The people who promised to 'Make America Healthy Again' have given America:
The worst measles outbreak since 1991
The worst screwworm outbreak in 60 years
The worst cyclosporiasis outbreak in years
You know who’s not having an major outbreak of explosive diarrhea?
Countries with functioning public health systems that are led by actual doctors and scientists
In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas.
I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build.
I was not prepared for the gas station.
There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps.
I counted them because I did not believe them.
A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty.
He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things.
Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon.
A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced.
A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume.
And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot.
The beaver is a saint.
The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house.
And the bathrooms.
I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people.
I was wrong to dismiss it.
The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it.
I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering.
A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist.
I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes.
I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church.
I did not need any of it.
I needed all of it.
I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there.
I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either.
But I did fill the truck.
And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.
MAGA:
2016 was fair! (Obama was President)
2020 was rigged! (Trump was President)
2024 was fair! (Biden was President)
They’re going to rig 2026! (Trump is President)
Why is Donald Trump so fucking bad at securing elections according to MAGA?
RIP Lindsey Graham. He served this country for 34 years and should be commended for that.
I will remember him for this quote. When he was clear-eyed. When he understood the catastrophe of electing Donald Trump. Tragically, no one in the GOP listened to Lindsey. Not even Lindsey.
Memo to DJT:
1. Everyone knows you lost the election so you can shut up about it already.
2. Everyone knows you lost the war so you can stop the bombing now.
3. Everyone knows they keep giving you dementia tests because you’re an 80 year old dementia patient.
That is all.