Not So Cagey

 

In honor of himself, the emperor built an arena festooned with corporate logos and ordered gladiators into it, to bloody each other before his majesty and consort. Perfectly encapsulating the tone and tenor of the event -- indeed, of an entire “presidency” -- one of the hand-picked combatants, an announced favorite of Trump, took to the microphone after his win and shouted, to MAGnafied cheers and, reportedly, a “half-smile” from Trump, “Michele Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”

Thus did Trump celebrate his birthday, adding a taxpayer-funded military fly-over. No American president has spent taxpayers’ money in such a paean to self. The desecration also included the Lincoln Memorial, on whose hallowed ground half-naked men posed for their weigh-in, after which they accessed every room of the West Wing. There are no words.

Disgraceful. Insulting. Embarrassing. Humiliating. Desecration. Shameful. Disgusting. Exploitative. Shameless. It’s foolish even to try. Degrading. Egomaniacal. Indecent. Reprehensible. Vile. Contemptible. Self-enriching. Repugnant. Grotesque.

It renders me wordless.

Debasing. Obscene. Vulgar. Tasteless. Self-aggrandizing. Unbecoming. Travesty. Shamelessly corrupt.

MAGA.

Happily, we needn’t dwell further upon this debauchery (wish I’d thought of that one). Other than reverberations through history and lingering stupefaction around the world, it’s over. We may now turn our celebratory attention elsewhere.

Our national artist of the deal has capitulated his way back, for sixty days, anyway, to where things were before his lie-based vanity war. It’s a “Memorandum of Understanding,” not a deal. The Strait of Hormuz will re-open, as before Trump’s folly, except for the fees Iran may still charge. Iran’s nuclear future remains unresolved. The regime stays in place. It can resume selling oil. Bewailed by Republicans when President Obama did it, Iranian assets are unfrozen. In the eyes of the world, Trump’s war has made Iran stronger and America weaker.

At best, our dealer might even art his way back, nuke-wise, to the situation extant before he trumped the Comprehensive Agreement achieved under President Barack Obama, international inspectors and all. If not, algaeic reflections on what we witnessed on the South Lawn may have to suffice.

But Trump’s amaranthine debasement of the White House is trivial compared to his deadly war on democracy’s definitional fundament: free and fair elections, equally available to all citizens. Having hired amoral sycophants helping Trump destroy everything America once stood for, people like Kash Patel and Todd Blanche and Russell Vought, plus overt racists like Stephen Miller, it’s proceeding apace, unchecked by Congressional Republicans, some of whom know better. Two, maybe.

Coming from Trump, to repeat a truism, accusation is confession. Like having lied for a decade about rigged elections for which he’s presented neither proof nor explained how it was accomplished. Aided by repetition of the lie by Foxian media, every cabinet member, and nearly all Republicans in Congress, he’s tilled MAGA’s intracranial soil, implanting unquestioning belief. Every election MAGA loses in November will be called rigged; every MAGA will believe it.

He’s not settling for the big lie. Under his command, the US Postal Service says it won’t deliver ballots in blue states, like ours, that refused his illegal demand to hand over their voter rolls. And he’s declared mail-in ballots illegal. Were the Supreme Court’s ideological, regressive majority not rewriting our Constitution, those efforts would be down-slapped in a Minuteman minute.

In what’s certain to be the first of many, Trump’s Kash-poor FBI raided an Ohio institution dedicated to registering eligible voters. The raid included homes of its leaders and staff, and the intent is obvious: intimidation. Not just of people wanting to register, but people helping them. Just as obvious: Democrats work to protect voting by all citizens, while Trump’s MAGAfied Republican Party wants to scare them away. Otherwise, they can’t win.

The sabotage includes SCOTUS-blessed gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states, where Black-majority districts are being systematically legislated out of existence. Some blue states are trying to counter it, even as Congressional Democrats have, repeatedly, produced legislation to outlaw gerrymandering, predictably voted down by Republican majorities. “Otherwise, we can’t win” should be their official motto. 

To their list of electoral corruption, add accessibility-skewed voter ID laws and purging legal citizens from voter rolls, potentially disenfranchising millions around the country. Their lying about Democrats rigging elections serves to mute allegations of their own obvious malfeasance. Is it time to suggest elections won by Republicans were rigged? What Trump and his party are doing is as obvious as an FBI raid. They hope to bury recognition under a pile of lies.

Oh, but Trump loves America. Just not the one in which laws were followed and court orders obeyed; in which the Department of Justice enforced our laws impartially. He kisses the flag, though, posts pictures of himself doing it on his Truthless Sociopath platform. And he put on a cage fight to delight testiculated Americans, right there on the lawn of the People’s House. Sure, he’s getting richer from investing in the sponsoring corporations and planting his crypto grift’s logo around the octagon. But, hey: what’s love if not that?

Also: nipples.