I've got that thing again where my heart races and my belly hurts and I don't know whether those tears are from laughing or crying.  I'm craving chocolate, any kind will do, and I can't stop thinking the end of civilization as we know it is right around the corner or up the street or somewhere in Iowa.

I go to sleep stressing and I wake up stressing.  Terrible things are going on in the world.  I should be stressing over them, and it could be that that's what's going on, but it feels like it's Donald Trump.

He's doing this to me. I should stop listening to him. I should pretend I'm not living in a country where Donald Trump, of all people, could be a front-runner in a bid for the presidency.  I should stop waiting for him to mess up so badly there's no going back.  I should do that, but if I had that kind of self-control I wouldn't be a full-time self-unemployed political blogger on the liberal circuit.  Now would I?

I'm a mess and it's all his fault.  I have succumbed to the slump I call Trump.  Donald Trump has entered my brain and if I don't get this down fast, my words will start sounding like a three-bean salad on a bed of spinach.  (I have no idea!  It just came out.  I'm telling you. . .)

Just this week Donald Trump, the man who would be president (or Tony Soprano, depending on how he strikes you--not literally, of course, though that's not out of the question), told a Black Lives Matter activist/heckler at a public meeting to "get the hell outta here".  This was after the man had been pummeled to the ground and then kicked by one of Trump's goons supporters.  Trump then took to Fox News, and, in his best considered presidential tone, said the man was obnoxious and loud, so, "Yeah, maybe he shoulda been roughed up.  Because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing."

On Sunday he told George Stephanopoulos he has no problem with waterboarding because "it's peanuts compared to what 'they' do".  (Almost every Republican could be heard groaning.  Cheers, though, from Dick Cheney, who, until that moment, hadn't even considered pushing for the job of choosing Trump's vice president.)

Then, with cameras still rolling, Trump assured Stephanopoulos that what he'd said the night before about seeing thousands and thousands of Arab people in New Jersey cheering as the World Trade Center came down was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

George suggested in an adorably nice way that there are some--or maybe all--who can't find a single solitary bit of footage or eye-witness account that would make what Donald said even slightly true.  Donald chalked it up to reporters wanting to be politically correct, and George, not ever wanting to be branded a politically correct reporter (oh gawd no!), thanked him ever so kindly for his time.

I watched that and breathed such a grateful sigh you wouldn't believe.  At last!  Caught in his own terrible lie!  Hoist[ed] with his own petard!  Stick a fork in him! He's done!

But you know what happened, don't you?  Come on, admit it.  You know.

Trump's poll numbers went up.  The crowds loved him even more.  Fifty five percent of likely Republican voters now say they would trust him over all other candidates to do the right thing about terrorism.  (What would he do about terrorists? Namely ISIS?  He would "bomb the shit out of them!" and take the oil. Yay!)

He is a serial liar and is the number one choice among Republicans for the next president of the United States.  (These same people, so deathly afraid of refugee families fleeing for their lives, have no fear of a Donald Trump presidency.  No fear!  None at all!  But there I go again.)

You know by now--because I keep telling you--I tend to take these things personally.   My America is not a plaything.  It's not a joke.  Turning my country over to a non-politician with no government experience would be punking of the worst kind.  But even thinking for one second of turning it over to a lying billionaire braggart who has a history of taking but not giving, who calls people ugly names and shuts up anyone who disputes him, who is such an embarrassment even countries with their own embarrassing characters can't believe we've topped them--that's insanity undisguised.

There are horrifying things going on in the world.  Donald Trump's ascendancy into the heights of American politics isn't one of them.  I know and you know that he'll never become president,  (We know that, right?) but the people egging him on will still be out there, still wishing it had been Trump, and I will still have to live among them.  Festering.

Once Trump is gone, the press, never ones to let an exploit pass, will be egging on Trump's people, pushing them to find someone equally entertaining. Because when it comes to American politics, there's no business like show business and, above all else, the show must go on.

Well, curtain down already.  Footlights off.  Come out into the daylight.  It's a whole different world out here.

Photo:  Salon

Paul Ryan took to the podium at CPAC on Thursday and did not disappoint those of us waiting to pick at the lies this duly elected government official must tell in order to remind us all that our government --the very same government he volunteered to be a part of; the very same government that pays him a handsome salary and will give him lifelong perks--has been infiltrated so thoroughly by the socialists (that's us) huge chunks of it must be eradicated and the spoils turned over immediately to the only saviors who have our best interests at heart--the privateers.   (Why does Paul Ryan lie?  Because he's Paul Ryan and that's what Paul Ryan does and does and does.) 

Here's a portion of what he said:

"The way I see it, let the other side be the party of personalities. We’ll be the party of ideas. And I’m optimistic about our chances—because the Left? The Left isn’t just out of ideas. It’s out of touch. Take Obamacare. We now know that this law will discourage millions of people from working. [We do?] And the Left thinks this is a good thing. [They do?] They say, “Hey, this is a new freedom—the freedom not to work.” [Who says that?  Lemme at em!] But I don’t think the problem is too many people are working—I think the problem is not enough people can find work. [ Now you're talking] And if people leave the workforce, our economy will shrink—there will be less opportunity, not more. [Yeah, that's what we've been saying ever since you guys came up with that crazy outsourcing idea] So the Left is making a big mistake here. [They are?] What they’re offering people is a full stomach—and an empty soul. [Okay, now--what?] The American people want more than that."

 So then he went on to explain that remark about the full stomach and the empty soul:                               

"This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my friend Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch—one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him."

Now, I know I'm not the only one to sit up and take notice over that one.  It's been all over the place.  But the emphasis from most corners has been on Paul Ryan's misuse of an anecdote that was lifted initially by Eloise Anderson, Scott Walker's appointee to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, who skewed the story to serve her own purposes after apparently finding something somewhat similar in Laura Schroff's book, An Invisible Thread.

I don't care where it came from.  I don't care that Paul Ryan was careless about the source.  What grinds me most about this are these words out of Paul Ryan's mouth:

She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch—one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.

This is a representative of our government shaming poor people.  This is a man of privilege--a man who never hesitates to vote against safety-net programs designed to pull underprivileged people up and out and on their own; a man who, through his own "Ryan Budget", offered up huge cuts to the safety nets in order to give more to the rich and to the military--shaming poor parents by telling them their own children don't want a free lunch.

He told a crowd--and the rest of us by extension via TV cameras--that poor kids are ashamed of their parents, that poor parents who accept government aid ought to be ashamed, and that we on the left are guilty of encouraging that kind of behavior:

"That’s what the Left just doesn’t understand. We don’t want people to leave the workforce; we want them to share their skills and talents with the rest of us. And people don’t just want a life of comfort; they want a life of dignity—of self-determination. A life of equal outcomes is not nearly as enriching as a life of equal opportunity."

This is what Paul Ryan does, and why he is so dangerous.  A quick reading of that quote above has everybody nodding their heads.  Skills!  Talents!  Dignity! Self-determination! Equal opportunity!

But what he's really doing is equating essential programs like welfare and SNAP to "a life of comfort".  He's suggesting poor people are poor because they like it that way.  A "life of dignity" means getting out from under the government wing and going it alone.  "Self-determination" means you brought this on yourself.

The "Brown bag" story means stop using your kids as pawns in order to get people to feel sorry for you and give you stuff.

And, oh, by the way, get a job.  (But good luck with that, since the dreaded Obamacare just killed that avenue for you, too.  The theory goes that employers hate the idea of Obamacare so much they're cutting their workforce in order to show how much they hate it.  The insurance companies thank them very much.)

This is Paul Ryan. He is wildly successful.  We pay him, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to his other income sources.  We will give him health and retirement benefits for the rest of his life--not that he needs us to pay for them.  We've given him the power, as a representative of the people, to use this public platform and he uses it to screw the least of us.

If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's this:  Live with it.

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Cross-posted at Dagblog and Liberaland.  Featured on Crooks and Liars MBRU.