A Pivot So Fast, I Think I Got Whiplash.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Adventures of Frank Merriwell.

The fascinating thing is not just Muir turning on Trump, but turning on him for something he probably isn't even doing. I mean--I'm in the weeds on what Muir's talking about here, and I suspect that if we check, whatever this is either isn't happening or isn't happening this way.

"We're In A Place Ruled By The Right Sort Of Despot!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery.

At the rate Muir's shifting to a rule that any Right-winger in any nation facing consequences is evil Communist tyranny, I'm expecting a revisionist take on the Nuremberg Trials one of these days.

Well, At Least He's No Longer Trying To Pretend He Isn't Neo-Confederate Scum.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Roaring West.

It's kind of fascinating how amazingly wrong all of this, from Muir demonstrating that he doesn't understand how odds actually work, to his following it up by demonstrating that he doesn't how laws work, to declaring that if the crazy theory doesn't happen, clearly it was being pushed by the insidious conspiracy to demoralize people and keep them from doing WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, to the weird CSA apologia and Lincoln bashing, and the babbling of that version of the Constitution that exists in Muir's head where he and his get to do whatever they want, and any attempt to make them stop is tyranny.

Just a parfait of crazyfail, really, and I'm wondering where Muir goes when the latest thing that is obviously going to happen doesn't happen.

"It's Impossible For Us To Lose Because Of Things We Did! Impossible!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Call of the Savage.

While I do think this most recent version of 'No, wait, this is a conspiracy!' is going to stick around, growing ever vaguer and more contradictory as, well, every previous iteration has, I also suspect his latest conviction that 'yeah, yeah, Trump has something planned, everything's going down like he drew it up' will at least partially fizzle out. Trump is just too out of juice, and Muir is too pissed at him for failing to keep going back to the same playbook. Oh, he'll keep regurgitating these witless arguments of how the other side winning can't be real, how laws that don't work the way he imagine can change it like pressing an instawin button, and that his various fantasies about stopping this through violence he'd never do himself are patriotic. That's standard Muir. But Trump is reaching the end of his days as a useful figurehead.

The Transition Era; Part 8: Muir Begins To Grumble About The Republican Candidates.

As I said, Muir started 2008 shilling for Fred Thompson, who many on the Right were hailing as the natural-born savior for a faction whose party that looked like it had gone gummy on them.  They spoke of his natural charisma -- he was an actor, they stressed, just like Reagan! -- his folksy manner, and his rock-solid positions. He was, they insisted, the perfect candidate. Muir bought it completely.

Thompson flamed out in January, an awkward, stiff mess who was utterly out of his depth.

See, that's the thing about Muir. For all he likes to pose as a strong-willed original thinker, he's actually a pliable puppet who will buy just about any nonsense once it slips through his bigoted, reactionary priors. If people he trusts tell him a guy is amazing, his brain will immediately tell him he's seeing someone amazing, and I'm betting how he was able to keep convincing himself Trump was really with it makes sense now doesn't it? In essence, Muir bought into Thompson, because people told him this was a can't miss bet... and the bet busted.

Did this cause any self-awareness? Hell, no.

It did however leave him in an uncomfortable state of ideological orphanhood. Of the two remaining major candidates... well, let's start with Huckabee. Muir didn't like him for two reasons. Firstly, Huckabee's weak 'compassionate conservatism' pitch made Muir suspicious that he might be for something other than the 'cut taxes for the very wealthy' that Muir had been convinced was the best economic plan possible. Secondly, Muir was still very much the smug Rand follower at heart who viewed religion with personal suspicion, even if he was willing to keep those beliefs on the downlow because he believed evangelicals were an  important part of the great wall against evil liberalism. (He would change to being religious in the vague Right Wing way that lacked any real religion in the years ahead.)

And then there was John McCain, the eventual winner, and...

Well, there were two Republicans in the Mystery Business(tm) Era that Muir had a passionate dislike for. One was Trent Lott, who let him lash out at an establishment he resented, while convincing himself this was more proof he wasn't racist.

The other was John McCain.

Now, Muir's hatred of John McCain was both complicated and simple. Complicated, because he was always finding new things to hate about the man, and simple, because it all traced back to him being told to hate him by the Right Wing bloggers he followed for one reason. McCain, while fundamentally a conservative, had  a history of bipartisan action, and the most significant example of it was the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which sought to limit corporate money and sizable donations in elections. Muir hated this and regurgitated arguments he read on why it was bad, arguments it was clear he did not actually understand. Like I said, a pliable puppet who will buy just about any nonsense once it slips through his bigoted, reactionary priors. When the primaries started, Muir thought that clearly Republican voters would repudiate this unworthy heretic.

They did not. McCain cruised to a relatively easy victory, in part because this was probably the last Republican primary which saw a significant moderate voting presence. And as Muir adjusted to his growing unease,  the Democratic primaries were likewise seeing his priors being undermined...

Why, They Could Set The Strip There... Oh, Yeah, That Was The Original Setting.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Rustlers of Red Dog.

The greatest irony of Muir's little whine is that not only is he bitching about the actual Texas daring to not match the pathetic piece of wish fulfillment he's put on the page, but the state he's now salivating over is... his home.

Where, again, he originally set the strip, albeit while failing for most of that time to make it in any way a distinct setting.

And of course, the secondary irony is, well, Florida is this way not because of some incredible virtue, but because its smug retiree population is convinced that they can keep this scheme going forever and never have it fail, and that may be true for many of them, cause old, but not all of them.

So, yes, Muir is likely setting up another grand true constant law of the universe to watch crumble into dust.

Remember, Not Doing What He Does Is Stupid, It Just Is.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Pirate Treasure.

Muir thinks he's showing his cleverness by bringing up the issue where he regularly ignores that he keeps fiddling with the dates when everyone else was supposed to start dropping dead, then following up with his new novel definition of coup. Which is apparently any election that the Right loses, and also any legal action taken against them for all the ways they broke the law when in power.

To be fair, the general sentiment has always been here, the idea that reality is what Muir says it is, and when what happens doesn't go that way, well, somebody had to have cheated. It's just what he says now is more witless and what little pretense he had of entertaining the other side's opinions is completely gone.

This... Is So... So... Sad...

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Perils of Pauline.

Remember, pay Muir money, and he'll draw you in the strip, and you can pretend you met his imaginary cast, and got to play with his imaginary toys.

The Transition Era; Part 7: Muir Begins With Assuming Inevitable Victory.

 And now we reach the opening of the 2008 campaign, and right from the start, something will become obvious--Muir opens the year blithely convinced of one thing, that the presidency is the Republican Party's to lose. Despite the disaster of the last three years, despite Dubya's popularity collapsing into a black hole... he thinks it's in the bag.

Now, this is not going to be his consistent frame of mind. Muir will have moments of doubt, moments where he acknowledges that, yeah, things aren't looking good. We will deal with what brings them on in due course, because, yeah, it's going to be a surprise. But by and large, this is going to be his base setting. It is not going to take much for Muir to get bullish on the Republican's chances in 2008. And this raises the question... why? What gave Muir this tendency to assume that obviously things were going to go his way?

The simple answer is, he just hadn't adjusted his priors.

You will recall that Muir spent nearly all of 2006 chortling at the Democrats thinking they had a chance of winning. To Muir, the post-Gingrich "Revolution" Congress was as much the natural property of the Republicans as the Presidency. The victory in 2006 was met  not so much with outrage initially as befuddlement, a bizarre freak that he couldn't quite wrap his head around.

The Democrats of the very tail end of the Late Mystery Business(tm) Period of the last Era, and the Hardware Store Period of this are, like so much of the strip, in an odd state of transformation. They are not quite the Cabal, those shadowy masters of intrigue who despite their degeneracy, rule from the shadows. But they are not quite the ineffectual jokers that they'd been previously.

Not quite, but still mostly. In essence, Muir treated the Democratic Congress as a mass of frauds and crooks who'd tricked and lucked themselves into power. They were a bunch of lightweights traipsing about in things that didn't belong to them, destined to be removed like the jokes they were. While Muir was starting to hint at their sinister connections to malevolent forces, he still largely saw them as a joke. Everything that had happened did not change his beliefs.

This is an important aspect of Muir's overall psychology. Any success by his faction is viewed as total and completely vindicating, no matter how partial and how many qualifications it has, or how quickly it turns to dust. Any success by his opponents, no matter how impressive, is treated as a technicality and frequently a fraudulent one. In Muir's mental universe, he is never ever wrong. No matter what happens. And his opponents are never actually right. Again, no matter what happens.

And so, from that starting point, Muir thought he had a pretty good idea what was happening. His party would triumphantly rally around the conservative politics the nation loved, pick an appropriate Presidential candidate--he was quite fond of Fred Thompson, something we'll explore in more detail in the future--and then go on to teach the Democrats the lesson they should have taught them in 2006, if the Democrats hadn't cheated somehow. (Muir was vague on this somehow at this point. It involved the press, and also, he was starting to grumble about George Soros, though not as much as he would later.)

Now, this was an incredible amount of delusion. George W. Bush was not the triumphant, vindicated figure Muir had long imagined--he was looking at one of the lowest approval ratings in polling history. The policies that Muir had long championed were despised by most of the public, and there was very little mystery why--they had failed. No one but an absolutely blind partisan looked at this Administration as anything but a millstone for the GOP in the upcoming race. Likewise, only a fool assumed anything but that the party would need a drastically retooled message for the upcoming election. But for Muir, his admittedly nebulous philosophy could never fail, only be failed. Muir might turn on something he'd supported, but only years later, and frequently from a set of premises that were close to what he'd started with. He remained convinced that everything he believed was wildly successful and popular. Just ignore all that pesky evidence.

All of which left him in a very uncomfortable state as the GOP primaries began...

Once Again, I Thought She Was Named After Eva PERON.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Terry of the Times.

Moving on from the deranged antisemitism on display, you know Muir's feeling grim, because he's pulling out the exact 'both sides' script he uses when he feels a loss coming up to try and make himself feel like he was never REALLY affiliated with the people about to eat an L.

It never works. It just makes him even more peevish and desperate.

Completely Composed Of Hitler Particles!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Lightning Express.

...

I mean, at this point, he's not only gone 'mask off' about this stuff, he's practically starting to tear off his own face.

He Asks Who Is The Worse Enemy, The Hebrew Or The Saracen?

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Pirate of Panama.

Jesus, he's barely trying to pretend that the ((())) aren't there when he yells about 'globalists'. All to lead into his old Islamophobia and oh yes, just a dose of sexism. Because Muir won't admit that his entire "philosophy" has left him a bitter, isolated old coot screaming that any of the human race that isn't as fearful and hateful as him is his enemy. And also, even if they pass that part, they still have to get by the envelope test.

So, Muir Apparently Thinks The Yucatan Is Right Next Door To Peru...

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Mystery Rider.

Always amusing to watch Muir try to dress himself up in education and culture that he doesn't actually comprehend. Well, that or tiresome.

Never Stop With Cheap Shots.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Vanishing Rider.

Of course, in the real world, Obamacare wound up popular and we're now facing problems because the Repubs keep trying to find ways to cripple it. But fuck it, Muir doesn't have to deal with reality. He can just sit back, insist that every lie he tossed out was true, and that every morally bankrupt failure he's backed worked out. 

Same as it ever was.

He Can Accept This As Wrong As Long As It's Clear White People Are The Real Victims.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Strings of Steel.

Once again, Muir demonstrating that this reconsideration of Israel doesn't come from a place of deep moral revaluation, it comes from him buying narratives that both confirm existing biases and frame this as another slight against whites. Because, once again, he's gotten really, really Nazi these days.

"Now Hurry Up! I've Got To Speak To The Degenerate Gender Studies Class At JMS In An Hour!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Great Circus Mystery.

As usual in these cases, several days of feeling angry at the Administration have shifted to Muir finding a way to transfer his anger to his imaginary cabal of leftists. Because otherwise, Muir might have to admit he was wrong about something.

But hey, he's back to trying to make Teeter happen.

As Usual, Muir Turns Against Oppression When He Thinks It Might Be Turned On Him, Personally.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Wolves of the North.

The fascinating thing about Muir's "uniparty" bullshit is that you get scenarios like this. When the people he supports do something that annoys him, he just rewrites reality so it isn't actually his side doing things--things that he supported in their initial phases, mind you--no, no it's that evil conspiracy that runs thing in the shadows doing it. Muir may be a fascist, but he's largely ruled by the impulses that created the Italian Regency of Carnaro, the unrecognized interwar microstate where the militias that had taken over wound up doing things like having mock battles with live grenades, because, hey why not, they're full of vital energy after all. He loves oppression in the abstract and when he thinks it's happening to his enemies, but eventually, he runs headlong into the fact that his dreamed of dictatorship is going to have build a general state capacity for oppression that could be used against him. And whenever that happens, he grows irate, because he is fundamentally a child demanding his vague and contradictory wishes be granted instantaneously and with no negative consequences for himself.

These moments are always true 'stopped clock' scenarios, Muir reaching the right conclusion for once, but based on premises that are completely self-indulgent and hypocritical. And now that I've said all that, let's enjoy Day 2 of Muir on the war path against the Administration, even if he's clearly loading his attitude with qualifiers.

The Imaginary Victories Are Getting Damn Hard To Parse.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Fighting Ranger.

...

The most amusing part is that Muir thinks this comes off as such a big win, but Mamdani has been listening to Trump spew anti-Muslim bullshit this entire time like a deranged racist grandpa at Thanksgiving. Or he would have if there was any actual continuity in this entire sequence of strips, but again, Trump and Schumer are having problems staying consistent in their personalities and goals throughout. And I don't mean between strips. I don't even mean between panels. I mean between lines.

"And Then HE WOULD CRY!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Steel Trail.

And here is Muir at his most pathetic, ignoring the blatant efforts to subvert the Constitution the man he's presently following, shrieking that reforms to correct institutions that he and his have thoroughly corrupted and turned into threats are betraying the government and writing a sad little cartoon where the target subjected to this imbecilic harangue just quivers and gives up, for who can resist this transcendent truth?

Again, simply pathetic.

An Uncanny Valley Thing From The Images To The Dialogue.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Oregon Trail.

The endless cries about the sad victimization of white men are hitting new levels of pathetic.

Also Mari's become the latest Owens girl to sprout the throat-arm. Yay.