Words Fail

[Note: I wrote this a few days ago when I first heard. Still no evidence to discredit it.]

I've heard it said that the English language is the richest, the most compatible with poetry, with descriptions of our world. Being (at one time) semi-fluent in none other than Russian, I have no basis on which to judge the claim. (I do prefer the sound of spoken French and Italian, though; and Russian, despite its somewhat percussive quality, can be lovely. Just for the way the words feel as I say them, I love to recite a Turgenev poem: gor'niye vershee'ni, spyat' vo tmye' nochnoi'... Sounds way better than it reads. Unless someone is singing it. It means "Mountaintops." But it's really about death.)

And yet l find myself flummoxed and frustrated. There simply aren't words yet invented to convey the depths of Donald Trump's venal assholery. He's a surpassingly despicable human being, lacking any characteristics that could be called attractive, empathetic, or honorable. He is the turd in the punchbowl, the breath of a shit-eating dog, the scum that rims an uncleaned toilet bowl. He's the green drip of gonorrhea staining unwashed underwear. He's the sebum that accumulates behind the ear, the bathroom mirror of a teenage pimple popper. See? Inadequate. Or maybe it's just me.

In this case, I refer to his most recent act of narcissistic scumbaggery, akin to defecating in the middle of a museum. That bag of rotting entrails of week-old roadkill pressured the government of Argentina to cancel an award, its highest for civilians, the equivalent of our Presidential Medal of Freedom, granted to Jimmy Carter for his work in defense of human rights.

Snopes calls the claim "unproven." OTOH, it was reported by a major Buenos Aires newspaper. I guess we'll learn eventually if it's false, in which case I retract everything but every one of the wholly inadequate words I used to describe him here. They apply to virtually every act he's taken; especially his heartless, destructive executive orders, displayed underneath his smug face. And now to the despicable tax break for the rich, disguised as a "health care" bill he just celebrated with House Republicans, may they rot in hell.

It's enough to make me wish I were a believer in that particular location. Or, at least, had a better vocabulary.

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