This weekend I was hiding from the onslaught of weirdness which the news has become, deciding instead to watch one of my favorite movies, The Lord of the Rings, part three. Frodo and Sam, Aragorn, Gandolf, I love them all. I even have a soft spot for that little shit Gollum/Smeagel.

So I got to the part where the minions of Sauron have overrun the port of Minis Tirith and they've got their eyes on the white city of Gondor. The evil general of the bad guys stabs one of our heroes in the heart and declares, "The age of man is over! The time of the orcs has come!"

Guys, seriously, the Orc general bore more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Trump.

You probably will need to go watch it to see what I mean. That Orc general had swagger. He was smug, cheerfully mean. He took pleasure in being a brute. He had his followers tossing the severed heads of the soldiers of Gondor over the walls of the city and onto the hapless people huddled there. He had nothing but contempt for fallen warriors and citizens alike.

And his followers loved him! They hung on his declarations, loved the smell of fear they were creating in their victims. They cheered and laughed. It was a big, hideous party to them.

Okay so clearly I don't think it was that bad that Hillary said some of Trump's followers are "a basket of deplorables." Because let's face it—some of them are. The men laughing and screaming about bitches? The trolls on line telling those of us who are begging for a sane conversation that we're just a bunch of idiots, with a long string of expletives to define the type of idiots we are?

Calling our good neighbors in Mexico "rapists?" Making fun of disabled people, demeaning women, dishonoring the parents of a heroic American soldier who died in battle? Telling honorable citizens he's going to deport them? Sucking up to brutes and dictators? Implying it's not out of the question to blow up the earth?

If that's not "deplorable," I don't know what is, and the people who cheer for that stuff are going to have to suck it up: It puts them in the basket.

Like I tell my kids, if you act like an Orc, don't be surprised when someone calls you an Orc.

I am of course interested in the Trump supporters who aren't in the basket of Orcs and I'm not the only one. We all know that there are a lot of good Americans who want to bring better jobs to the working class. We want the banks to be held responsible to the people they serve. We want college to be affordable. We want better infrastructure. We want to reverse global warming, and we want the good jobs that effort will bring. More than anything, we want government to govern.

When Trump and his followers are ready to have a conversation, trust me, we're here.

The logic of the bully tells us, I'm allowed to hit you as hard as I want, but it's your fault if you bleed. We've been watching them say hideous things about our Hillary for years now and she may not be bleeding but I am. I don't like Orcs. I'd rather talk to men and women.

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September 15, 2016