Funny Not Funny

 

Analogy: Lucy Van Pelt is Iran. The football is the Strait of Hormuz. And Trump is, well, Trump.

As he decompensates while his stupid war spins out of control like a buzz-bomb firecracker, it’s obvious that Iranian leaders have figured him out. It’s the B-side of what other world leaders have recognized and used to their advantage: praise him like a child who used a potty, flatter him with participation trophies, and get what they want. Iran’s insight is to lie to him like he lies to everyone, get him to announce the latest “agreement,” deny it exists, induce him to make ridiculous, madman threats, announce more agreements, threaten more war crimes, back off, produce deadlines, rescind them, while they enjoy the result as he looks more out of touch, less and less powerful, and definitely not in control of anything; least of all, himself. Watch as the world backs away from him in dismay.

This is what Trump has done to America’s once-admirable standing in the world. Unconditional surrender was the goal. Or ending their nuclear program, “two weeks away from a bomb” every two weeks for ten years. Or opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was closed only because of his war. Since Trump spends most of his time on social media and watching toady TV, he must have seen Iran’s hilarious trolling videos, of which this is but one example. He’s become so dislodged from reality and unstable that aides kept him out of the room where it happened when planning the rescues of those downed pilots, lest he start issuing damaging orders.

This is the “president” we have, thanks to MAGA. It should frighten everyone. It's the patriotic duty of every American to vote only for Democrats until every MAGA Republican has been replaced in Congress.

The mullahs must be having a constant laugh as they make Trump look ridiculous to the world, including, of late, even former Trump-fluffer Tucker Carlson, who stopped licking and started looking. Though it was obvious before he descended that golden escalator, deniers can no longer deny: everything Trump says is a lie. About Iran, about elections, about climate change. About anything and everything. In a “president,” it’s an undesirable quality. Recent example: Iran’s “totally obliterated” navy just commandeered two commercial ships.

Trump’s calamitous, unnecessary, undeclared war/not-war has strengthened China and Russia, and convinced Iran that it doesn’t need nuclear arms. In its control of the Strait of Hormuz, it has a far more powerful weapon. No rational world leader other than Trump, who isn’t, would use nukes. Thanks to Trump, Iran now understands they don’t need them to disrupt the entire world and get whatever it wants. 

Foxotrumpic media insists he’s playing 4-D chess. He’s playing checkers. And, because he thinks the pieces are Oreos, he’s eating them. The best we can hope for from this debacle is a return to the parameters of the nuclear agreement President Barack Obama negotiated with Iran years ago, by which they were abiding, and which Trump, because his only constant is a need to punish those who don’t debase themselves for him, ended.

His unfitness is also manifested in the incompetence, criminality, and danger of the people he chose for his Cabinet. Three have been dismissed in the last few weeks, all women, despite the tendentious testicular travesties, the fulminating phallic failings of his male maladies. Atop the list is Pentagon Pete, who treats war like a game, a platform for self-promotion, strutting and puffing before his hand-culled press, embarrassing us before the world. Not content with firing minority generals and admirals, trying, apparently, to out-crazy Junior Arfkay, he just ended mandatory flu shots for troops. He must assume Trump will get his 1.5 trillion-dollar defense budget, in which case the expense of caring for unnecessarily sick soldiers won’t matter.

Tied for worst appointment, ever, is Kash Patel. Trump : judgment = strychnine : food.

For humor’s sake, recalling his promise to end Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine on day one, part deux, Trump predicted he’d have ended the Vietnam War “very quickly,” in five months. Why five? One for every deferment he got to keep him out of it.

Finally, this: Trump’s ill-planned, unjustified war, his undeniable decompensation over it, the worldwide effects of it all, are driving from memory the litany of his previous failures, the number of ways he’s endangered America, civilization, and the planet. But maybe that’s the point. If his war/not-war is over by November, Trump hopes, voters will be relieved enough to overlook the horrible and, in many cases, irreversible damage he’s caused in a mere six years.

Against that possibility, here’s a gift link to a New York Times article by Thomas B. Edsall. It’s a fact-supported recounting of all that Trump has wrought, and should be required reading for every voter, better written and more comprehensive than anything I could do. 

Brick By Brick

 

             Image source: anntelnaes.com

After an exhausting week of stamping out human decency in his government, Trump spent the weekend taking the Miami golf cure. I spent it getting over not being confirmed as Secretary of Defense. I thought I had a shot; my resumé is on a par with Pete Hegseth’s, if not greater. We both served in the military in war zones, but, unlike me, he didn’t receive a Purple Heart. We both provide weekend opination via public media; and whereas mine is mine only, he shares his platform as a mere co-host. In managing huge bureaucracies, we’re identical. What put me out of the running, I think, is that I’m not a problem drinker or a sexual miscreant, both of which are touchstones in the upper echelons of today’s Republican Party.

Choosing Hegseth over me made Trump the only president who’s had two cabinet nominees requiring a Vice-Presidential tiebreak after a 50–50 vote. No other president has had even one. Which says everything about the quality of his choices. 

For those who believe Democrats’ unanimity in voting no was purely political, votes for the previous SecDef nominees, Democrats and Republicans, were as follows: Lloyd Austin, 93–2; Mark Esper 90–8; James Mattis 98–1. Ashton Carter 93–5; Leon Panetta 100–0. Robert Gates 95–2. The difference: credentials. If not all R senators are stupid enough to think Hegseth is qualified (?), only 3 had the guts to vote no, one of whose cynical hypocrisy put us where we are. It’s shameful and cowardly.

Arriving at the Pentagon, Pete went to work implementing Project Trump 2025: his first communiqué was about ending DEI, because any military member not straight, male, white, and Christian is inferior. Then, calling them “dishonorable” and “liars,” he banned trans people who, because they had the courage to be public about who they are, are braver than most; and about whom there’ve been fewer deportment issues than non-trans members. And he announced plans to interview top general officers to see which will kowtow and which won’t. Shoot protestors in the legs. 

Beyond turning the military into his domestic enforcers, Trump is eliminating people and programs that would keep him in check. He fired inspectors general of virtually all government agencies. His Department of “Justice” ousted every prosecutor who worked with Jack Smith and will subject them to “investigations,” and it just ended further pursuit of Trump’s crimes. The firing of the IGs was clearly illegal because the law requires thirty days’ notice. The message: Whatcha gonna do about it?

Same with the TikTok law passed by Congress, signed by President Biden, and approved in a rare 9–0 ruling by the Supreme Court. Trump ignored it. Likewise, his demented attempt to rewrite the Constitution by executive order. He’s convinced he’s above the law, which, thanks to congressional pusillanimity and judicial corruption, it turns out he is. Then, because they’d get in his way, he rescinded the ethics rules ordered by President Biden. 

In a silent coup, our country has been captured by a group of very wealthy men, Christian nationalists who are anything but Christian, whose aim is to remove from government all institutions that have, till now, protected us from people like them; that stand in the way of unchecked power and unregulated self-enrichment; that let people not like them retain the power of the vote. And they’ve put in place enough judges and justices to clear their path.

It’s been a concerted effort for years. In Trump, they recognized the perfect stooge, one they could convince he’s in charge because he so desperately needs to be; a frontman willing, for his needy gratification, to keep public eyes off what’s happening; to cede the agenda to Project 2025. It’s not Greenland or Panama or Canada. It’s in the backrooms of the White House, into which they’ve charmed and threatened unimaginably rich oligarchs to bankroll their efforts. Trump gives them what they want because they give him what he needs.

Trump was elected by a minority of voters, strategically convinced it was about eggs and immigrants. People who look worshipfully at his self-pity and rejoice as he strikes at the vulnerable, who will include, before long, themselves. When they realize that, it’ll be too late.

It’s hard to accept, to know whether to tune out or scream into the night. Trump has the limelight. For him, vengeance is the goal; that, and validating his neediness. He’s president of people who see the cruelty and love it. And of the string-pullers. The more distracting outrage he engenders, the more he lies and pounds his chest, the more he fools the media into focusing on the hole rather than the donut, the more easily the Project-iles can take down our democracy, all but unreported, brick by brick.

For those who still believe in democracy and kindness, it’s hard to watch and harder to know what to do.

Gloatfest

 

Since the election, I’ve received gloating emails from dislikers of my columns. They’re entitled to it, but they should acknowledge who their gloatmates are. Like anti-everyone Nick Fuentes, Trump’s honored dinner guest at Mar-a-Lago, who immediately posted “To Women”: “Your body, my choice, forever.” They must also find it gloatworthy that racist emails were sent to Black students across the country, and that neo-Nazis are rejoicing. And looking to intimidate.

They must love that Trump named white-supremacist, anti-ALL immigration, Stephen Miller as Deputy Chief of Staff, in charge of policy. (Susie Wiles, his Chief of Staff choice, previewed the extent to which she’ll keep him within the law. When Trump showed her his stolen classified documents, she stayed mum about the crime.) Okay with suspected Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard as DNI? Matt Gaetz as Attorney General???

We presume my emailers find those choices, to whom the word "deplorable" really does apply, gloatastic. Like Fox’s Jesse Waters, they must think it’s “hysterical” to imagine parents and their terrified children held in detention camps, awaiting deportation. As yet unanswered: will the people doing the rounding-up be provided jackboots or will they have to purchase them?

Gloatiizers will have about two gloatable years. If Trump imposes tariffs and deportations as promised, they might do some retrodegloatation when prices of imports skyrocket; when various imported goods become unavailable; when crops die in fields for lack of harvesters, grocery shelves offering only dust. As deficits soar and interest rates rise, they’ll either have multiple gloatasms or help liberals return Congress to Democrats. Assuming they haven’t all been arrested, as Trump has threatened about the Clintons, Obamas, Bidens, Cheneys, and Pelosis.

Based on past performance, it’s unlikely Trump will fulfill all of his campaign promises. We can hope. He’s blown past one already, namely ending the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of being elected. He did, however, call Ukraine’s President Zelensky. For unfathomably ominous reasons, he shared that call with uber-oligarch Elon Musk; tacit acknowledgment of a shadow presidency to be. Trump said he also spoke to Putin, telling him not to escalate the war. The Kremlin denies the call. Showing him how ignorable they consider him, Putin escalated immediately. Making their disrespect of Trump even clearer, Russian TV then ran nude and semi-nude photos of Melania. (NSFW)

Rather than promised millions, maybe Trump will only deport migrants who committed serious crimes. That’d be okay. Maybe he’ll never get around to those living here for years, raising families including their US-born, citizen children, working, paying taxes, going to church. It’s doubtful Jesus would find it hysterical. Nevertheless, several gloatists cited their faith as a reason for choosing Trump. That’s professional-level compartmentalization. Tested to reject cruel, oligarchical autocracy, over half of America failed. Will there be, as there were during the Holocaust, citizens brave enough to shield their migrant neighbors?

As in 2016, Trump will inherit a booming economy. It’s a pattern repeated for decades: Republicans inheriting then ruining thriving economies, Democrats revitalizing them, and Republicans, when they regain power, taking pre-ruination credit. Since Trump will be busy dictatoring on Day One, expect him to wait a while before taking credit for President Biden’s economy, as he did with Obama’s. And to blame anyone but himself when his policies ruin it, yet again.

I’m neither the betting nor conspiratorial type, but I’ll put a nickel down that, soon as Trump’s installed, big agra will lower egg prices on which the election seems to have turned, giving not just a “win” for Trump, but themselves, too, having purchased deregulation that will allow making it all back by avoiding costly consumer protection measures. Eat safe, America.

No matter how unqualified, Trump will get every appointment he wants, based on a single criterion: unquestioning, prostrate loyalty. Not to Constitution or country. To Trump, exclusively. And election denial. As Senate Republicans have pre-caved on recess appointments, he might not seek confirmation. If he does, he’ll get it. Even for Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary, a Fox “news” host with no managerial experience who’s clearly unfit. He and Trump will purge generals who’ve stood for the Constitution. If he turns our military, as demanded, on Trump’s enumerated domestic enemies, gloaters will acquiesce. Throughout history, it’s what such people do.

For now, nothing and no one can stop Trump, my words least of all. But, despite its insignificance, were I to stop writing now, I’d feel like a coward. To withdraw in silence at the dawn of dictatorship would be to abandon duty that democracy demands. So, ineffectual as it is, I’ll keep it up. You, too, gloatophiliacs. In a couple of years, maybe less, we’ll learn who’s right. If it’s me, I won’t gloat. I’ll ponder how America can keep it from happening again. If it’s you, you’ll have time to apologize to your progeny.