Viel über die Weimarer Republik gelesen, dann Zeug erledigt, das nicht ins Blog gehört, weiter gelesen, geschrieben. Zwischendurch Kartoffelbrot mit Zeug drauf, eine Kanne Ostfriesentee, abends noch einen Chai Latte und ein Müsli. Es gibt gerade nichts zu erzählen.

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Heute wird in den USA endlich gewählt. Susan B. Glasser vom New Yorker begleitete 45 auf seinen letzten Kampagnenstops. Ich bin so froh, wenn das endlich (hoffentlich) vorbei ist.

Donald Trump’s 2020 Superspreader Campaign: A Diary

„To watch in full, and not just a highlight reel, is to be reminded of Trump’s verbal diarrhea, his absolute inability to connect two thoughts in a way that makes sense—not even with a week to go in the election and his Presidency dependent on the outcome. Trump can and will ramble on until the very end, convinced that the audience is there for whatever he chooses to give it and that, just like their President, they don’t give a shit about the particulars. But the digressions are far more numerous and confusing than in the 2016 original. This time, the rallies are like a TV show that is too many seasons along to attract new viewers; it’s for superfans only at this point. […]

Around 1 p.m. local time, Air Force One pulled up on the tarmac in Bullhead City, Arizona. “Macho Man” was playing as the crowd waited for Trump. For four years, his insistence on a playlist heavy on the Village People has simply been one of those ridiculous things about a Trump rally. The man knows no irony. The song may have originated as a gay anthem, but to Trump it is just a celebration of his alpha-maleness. “You’re so lucky I’m your President!” Trump said, after a long rant about Biden’s flaws. Then there was a riff on his own hair, and how it’s his real hair, and how it was so windy out, and then Trump took a red “Make America Great Again” hat from someone and put it on. Is this what passes for macho among his supporters? […]

On Thursday night, Trump’s son Donald, Jr., was on Fox News with Laura Ingraham, one of the Trumps’ favorite prime-time hosts. He told Ingraham that, in fact, coronavirus deaths had dwindled to “almost nothing,” on a day when the U.S. once again hit a record for new cases and more than a thousand Americans died of the virus. Ingraham did not challenge him. […]

No question that Trump is worried. Turns out he can’t sleep, either. He is doomscrolling and anxiety-tweeting overnight, just like the rest of the country. At 2:34 a.m., he tweeted, “make america great again. vote!” At 2:37 a.m., he tweeted, “#Bidencrimefamily.” At 2:40 a.m., he tweeted, “Biden will destroy the United States Supreme Court.” Soon after that, he was ranting about a Biden plan for the Supreme Court so diabolical that it would apparently involve not only a packed court but a “revolving court,” whatever that is. The time stamp on the tweet was 2:57 a.m. I guess it’s sort of comforting to know that he, too, is having nightmares about the election. […]

Yet the crowd invariably loved it when Trump mocked the mask-wearers. They hooted and applauded when he called Biden stupid and a crook. They booed on cue when Trump brought up dangerous terrorist refugees and those un-American young women in Congress. It was the same wherever Trump went. I remember one of my Russian teachers telling me what it was like to grow up in the Soviet Union, to be a Young Pioneer and to want so much to believe that one was part of the crowd, to go along with the crowd no matter what. But, after a week of immersion in the final days of Trump’s campaign, the rational explanations for this phenomenon don’t do justice to what it is like to be confronted with it in rally after rally. The President’s glee in slinging hate is equalled by the discomfiting spectacle of thousands cheering him on as he does it.“