Why We Love Michael Musto

One of the worst things about having Trump back in the White House is that even though we’re all consensual, law-abiding, tax-paying, and intelligent citizens, we are constantly smeared by him as “scum” and “garbage” and the biggest problem with America today. It’s like being stuck in an abusive relationship where you have to do all the heavy lifting to keep it going while they attack you constantly in order to stay amused.

To wake up every day to speeches, press conferences, and postings, calling all of us human excrement is pretty painful, considering that we do love this country–or at least what it’s supposed to be–and the people putting us down are the ones who actually crap on the Constitution and on any chance for human rights and services on a daily basis. “Patriot” and “Christian” now mean the exact opposite of what they were intended to mean, and we’re supposed to be slimy, evil wretches for not going along with the change.

As Trump tries to stir up more and more chaos (because he thrives on it), the putdowns against Democrats get more and more toxic. I’ll never forget the uproar when Hillary dared to say that half of Trump’s followers could form “a basket of deplorables”. She didn’t even say all of them, just half, but every self-righteous monster alive came out from under a rock to lecture politicians that they should never put down any group of voters, no matter how misguided you might think they are! Later, when Biden said that those who only accept elections when they win are basically enabling fascism, he was practically burned at the stake by the Repugs, and we were supposed to think he was a terrible person for insisting on the need for human decency before we lose sight of all the justice that the country was founded on.

At this point, things have swung so far over in the other direction that some GOP members seem to be advocating a one-party system, and “Just Dance” Vance is suggesting that it would be great if anything remotely left-wing would be defunded, deprogrammed, and in fact, totally eradicated. So much for “the anti-cancel culture party.” We liberals have become “the other”– the different, dangerous lefties who don’t know what women are and who don’t feel that someone eating your pet dog is a deal breaker. Of course, it’s irrelevant that we know exactly what women are and that no one is eating your pets; the person who started that whole thing recanted when she found her little darling in the basement. No matter. The GOP lies have festered upon themselves and been repeated so frequently that they’ve become more reliable than the truth. As Trump spews them day and night, a MAGA could easily spend $4 on a gallon of gas but then realize he had only spent a dollar because Trump said so! And just think of the 1500% savings on medications!

The gaslighting gets worse and worse as the biggest criminal in America and his band of merry lawbreakers keep finding new, illegal ways to shred our rights while pretending to be cracking down on crime. If they didn’t have such a terrible track record on all this, I might feel better about joining in the crusade. After all, these are the people who brought you Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide”, Trump’s “assassination attempts”, and Ivana’s “accident”.

And now, the Charlie Kirk murder has opened up all kinds of wounds that the Trump team is pretending to grieve while relentlessly weaponizing the conflict against us. Rather than unveil the truths about Epstein (the urgency of which faded the second Trump realized the FBI was getting carpal tunnel crossing his name out), the Trump team instead is focusing on putting some trans angle—any trans angle–into the Kirk killing. They were so desperate to do so that Utah Governor Spencer Cox—who, I’m sorry, I don’t trust—initially claimed there was pro-trans ideology inscribed on the bullets, as our eyebrows collectively arched. But whoops, they then did a little more research and said “Never mind”; that wasn’t the case at all. Perhaps the ideology was actually on a Laffy Taffy slip, and Cox had gotten confused.

They also initially said the killer lived with his family (whose grandma swore is all MAGA), but then they subtly shifted that to “He lived with a roommate, who’s trans.” The implication seems to be that if you even just get near a trans person, you become a maniacal murderer. You turn into Norman Bates. This ignores the fact that the vast majority of mass murderers and assassins are cis gender, thank you. 

So, knowing all of this, what do we do? How do we fight back? I’d say just keep being as queer and lefty liberal as the law allows while fantasizing that our abusive boyfriend goes to jail. If we all unilaterally focus on that, maybe we can manifest it. It’s unlikely, but it’s definitely a better chance than gas being a dollar.