Peak Cringe Theory: Have We Finally Hit Bottom?

How Donald Trump may have staged an American intervention at The Garden

On Sunday night at Madison Square Garden, a who’s who of liars, conmen, cult leaders and oligarchs delivered a five-hour nightmare straight into American veins. The location was a blatant reminder of the infamous “Night at the Garden” captured in this Academy Award-winning short by Marshall Curry, when 20,000 American Nazis gathered to sing the National Anthem and pledge their loyalty to Hitler.

As someone who has been closely watching the fascist insurgency attacking our population and government for 4 1/2 years, I feel this will either be the moment we “wake up” from our national nightmare — or be swallowed by it.

Those who can make you believe absurdities, are those who can make you commit atrocities. — Voltaire

The richest man in the world, clearly on very hard drugs, bounced his way on to stage to deliver a speech that was so strange, so… un-American, it felt like a national psychotic break. This short video of the richest man in the world, went ballistic (13 million views and counting) on Twitter because it’s so damned absurd.

I warn you this is cringe on a molecular level. Watching it physically hurts. The Dean Scream has nothing on this.

As part of his treasonous taunt of the American Experiment, Musk wore a hat with MAGA spelled out in Fraktur font, which was both used and banned by the Nazis.

Elon Musk’s “Dark MAGA” hat, Mein Kampf, both in Fraktur font

But Elon Musk was just a thin, white slice of a very long shit sandwich, a virtual Academy Awards of foreign propaganda, fraud, greed, cruelty and bigotry.

List of speakers at Madison Square Garden, 10/27/24

As a small example of how unconnected to “politics” this tragicomic evening was, “Kill Tony” aka Tony Hinchcliffe made a joke comparing the US territory of Puerto Rico to a “floating pile of trash.” There are almost half a million Puerto Ricans in the critical state of Pennsylvania. There are 1.2 million in Florida, a state threatening to be in play for Democrats. No one was trying to add votes at this event — to the contrary.

Perhaps the most, well, Nazi moment, was Stephen Miller, a close associate, speechwriter and legal attack dog of Trump, doing a dead-on impersonation of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Miller’s been working on this for years but he’s brought his doppelganging to a fine art, including using the line “America is for Americans” — which is a direct copy of Goebbels’s line “Germany is for Germans.”

I could go on and on, but the upshot of this whole event, the Big Idea that one had to take from it was just a big middle finger, basically: “Yes, I’m a petulant hateful brat with no boundaries and no guidance, fuck you. Murica!”

When the prospective Vice President, and near-certain President if Trump wins, JD Vance, mentioned Tim Walz, the immediate reaction of the audience was “Tampon Tim!”

It seems that nearly half the country has been Benjamin Buttoned back to 6 years old.

Of course, the question is “why?” How can they not care about alienating their own voters? The answer is clear: They know they’re going to lose. This is about getting ready to cheat. This entire event was saying, right out loud, “We’re the Nazi Party, everybody knows it, and we’re going to try to steal the election.”

As I have warned, I think the Supreme Court is going to help them try to do it. And I think the conditions are in place for a second civil war.

The question is, does whatever is left of the sane American majority pull themselves from their collective apathy, reject this absurd Nazi theater at the polls — and stand up to them when they live up to their promises to seize power regardless of the vote?

At the risk of spreading the dreaded hopium, my gut feeling is yes. I do not think the American spirit, the real one, is done. I do not think we’ve given up on a more perfect union. And honestly, I think we’ve hit Peak Cringe. Even MAGA seems exhausted.

As a historical parallel, let me leave you with this. Fritz Kuhn, the immigrant naturalized leader of the German-American Bund, who led the 20,000 person 1939 Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden, was subsequently arrested, jailed, denaturalized and deported. 🇺🇸

VOTE.

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