There are snippets of reassuring news—Tucker is cratering, MAGA minions are facing the legal music—but sweet Jesus why is this witless, blubbering, barking mad lump of lies and hate still here? This week, he flew into Omaha to drop his nuggets of dark, daft bilge in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he offered “remarks” to over 1,000 people in what doggedly disingenuous we-don’t-see-no-circus-here press coverage deemed “a wide-ranging speech” about “the achievements (sic) of his term in office” and “the decline of America.” Chyron on some obscure right-wing TV station: “President (sic)Trump Casts Vision For 2024 and Beyond.” Like Buzz Lightyear?

Crafting a nice, big bubble of mass paranoia, he told the crowd, “They’re not after me, they’re after you.” “We are approaching the most important battle of our lives,” he said. “If we don’t win this election, we won’t have a country.” Happily envisaging when “we” are elected, he said of his purported enemies, “Their reign will be over and America will be a free nation once again.” The crowd cheered; one person called out, “Save us.” Yes, please do.

The Queens native who’s never been closer than Central Park to a farm also declared himself “the most pro-farmer president you’ve ever had.” Launching a new “Farmers For Trump” shtick—and tossing its inevitable, newly labeled hats—he also warned that Ron DeSantis “totally despises Iowa ethanol and ethanol generally,” while “I fought for Iowa ethanol like no president in history.” Maybe his epitaph? Along with covfefe? Not only will he keep bravely fighting the enemies of ethanol, but the enemies of America. “I will also order our government to deny entry to all Communists and markers,” he vowed.

Realizing his gaffe, he hurried on, “Look, we have Marxists, fascists, communists—they’re pouring into our country. We are going to deny them access to our cunny.” Thus did the guy who likes to jeer Biden can’t speak or think clearly, “misfiring more than a 1924 Studebaker,” then crassly debase women’s genitals. He added, “The problem is, what about all the ones we already have that happen to be politicians,” naming Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff. “Shifty Schiff,” he spat out. “Liar. What a liar.”

Soaring oratory, thy name is. His followers—”We love the uneducated”—likely relish a dolt of a guy who’s as stupid, toxic and inarticulate as they are, but damn they’re a dispiriting reflection of a country where fewer than half its denizens can name all three branches of government and, Philip Bump just wrote, “On any given Election Day, (a good) chunk of the electorate is misinformed about who and what is on the ballot.” “‘Idiocracy‘ is a somewhat amusing movie,” notes one weary patriot. “MAGA thinks it’s a documentary.”

Never mind the vast trove of misinformation behind the right’s current boogeymen: A Red Scare born of a Democratic party that ranges from centrist corporate capitalists to (a minority of) Socialist-lite progressives and a Communist Party of America with maybe 5,000 members; a vicious anti-trans hysteria born of roughly 1.6% of U.S. adults identifying as trans or nonbinary, and slightly more younger people; a book-banning, history-denying fever born of an almost non-existent CRT taught in U.S. schools; a nationwide culture war born of M&Ms and a Very Scary term—woke—nobody can define.

That’s just the macro view of the GOP’s universe of alternative facts; the micro offers ceaseless, surreal dissonance. Under Trump’s reign, the economy lost 3 million jobs, the number of uninsured rose 3 million, the trade deficit rose 40%, the federal debt rose to an astronomical $21.6 trillion, the rich got richer, he abandoned peace treaties with Iran and Russia, flubbed one with N. Korea, withdrew from the Paris climate deal, started a trade war with China, tried to overthrow democracy, and oh yeah—over a million pandemic deaths, 40% preventable. Facts, people.

Now they want him to “save us?” From not just all the earlier boogeymen of masks, drag, immigrants, godlessness, abortion, black Little Mermaid, same-sex anything, Anti-Racist Baby and wokety-woke demons on all sides, but the ever-growing number of commie sharpies—useful for redirecting hurricanes, sure, but a fearsome threat to our schools, jobs, neighborhoods, and sanctity of USA!!-shrieking life. And don’t get us started on pernicious crayons. Also don’t forget Lenin, that hippie who wrote Imagine. We can’t even.

Still—markers be damned—the right is boldly confronting the vital issues of the day. In Texas, which is seeing historic 120-degree days and a spike of heat-related deaths, the GOP continued its streak of performative evil by banning local ordinances requiring water breaks for (often brown) workers laboring outside. In Oklahoma, the new evangelical school superintendent, who’s proposed teaching “Western heritage” in all classes and called the teachers’ union a “terrorist organization,” told a forum the Tulsa Race Massacre doesn’t fall under a CRT ban because, “Let’s not (say) the skin color determined that.”

In Tennessee, GOP Rep. Andy Ogles posted a cheerful, dystopian video wishing constituents a happy 4th: “Look, the left is trying to destroy our country and our family and they’re coming after you…Have a blessed 4th of July!” Back in Iowa, Trump ended his anti-Marxist diatribe by visiting a Dairy Queen, telling workers to “take care of the people” and ordering blizzards all around—but only after having to ask what it is. One answer: “A blizzard is 71 felony charges, with more on the way.” Also, alongside Stalin, a belated place in hell.