Trump, Parasitic Wasps, and My Vote

Emerald Cockroach Wasp Ampulex Compressa Lenny Worthington, Photographer. 

People say you never change anyone's mind on the internet. Not true. I seek to have my mind changed through the internet and any other source of information.

When the Republican primary debates began, I watched them eagerly. I knew almost nothing about Donald Trump and I was ready to vote for him if he proved himself worthy of my vote. I defended him against Facebook friends who called him a Nazi. Ask Facebook friend Maria Elena Gonzalez, who denounced me in melodramatic terms.

It was only after Trump revealed his mind and character that I realized I didn't want to vote for him.

After the primaries ended and it became clear that Trump and Clinton would be the major party nominees, I read Facebook eagerly. I wanted to know if my anti-Clinton Facebook friends were correct. Was she the anti-Christ, and should I vote for a third party candidate, or at least plan an insurrection?

I followed the links my anti-Clinton Facebook friends posted. I rapidly discovered three things:

Anti-Trump links tended to be to mainstream news sources, from the NYT to the Wa Po, to CNN. Anti-Clinton links tended to be to fringe websites overloaded with ads that made my anti-virus software kick into "danger, danger" gear.

Anti-Clinton links were accompanied by physically unattractive photos that emphasized that she is an older woman with wrinkled and sagging flesh. You can photograph an older person to make them look wise and deep. You can also photograph them to make them look hideous. Facebook friends, strangely enough including older women, were choosing photos of Clinton that made her look like a bag of sag, a hag.

The third thing about these links: a good percentage were outright false. That Clinton had "recently" "fallen" and that that "fall" revealed that she was dying. False. That she had paid Khizr Khan $375,000 to speak at the DNC. False. That she had announced plans to rescind the second amendment. False. That she had embraced sharia as pro-woman. False.

I rapidly lost faith in anti-Clinton articles. She may well be the anti-Christ; the boy-who-cried-wolf principle applies.

I was still ready to be convinced, if not to vote for Trump, at the very least to vote *against* Clinton. The anti-Clinton posts in my Facebook feed, relying, as they did on fringe falsehoods and misogyny, swayed me closer to voting *for* her.

Because I disagree with Clinton about so very much, I continue to ask myself, "Can I / should I vote Trump?" Yes. I do. I still ask myself that.

Yesterday, Facebook friend Joe Palinsky shared a Rolling Stone article, "How Donald Trump Lost His Mojo," by Matt Taibbi. Taibbi outlined how Trump's stump speeches are now confused: He occasionally bursts out in the incoherent, abrasive braggadocio that won him his fans, but he also slips into politically correct embraces of blacks and Hispanics. During a recent speech, Trump shouted that during his administration, "African-American citizens and Latino citizens will have the time of their life!"

Noting Trump's current brown-nosing of the very special interest groups he had previously spoken down to, The Atlantic Monthly published, "The Cowardice of Donald Trump." That article carefully documents Trump saying scathingly critical things about blacks and Hispanics – when speaking to white audiences – and then praising and sucking up to blacks and Hispanics when speaking to blacks and Hispanics.

And this is where amupulex compressa, the emerald cockroach wasp, comes in.

Anti-Hillary voices have been insisting to me, "Sure, Donald Trump is a buffoon and we all wish he were not the nominee, but he is the will of the people. But that's okay, because we will control him. We will tell him whom to place on the Supreme Court. We will be driving the car. He will merely be a figurehead, or bobble-head, to entertain the ignorant masses who chose him."

And *that* is supposed to be *less* diabolical and safer for our nation than voting for Hillary Clinton.

The powers-that-be, the men-behind-the-curtain, the unseen-hands, have been trying to bring Trump to heel for months now. Paul Manafort couldn't do it; he was kicked out. Corey Lewandwoski, who notoriously manhandled a female reporter couldn't do it.

Who is doing it?

A parasitic wasp has finally gained entry to Trump's brain.

Parasitic wasps inject a neurotoxin into the brains of the insects they parasitize. Ampulex compressa parasitizes cockroaches. After subduing the cockroach, the wasp lays her eggs in the zombie-fied cockroach. The cockroach lives long enough to do the wasp's will. Once its mission is finished and her eggs hatch, the cockroach dies.

Who is now controlling Donald Trump? Ironically enough, it is, like the much vilified Hillary Clinton, an older, unattractive woman: Kellyanne Conway. She is the new campaign manager who is steering around this new, neutered version of Trump, the mojo-less Trump who sucks up to blacks, Hispanics, immigrants and migrating Muslims, as documented in Rolling Stone and The Atlantic.

And *this,* ladies and gentlemen, is supposed to be less diabolical than electing Hillary Clinton, a woman who has been in the public eye for most of her life, and whom we all know. She's obnoxious; we all agree. I disagree with her on just about everything, except the necessity for public professionalism and behind-the-scenes competence.

No. I cannot vote for a shell being manipulated by the unseen, and unvetted machinations of parasitic wasps.