The lady or the tiger

Look: There are no undecided voters. Not this time. Let’s just be done with that nonsense right now.


Those who claim indecision at this late date are disingenuous at best and self-serving liars at worst. They imagine that seeming to waver on the starkest political choice in American history makes them appear somehow thoughtful, somehow relevant. 

It’s the Lady or the Tiger. You know that story, right? Except that there are no doors. You can see both right there in front of you. The tiger will eat you. The lady will not. Choices, choices.

The MAGA crowd is full of rubes and opportunists who think they can ride that tiger. They imagine that they can enjoy and even guide its depredations from a safe perch above its claws and behind its jaws. Let’s go eat some immigrants! Let’s burn some books! Let’s teach those bitches who’s their daddy! 

The tiger metaphor only goes so far. Trump’s only real strengths are complete self interest, total amorality and a certain measure of animal cunning. This NYT piece sums it up nicely. He’s a geriatric sociopath with the mind of a very naughty child. In eight years, only four of them in power, he has made this country demonstrably less great than it has ever been — not through any coherent policy, but by convincing about a third of Americans that they’re living in a shithole he will shortly cleanse. 

Nobody can be undecided now. Those who pretend to be have made their choice. And the tiger salivates.

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