In a stubborn effort to protect my dignity, I didn’t watch a minute of the SOTU farce last Thursday.  The idea of listening to an arrogant old grifter, who in a sane, uncorrupted world would be on trial for treason rather than pretending to run a country, barking out lies and insults for more than an hour was more than my digestive system could have handled.  Just watching snippets played on Rob Schmitt, Chris Salcedo, et al was nauseating enough.

Even I was surprised when I heard that Screamin’ Joe’s puppeteers had him open his hysterical tirade with the importance of supporting Ukraine.  I didn’t realize SOTU stands for State of the Ukraine.  Then it was on to the January 6 sham “insurrection,” followed by the sanctity of abortion.  Joe Biden is a depraved, sociopathic liar, but everyone already knows that, so I’ll dispense with the niceties and move on to Donald Trump.

By undertaking a massive lawfare campaign, Democrats have succeeded in elevating Trump to near messianic status with tens of millions of people.  Unlike Bush Derangement Syndrome, Trump Derangement Syndrome has become something of a religious crusade for the most wicked and degenerate among us.  They would prefer Trump be dead, but, at a minimum, they want him to be permanently banned from running for office in an effort to “save democracy” — and hopefully bankrupting him in the process.

There’s no question about it, the rise of Donald Trump has united Democrats.  They have become like crazed zombies stalking a man they see as evil incarnate.  Even gramps mentioned Trump 13 times in his hate-filled SOTU campaign speech, dutifully referring to him as “my predecessor,” just as his speech writers instructed him to do.

Crazy as it all seems, I understand the Democrats’ fear of Trump, because he did disrupt a lot of business as usual in the swamp and accomplished a lot of good things in the process, which is why I support his candidacy.  But he also joined a long list of both Democrat and Republican presidents over the past 50 years who failed to address America’s ticking time bomb, the skyrocketing national debt.  Kind of embarrassing to admit that the only two presidents to achieve a balanced budget during those years were Democrats Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson.

Now we have another nice, well-meaning guy, Kevin McCarthy 2.0 (aka Mike Johnson), pushing through yet another pork-laden bill.  After all the hand-wringing and remorseful talk about their determination to refuse to be intimidated by threats of a government shutdown, how can it be happening yet again?  Conservative Republican Brian Babin unwittingly summed up the problem when he admitted he voted for the bill because “it has some good things in it.”  Message to Babin and all feckless Republicans:  Wake up!  Democrats throw you a bone by adding a handful of earmarks to take back home to your constituents, and you clap like drunken seals and sign off on another half trillion dollars of debt?  C’mon, guys.

It’s time for Americans to face up to the reality that Republicans in Congress will never cut spending.  The problem is that all but a small minority of politicians are in the government con game for themselves, not the people who voted them into office.  By focusing on earmarks for the folks back home, the hope is they can fool enough voters into keeping them in their cushy jobs.  The entire system is set up for the benefit of politicians.

I don’t know if Trump can overcome the massive cheating campaign Democrats are undertaking for the November election, but if he somehow pulls it off, I hope he has the stones to address the budget deficit.  I think he’ll handle all the bad actors — Putin, Xi, Rocket Boy, the Ayatollah, et al — as he did in his previous term.  But if he’s the president who finally has to preside over a “restructuring” of U.S. debt (read, default), the repercussions could result in James Carville’s one-time prediction that Democrats would be in power for 40 more years coming true.

I’ve been saying it for decades:  Government is inherently evil.  It appeals to the worst instincts in people who aspire to power and wealth without work, and it uses its monopoly on the use of force to punish those who challenge its nefarious activities.  It’s probably unreasonable to expect Trump or any other mere mortal to challenge this evil leviathan and survive, but the only other alternative is to roll over and die, and that’s not a very appealing option.