Moon Man

 

Image created by ChatGPT, prompted: create image of Trump's face on the moon.

“Fly me to the trump and let me play among the stars...”

“Trump river, wider than a mile...”

“Would you like to swing on a star, carry trumpbeams home in a jar” (“Or would you rather be a trump? A trump is an animal that lies all the time, too many to fit into a rhyme. He struts and he poses and he does a dumb dance; He goes backstage where they’re wearing no pants. So if you want to turn the world into a dump; you could grow up to be a trump.”) 

“Trumplight becomes you, it goes with your hair...”

“Shine on, shine on harvest trump...”

Building on universal enthusiasm for rebranding the Kennedy Center in his honor, Trump, we believe, is set to announce renaming humanity’s all-time favorite nighttime sky object, too. No longer the moon. Trump.

And who’s better at shining on than Trump? His speech last week to that part of the nation that still believes his lies outdid all his previous ones; not in terms of lies and made-up facts, by which measure they’re all the same, but in brevity, rapidity, and decibels. He shouted the golden oldies and came up with new material, too. Check these links. They should be required reading for MAGA.

Normal human beings -- and there’s the problem – would hesitate to tell lies so easily debunked. They might even blush, look down at their feet. Not Trump. His lies are a steady stream without so much as a second’s hesitation or compunction. The only questions about his absurd lies are whether he believes them, and, if not, why his disciples do. Trumpists lack any curiosity about and desire for truth, accepting as gospel his every word.

“One year ago,” he lied, “We were absolutely dead. (Ed note: by what criteria?) But now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. (Ed note: by what criteria?)” According to Trump, every world leader tells him that. Another lie, more likely than not; but it’s certainly true that world leaders recognize Trump’s pathetic need for praise and easy manipulation when he gets it. So maybe not.

There also could be some truth to the “hottest” claim, if not now, soon. For reasons buried deep in his psyche, Trump is deliberately making climate change not only worse, by banning offshore windfarms while allowing offshore drilling and disincentivizing the use of electric vehicles, solar power, and more, but, by closing the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado, he’s making its effects less traceable and solutions more elusive. It’s perverse, destructive stupidity, willfully ignored and effectively facilitated by Republican representatives of the Americans most directly endangered by it. 

Trump’s woeful naming spree just traveled back to the 1940s, the last time the US built a battleship, after which their obsolescence and vulnerabilities, especially in the last few decades, became increasingly clear. That’s of no concern to Trump, who, as he’s told us, knows more about war than all generals and admirals combined. If it weren’t for his miraculously disappearing bone spurs and five deferments, which, unlike me and millions of others, tragically kept him from serving, he’d know even more.

So, he announced, he’s authorized a new category of battleships, to be referred to as “Trump class.” Maybe a few feeble Republicans in Congress will awaken from ten years of torpor to prevent spending the billions the ships would cost, recognizing there’s no reason to build them except to feed Trump’s pathological, almost pitiful neediness.

I assume we agree that “Trump class” is an oxymoron. Those two words don’t belong, ever, in the same sentence.

There is some irony here: as anxious as Trump is to have his name plastered everywhere and to build oversize, tasteless structures to display it, he’s uncharacteristically reluctant to have it appear anywhere near the so-called Epstein files. He and his personal law firm, for the last year doing business under another oxymoronic title, The Department of Justice, aren’t hiding their contempt for the law and the public, brazenly redacting, withholding, and disappearing major parts of those documents which they so reluctantly released to Congress. Nor can they hide the indisputable inference: he’s guilty as hell. (Saying so makes me, by the DOJ’s Trumpophilic definition, a domestic terrorist.)

There’s good news, though: I, winner of the “Fred’s auto parts and bakery great peace of writing” award, sleuthed a telling portion of the missing files. Read and report back.

Since the season of good cheer is upon us, I’ll not mention the deliciousness of Republican Congressdwellers subpoenaing Special Counsel Jack Smith but refusing his request to testify in public. He has the goods on Trump, and they know it. 

Rather, in the holiday spirit, I hope everyone had a merry Trumpmas, happy Trumpukkah, a meaningful Trumpzaa, and, belatedly, a satisfying Trumpwali. Together, let us prepare to face twenty-trumpty-six.

No Alternatives

There must be a universe in which America hasn’t descended into anti-science denialism; in which all members of America’s majority religion actually followed its teachings, rather than promoting hate and fear of otherness, and elevating its amoral political “leader” to a status higher than their religious one.

Somewhere in the multiverse, America never elected a lifelong liar and flouter of the law, a narcissistic destroyer of the once-touted “guardrails” of democracy; a wrong-doer never held to account, unable to accept recant or renounce transgressions of decency and the law. Surely there’s a universe in which the party that elected him took responsibility and corrected its mistake. By producing superior candidates capable of correcting the error, refusing to reinstall the one, fealty to and fear of whom facilitated the downfall of party and country.

These Friday columns are sent in by Wednesday evening, allowing Editor Jon Bauer to lay out the opinion section on Thursday morning, for publication the next day. So, at this writing, we don’t know if the inevitable indictment of Donald Trump by Jack Smith has yet dropped. But we know the reaction.

From Republican leaders and their admitted-liar media, the meas won’t be culpa. We’ll hear of witch hunts, crazed Trump-haters, liberals seeking vengeance for something or other, rather than supporting punishment for obvious crimes, as should be the case, in a nation of laws, for all people, even former “presidents.”

We’ll hear praise of the January 6 desecrators, pretense that stealing classified documents, lying about it, and getting others to lie, too, is no big deal; and claims that, in a supernatural act, the documents became declassified the minute they were stolen.

There’ll be calls for impeachment, imprisonment, or worse, of investigators, prosecutors, and Democratic leaders, top to bottom. Trump’s poll numbers will rise. “Truthless Social” will run out of capital letters. Despite his undeniable criminality, he may still become his party’s nominee. Too late to admit their mistake. For those with time and inclination, here’s documentation of Trump’s crimes, created by former prosecutors, which they propose would be similar to Jack Smith’s “prosecution memo.” 

But what alternative candidates are there? Ron DeSantis, whose campaign is based entirely on constantly repeating his too-clever-by-three-quarters phrase, “woke mind virus,” the definition of which boils down to acceptance of differences among fellow humans and resistance to banning books and words. (Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, not yet and hopefully never a candidate, just signed a law requiring imprisonment of librarians who allow children to see books she’s banned. Other red state governors are in line.)

Nikki Haley, the “reasonable one,” just blamed the fact that a third of girls have contemplated suicide on fear of sharing a bathroom with a trans girl; something that happens rarely and so what? Girls’ bathrooms have stalls, not urinals. And she doesn’t like red flag laws because she doesn’t “trust the government to enforce them.” As opposed to whom? The NRA?

Chris Christie, whose weight is being mocked by classy, 237-pound (according to lying Ronny Jackson, MD, R-TX) fourth-grader Trump, once in trouble for hugging President Obama for his help with Hurricane Sandy, began his rehabilitation campaign by asserting that Obama deliberately divided the country.

Mike Pence, whose chances lag Hell’s snowball, kicked off his campaign with a professionally produced video, in which he says “President Biden and the radical left have weakened America at home and abroad;” a statement believed, no doubt, by the Foxified but refuted on every level by simple observation. The part of the video that insists “timeless American values are under assault” shows images of rainbow flags and trans kids. No dog whistle for Mike. A soulless bullhorn.

Most of these pretenders push the lie that children can be “groomed” to become gay or to change their sex. They push it because it works; because it’s a proven path to power when they have nothing to offer for average Americans. Granted, children can be groomed to accept sexual molestation; we hear of it, roughly weekly, being done by various youth pastors and anti-LGBT, pro-life politicians, as well as “patriotic” militia members. And, for sure, taught to be racist. But not to become gay. Or to switch gender. It doesn’t happen.

The lie that sexual identity is chosen, or “groomed,” as opposed to inborn, is second only – or maybe, in terms of harm to vulnerable people, first – to Trump’s election lies. The science – yes, science! – is compelling, and deepening steadily. Pushing the lies, attacking our most vulnerable for political gain is cynical, un-Christian cruelty at its worst.

Having run out of space, we finish by quoting noted social scientist, Wanda Sykes: “Until a drag queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, I think you’re focusing on the wrong s[tuff].”