Just gotta keep reminding myself, every day that passes is another day closer to us being, maybe, with any luck, done with Trump and his cronies.
I mean, sure, the guy's gotten us into a pissing match with Iran, he's throwing his under-performers under the bus, and Epsteinapalooza constantly burbles in the background. Those are just a sample of the things he's been doing over the past year, but pretty much all things that I'd say fall within what I'd expect him to try and pull. I honestly never thought I'd see the day where he'd try to take on the Pope.
So, I'm not going to link to the source materials this time, because it's all social media, so ew. But basically, the pope, like many before him in modern times, came out and said something to the tune of "war bad, don't try and justify it with religion." Trump apparently took that as a rebuke (duh!), and put up his own rant about how the Pope is weak on crime(?) and terrible on foreign policy... then followed up with an AI-generated picture of Trump as fuckin' JESUS CHRIST. Saner heads prevailed and got that pic taken down (with Trump making the lame excuse that he thought it was made to look like him as a doctor, not, you know, a major and readily-recognizable religious figure). Since then, there's been a little bit of back-and-forth, but, unsurprisingly, the Pope is being the bigger man and refusing to let things escalate.
But the kicker is that it's not just Trump. His VP and the Speaker of the House, both supposed men of faith, have, in effect, told the Pope to stay in his lane... and apparently, there's significant support for that stance among various Trump voters. Honestly, it would no longer surprise me if the people dredging up bad ideas from the past didn't have "once we've got the brown people under our thumb again, we're going after the Catholics next" on their agenda.
Seriously, the midterm elections can't get here soon enough. I need another read on my fellow Americans, to see how many are in the camp of "no, really, this is what I voted for", handily sorted by region so I know where never to go in the future.
