The Midterms Are Coming! The Midterms Are Coming!

Poetry In Commotion

October 25, 2022

You are likely aware that the most consequential election since the Civil War era is looming like Putin’s finger hovering over the nuclear button, with all the steadiness of someone with late-stage Parkinson’s. In a mere two weeks, we will learn the fate of the unique experiment in governance brought forth on this continent (without consent of its original inhabitants or those brought here against their will or those unfortunate to have been born without penises) in the late eighteenth century after the alleged birth of Jesus Christ.

Nearly 300 election denying psychopaths are on the ballot in 45 states. That number of course only includes those who are damaged enough to admit to it publicly, but as we know, Ratpublicans cannot be trusted for at least a generation. Many of these hate-filled, halfwits are unfit for tying shoes, let alone protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States of America – particularly when it comes to enemies domestic.

Here are just a few of the miscreants and mental defectives gunning for office:

The rest of them are just your run-of-the-mill fascist, election-denying, anti-choice, anti-science, pro-gun-death, racist, anti-Semitic nut-jobs who want to kill Social Security, Medicare, education, elections and possibly you. And don’t even get me started on the House candidates. It would be difficult to out-dumb-fuck the current crop of kooks. Their new normal, following the lead of their soon-to-be-indicted brainless leader, is to reject any election they do not win.

Makes me think of Gil Scott-Heron from his 1974 H₂Ogate Blues:

We leave America to ponder the image of justice from its new wave of leaders: Frank Rizzo, the high school graduate mayor of Philadelphia, whose ignorance is surpassed only by those who voted for him.

The Insurrection Election

This will be the first election since the January 6 insurrection kick-off. The insurrection continues to fester. The disgraced, twice-impeached, failed insurrection leader and Fifth-Amendment-dependent ex-one-term-fake-president continues to spew his big lie. His mentally-defective minions continue to support his big lie. He always knew it was a lie. They all know it’s a lie. Any who claim not too are not doing themselves any favors. The only way to believe Trump’s Big Lie is to be brain-dead.

The Fascists are coming! The fascists are coming!

In honor of this historic event – the long-avoided second attempt to tear asunder the fragile experiment initiated by the likes of Jefferson, Adams, Washington and all the other wealthy, famed, white male slave owners, land barons via civil war, our in-house poets here at Paying Attention™ have crafted a remake of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classic (historically inaccurate) Paul Revere’s Ride.

I. Mangrey’s Snide

by Henry Whatsworth Shorttemper

Look now, my children, and you shall see
The midnight blog of I. Mangrey,
On the eighth of November, in Twenty-Two,
Where will you be and what will you do,
To honor the future and your civic duty.

I blogged to his friends, “If Ratpublicans prevail,
At the booth, through the post, in the Senate or House,
You will surely witness democracy fail,
If elections that day favor fascist and louse;
One person, one vote, has been how it has worked,
‘Til our rights, by the High Court, off have been jerked.
I. Mangrey joins others to raise the alarm,
Through ranting and blogging and flailing his arms,
Exposing the assholes, their dangers and harms.

So through these dark weeks I. Mangrey still blogs,
And so through the weeks he skewers these dogs,
In desperate attempt to help preserve freedom,
For two-leggeds, four-leggeds, waters and treedom;
A voice from the internets bellowing warning,
And words that shall echo from nighttime ‘til morning!
One vote if in person, or one if by mail,
To stop the planned steal, lest democracy fail,
In this hour of darkness and peril and need,
Recall all the months, and now many a year,
The harrying blog posts, the rant and the screed,
Of I. Mangrey’s warnings, à la Paul Revere.

And all of this predates Would-be-King Donald

I. Mangrey reporting. We hold this bullshit to be self-evident.