signs
The reckoning is coming for tens of millions of Trump/GOP supporters who have yet to see the light. They continue to cling stubbornly to the desperate hope that Donald Trump is actually doing his best to help them.
They continue to believe in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary that Donald Trump is not lying to them. That he did not cheat on his wife. That he didn’t grope several women. That he isn’t playing footsie with Russia, That he isn’t a racist, and that he actually knows something about how an economy works.
They actually swallow his denials that he didn’t stiff many of his contractors and they believe him when he brags he is a shrewd businessperson, despite declaring bankruptcy several times.
They don’t believe fact-checkers who can prove he lied more than 2,000 times since coming to office and they also don’t believe his business affairs are entangled with shady Russian oligarchs and shady financial institutions and maybe even Vladimir Putin.
They believe all of his magical conspiracy theories and they also share his conviction everyone in the Mueller investigation is a Democrat sympathizer, out to “get” him and members of his family.
His supporters continue to stand by him even when the Stormy Daniels affair threatens to topple his presidency.
They believe him when he says he can’t release his taxes, because he facing an “audit”, which must be one of the longest in history.
A fledgling cult leader must weep when he thinks of Trump and his millions of enablers. It’s probably true – he could actually walk up Fifth Avenue, shoot someone and get away with it, just as he bragged he could do during the election.
But it all must come to crashing end. The laws of physics cannot be denied for forever.
I just hope his supporters show mercy to the tens of millions of other Americans and Canadians who were not Trump supporters.
It’s funny how things work out. By way of explanation I’ll relate an incident from my high school years. Someone had pranked me by sticking a “Kick the Doofus” sign on the back of my shirt.
When I found I out, of course I felt a sharp flash of anger. But it wasn’t directed so much at the person responsible but at everyone else who sniggered and put their hands to their mouths and doubled up in laughter when I passed them. I was broiling mad – at the people who knew about the sign, who saw it, but refused to tell me for the longest half hour of my life.
That’s what I fear will happen to Trump supporters when they finally learn they’ve been the butt of a cruel joke extending for years. The first questions they will ask are, “Why didn’t anyone say anything? Why did they let me go on making a fool of myself, buying the MAGA hats and merchandise, threatening to commit harm to media outlets and the other presidential nominee? Why did they let me become a troll for Trump?”
God help us all then. I for one do not want to be put in a position where I will have an angry, foam-flecked Trump supporter screaming at me. Or worse yet, face a Trump supporter’s wracking sobs of embarrassment and shame. Did I do all I could to help them? Could I have put another meme or post on Facebook? Could No. 8,349 actually have been the one to turn the tide for at least one Trump supporter?
Instead of deleting supporters from my Facebook feed could I have messaged them instead, warned them in more stark, direct language about Trump? Instead of telling one Trump supporter 514 times he was headed down a dark alley, why didn’t I organize an intervention with my social media friends?
There is so much more we could have done. And the newspapers, the so-called “Commie-press” or the “Fake News” could have gone the extra mile, too. Could they not have doubled the size of their text, added more cartoons of Trump committing his misdeeds to help literacy-challenged supporters (much of his base) get a clearer grasp of what was going on? And let’s not get into CNN and MSNBC and those other liberal outlets that completely dropped the ball.
I’m afraid we all let them down. We turned our backs and sniggered when they walked past us wearing “Kick the Doofus” signs.
And now we shall pay for our failure to look out for others less fortunate than ourselves.
They may never forgive us.
Grab those Dreamers before someone else does!
By Jim Brown
It’s time for Canada to make a bold move and court the 800,000 or so Dreamers Donald Trump and the GOP apparently don’t want. Their only real sin is being born in the US to undocumented (illegal) immigrants.
Just think of it – hundreds of thousands of well-educated, well-trained, super-motivated, entrepreneurial young people just waiting for a chance to show the world what they can do. And guess what? Crime rates are substantially below the national average (certainly much lower than the MAGA ballcap-wearing Trump supporters who want them out).
It’s the last big gold rush of talent and we need to grab them before other countries do.
A dog’s day in Hunter River
Jim Brown
This dog has the most striking eyes I’ve even seen in a canine. The photo was taken in mid-December in Hunter River. 
Trump and the prosperity curse
Gone fishing near Margate, PEI
By Jim Brown
In early June an angler tried his luck at a pond near Margate where he had caught trout in previous trips.
We, all of us, are The Deep State
By Jim Brown
It’s going on 130 days in office for Trump and when I’m not foundering in the depths of a deep, black despair about the future of liberal democracy, I find some solace in the knowledge that although America has been seriously wounded by a populist demagogue, the wound isn’t a mortal one.
I think of Trump as a dangerous parasite – perhaps a disease organism.
The body may be infected, but it is possible to isolate the infection – to provoke an immune response that surrounds the invading organism with layers of firm, fibrous tissue, preventing it from spreading to more vulnerable areas. What am I talking about?
Trumpism has invaded the White House, but hasn’t gotten much further. The movement has been stopped in its tracks by something the alt right media and Fox News have derisively labelled “The Deep State.”
Who is “The Deep State”? A short answer is just about everyone connected in some way to the federal machinery of government who doesn’t want Trump to destroy America. Think about it. There are millions of Americans receiving their paycheques from Uncle Sam – from rocket scientists, diplomats, intelligence officers and four star generals to teachers, filing clerks, fisheries biologists, police officers, road engineers and game wardens. Thousands and thousands of job descriptions and they all are carrying on their important duties, keeping the country running and living up to their name as the best civil service in the world.
They are doing that despite the tremendous strain placed on America’s institutions, it sinews of democracy, by the Trump White House and a corrupt, compliant Republican Party.
And, on a much larger scale, millions of good-hearted, sane, rational, pragmatic Americans, who are not connected to the government in any way, are also, very loosely, part of the “Deep State.” How is that possible? I’m sure nearly every progressive on Facebook or other social media outlets has had the experience of jettisoning chest-thumping, racist, bigoted, quite insane Trump supporters. Bye, bye, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. We’ve isolated and contained them to their own festering cesspool of hate and ignorance. We don’t want them or their toxic views in our lives.
Secondly, we haven’t heard much about this on cable news networks or in major newspapers, but I can’t imagine supporters of Donald Trump who have outed themselves on social media aren’t taking a hit in their professional lives. Would you want someone who supports Trump on the payroll of your non-profit, start-up or green tech business, where many of the new, high-paying jobs of the future are expected to be? I sure wouldn’t. These are people who have embraced a president who is one of the founding fathers of the noxious birtherism movement, who has brought the very worst elements of the loony far right movement into his Oval Office. These are people who support a president who has openly bragged about assaulting women, who is a climate change denier, and a serial liar.
So I think we’ll hear a bit more about their employment struggles in the coming weeks and months.
And then there’s this.
On June 1, Trump officially withdrew America from the Paris Accord, to which nearly 200 countries had signed on, all in a bid to ameliorate the worst of the coming climate catastrophe. America may be out, and atmosphere fouling coal and shale oil may be in, but the world’s sixth largest economy and America’s most populous and prosperous state, California, is continuing to embrace green technology and carbon-slashing strategies. So is New York State and so many, many large corporations, all fighting the good fight.
“Isolate and contain” are the two key words for fighting a deadly contagion. Perhaps it might be possible to do the same with Trump and his enablers at the White House.
His opponents, better known as “the resistance”, will ignore, deflect or jam up bad laws and regulations, fighting a fierce rear-guard action. And it might yet work.
Taking care of business on the White House lawn
By Jim Brown
Something occurred to me right away as I heard about the ridiculous news conference on the White House lawn, in the dark, to announce FBI director James Comey’s firing. I wondered how many journalists used the opportunity to secretly ‘water the shrubs’, if you know what I mean? In my three decades worth of reporting – often waiting up to an hour or longer for official spokespersons to show up and say what was already in the prepared news releases, there were many times I would have killed for a bush and cover of darkness to take care of urgent business.
Shattered pavement in Cavendish
Jim Brown photo
Spring has arrived on PEI to reveal a very ugly truth about many of the Island’s roads and highways, including this stretch of road in Cavendish on April 19.
Smelt filling streams and rivers on PEI
Jim Brown photo
The smelt are in and they are turning rivers and streams black with their numbers. These smelt were caught with a dip net in a stream in the Stanley Bridge area on April 11.
Fighting hate with love
By Jim Brown
Instead of going for a hike in PEI’s great outdoors, as I usually do on Saturday, I went on another walk instead, joining as many as 2,000 other Islanders in Charlottetown in a silent procession to Province House.
The march was organized to honour the victims of a terrorist attack on a mosque in Quebec City in which six Muslims were brutally slain as they prayed and several others were seriously wounded.
Marchers called for an end to the divisive, hate-filled rhetoric that turns Canadians against each other and they also condemned the travel ban imposed by the Trump administration on people from seven Muslim majority countries.
Hate crimes against Muslims in Canada are rising and every Canadian has a stake in the fight against Islamophobia.
Judging by the number of people who joined the peaceful march and demonstration, it looks like love won over hate today, said one of the organizers.
PEI's Shores And Beyond 
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