Mango Sorbet

First ballot LGM commenter Karen performs a useful service by regularly donning what I hope is the world’s best Internet HazMat suit to go diving into the most gothic regions of the right wing — can we just start calling them fascist now? — fever swamps. Her latest foray produced this amazing bolus of rhetorical toxic waste, from one Bruce Bawer.

The thing has to be read to be believed: for example, as a prelude to explaining why Donald Trump is possibly the greatest president in American history, Bawer cites the prophetic wisdom displayed by Pat Buchanan’s infamous 1992 GOP convention speech, that only quibbles with the gay bashing part of it (you will be shocked to learn that Bawer is gay).

Bawer follows the now-standard GOP practice of simply declaring, without referencing evidence of any kind, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump via unprecedented amounts of voter fraud. Thus is America on the verge of losing the unspeakable blessings of having the most essential of all men in the Oval Office.

The whole thing is an exercise in weapons-grade delusion, as illustrated nicely by this apercu:

Like Reagan, Trump actually seemed to care about ordinary Americans.

This is one of those texts whose meaning seems to grow in richness the longer one stares at it in ever-growing wonderment.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough

These people are completely insane.

Footnote: it should be noted that American Greatness, the cesspool entombing endless reams of stuff like this also features regularly the effusions of no less of a luminary of Contemporary Conservative Thought than Victor Davis Hanson, who is also still a regular at the still putatively “respectable” National Review.