Ice Cream, They Scream

During President Biden’s barnstorming tour of the nation’s ice-cream parlors, some insouciant reporter asked him about his party’s position on defunding the police and whether it might hurt their chances in the midterms. Let us paraphrase his response:

“Some Republicans, they, we, are, going to be, and we’re looking at finding out the where, say, I drink the blood of kids. They think I’m Satan. C’mon. C’mon. And they say, they say, it’s true, they say, it’s false about kids in dungeons. I had a dog once. You know, you know what they say about a cold nose, it’s a good sign.”

To which one might say: Huh? But others would get what he was talking about, once they untangled the wet rags of his ramblings and set them out on the table to dry. He’s referring to QAnon conspiracies, the ne plus ultra of modern nutwaddery.

In Q’s ever-evolving kaleidoscope of Deep State Perfidy, there’s a cabal in D.C. that steals children and harvests their blood for a life-enhancing chemical called “tequila.” No, wait, “adrenochrome.” Between 2018 and 2022, nearly everyone in D.C. in a position of power was knocking back shots of kid blood, garnished perhaps with a stalk of celery.

Everyone, that is, except Donald Trump, who was working behind the scenes to bring the nightmare into the light. Patiently he assembled his forces, waiting for the moment when it would all be revealed. He didn’t bring it up before the election, because that would’ve tipped his hand and let them know he was on to them. Apparently no one in the cabal read Twitter or Facebook, so they’d be taken completely by surprise, stuttering in mock outrage as the marshals of the Supreme Court arrested them and bagged the various sundered remnants of sacrificed children scattered around the townhouse.

I think there’s supposed to be a restoration in August, when the election will be nullified, Biden will be led away in handcuffs, and Trump will say, “Now that we’ve settled that, let me tell you about the child-blood-drinkers. The way he’s been ruling, Gorsuch might be one of them. I don’t know. That’s what some are saying.”

If you don’t know what Biden is talking about, though, you might think: Was that supposed to make sense? Did he really say that some people think he’s Satan? But perhaps you’re accustomed to his novel way of public speaking, the way he seems to search for words like someone picking up a grain of rice with chopsticks in a dark room, the pauses that surely make the aides in the wings start to sweat. If Trump was a firehose aimed at the face of the press corps, Biden’s rhetoric is like an old man trying to bring down a piñata with a pool noodle.

Even so, some supporters might have wondered what this blood thing was all about. Hard to file talk of Satan and ritual child-slaying under “Oh, That’s Just Joe.”

The other problem: He’s wrong. For every anonymous acolyte of Q on Twitter who believes children are being drained so Hillary Clinton can stave off wrinkles for another year, there are ten Democratic Party defund-the-cops advocates in positions of power.

The difference between someone who thinks the government is controlled by a vast network of vampiric pedophiles and someone who thinks the police can be replaced by social workers? You can probably change the mind of the former. The defunders are driven not by mad crazy beliefs but by intellectual certainties, and these are usually impervious to evidence. You can literally take a QAnon group to the basement of the pizza restaurant in D.C. where children were supposed to be held and show them: Look, it’s a storage closet with a mop. You want to find the secret door? Go ahead. We’ll be upstairs, eating.

They’d come back after two hours: You’re right, there’s nothing there. I was deceived. Whereas the police-abolition group would read of nightly mayhem in unpoliced poor neighborhoods and think, “We have to abolish the Second Amendment.” And even after they’d confiscated every legal firearm, they would blame . . . I don’t know, the discovery of metal, or gunpowder. No, that would be xenophobic, since the Chinese get credit for that.

You’re surprised a reporter asked the question at all. Most reporters, given the time, would probably phrase the question like this:

“President Biden, the American people thank you for restoring the norms and also reminding us how delicious and refreshing ice cream can be on a hot day, especially with record temps scientists say are a portent of global warming’s impact unless fast and certain measures are taken to reduce emissions, but what do you say to those who say your party faces difficulties with voters who think the Democrats want to defund the police, in the face of a perceived uptick in crime statistics that actually compare favorably with historic norms, even allowing for some municipalities juking the stats by declining to prosecute theft in the name of reducing justice-system involvement in historically disadvantaged socio-economic and racial groups?”

The Joe Biden of yore would nod, talk about infra-structure, tell an anecdote about Corn Pop and his brother Snapcrackle, then drop the smile and note that he had sponsored a bill that would mandate the electric chair for habitual criminals, with the juice supplied by sustainable sources.

“Let’s be honest about this, electrocution powered by solar energy takes longer. But it’s a sacrifice we all have to make. Cleaner planet, safer cities.”

That Joe Biden is long gone. You almost wish he were still around, if only to hear what he’d say about the Biden we have.