A Season’s Greetings Message to Donnie, Rudy, and Their Fellow Klansmen

A time for celebration, forgiveness, and extending a warm hand to those with whom you may have had differences in the past. Well, fuck that.

Photograph: Alison Jackson

by Rich Herschlag

This is the time of year for spreading joy and seeing the best in your fellow human being. A time for celebration, forgiveness, and extending a warm hand to those with whom you may have had differences in the past. Well, fuck that.

To the discerning eye, you appear to be suffering on the way out. But my appetite is merely whetted. I pray in the coming days that suffering increases exponentially. Astoundingly, after years inflicting incalculable misery upon the people of this nation purely for the sake of greed and ego, the atrocities you are perpetrating at this late date exceed the sum of all previous atrocities. As you know so well and deep down in that place where your soul once was, you are not worthy of anything even approximating mercy.

May the cancer of your spirit— now clearly metastasizing on your pasty, creased faces—consume you visibly and whole. May your utter lack of humanity and empathy materialize as 200 proof karma swallowing internal organs, bursting blood vessels, and propelling you to pine for a sweet but elusive death.

In all this time, I never quite figured out why it is you so loathe America, the country you seek to overthrow as I write. Is it the shards of meritocracy that still remain, enough for a Black man born with nothing to outshine you? Is it the thousands of vibrant, self-made women who spurned your menacing advances? Is it the millions of hard working people who find more organic satisfaction in their rigorous daily labor than you find in all of your pawns, schemes, and subterfuge? Is it the nobility of medical professionals, the bravery of soldiers, the dedication of educators?

Who can really say? All I know is through a combination of parasitism and neglect, you have done almost everything within the power granted you to destroy those granting it. And now, as it turns out, you must pay in ways that defy even your own gruesome imagination. I have reserved a front row seat.

With each passing day—the clock seemingly slowing down in half-the-distance-to-the-goal-line fashion—your desperate clinging to misbegotten power increases. The options considered become more devious. The M.O. more toxic. The results more deadly. The endgame more cataclysmic. As unrepentant mass murderers—and pardoners of the same—you display the attitude of the garden-variety killer, who once venturing beyond a certain arbitrary mind-boggling body count determines all forthcoming bloodlust is essentially a freebie. May this cynical calculation prove as wrong as your claim that COVID-19 would just disappear.

There is no principle you won’t mock, no oath you won’t break, no line of decency you won’t cross. There is no responsibility you won’t eschew, no situation you won’t exploit, no person you won’t prostitute. May the coming reckoning bring searing child-like screams. Hallelujah, the chickens have come home to roost. After decades of lucky sevens you have rolled a snake eyes for the ages.

While it is impossible to know what awaits those on the other side with literally no redeeming qualities, on this side, may the walls close in quickly enough to cause ineffable agony yet not quickly enough to snuff it out. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year, you worthless sacks of subhuman fecal matter.

Read the latest for Banter Members:

2020: The Year Covid Beat Trump And Uncovered A Deep Rot In America

The Coronavirus made Americans look at themselves and attempt to come to terms with the deeply fractured society they have created.

by Ben Cohen

To call 2020 a disaster would be like calling the sinking of the Titanic a minor boating incident. 2020 has been, for lack of a better word, cataclysmic.

America has undergone more societal economic and change in the past year than at any time in living memory. The Trump presidency alone has been an experience of radical upheaval from one month to the next, but combined with a deadly global pandemic, huge racial unrest, the collapse of the economy, and a torrid, nerve wracking presidential election, 2020 wins the prize for being one of the shittiest year in human history.

How Covid beat Trump

As Covid-19 tore through the nation killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, president Trump decided that it wasn’t really a big deal and did his best to ensure as many people died as possible. The entire planet sat back aghast as the leader of the free world careened from one spectacular disaster to the next, shredding the country’s reputation, and endangering the lives of, well, everyone.

Instead of leading the country through a time of great uncertainty and fear, Trump set about politicizing every aspect of the pandemic he could…

This is an excerpt from this week’s Members Only article. Get a 50% discount on a Banter Membership and read the full article here.