(Warning: anyone more comfortable in an echo chamber should run to his or her safe space now)
Dumb is en vogue. So is lying. What was once shunned is now worn as a badge of honor. The White House has had a fashion makeover and been fully staffed by those embracing ignorance and deceit, though in an odd sort of Neo Political Correctness, the terms thrusted upon us are ‘gut feel’ and ‘Alternative Facts’. Also used, with near Oscar-quality drollness, is the phrase, ‘the President has long believed’, which invariably comes right before something truly silly or bizarre. Certainly the ‘gut feel’ thing is patently obvious, both figuratively and literally, as everyone from Donny to Bannon to Spicey to Hucksterbee to the ‘Honorable’ Omarosa Reality Star have been packing on the pounds since the Inauguration. The lying, too, is obvious, as what emanates from the White House in terms of its lack of veracity is as consistent as such physical laws as the speed of light or the force of gravity. It is unwavering in terms of its untruthfulness, relentless in its debasing of reality and probity. If Donny’s lips are moving or his little stubbins Tweeting…..…..etc.
Some places where actual knowledge and experience, sanity and maturity reared their now ugly heads have been eviscerated by the Post-Intellectual Administration. The Department of State has had its budget slashed and its senior ranks thinned like the tropical hardwoods in a Third World rain forest or the hairline of Heinrich Himmler look-alike Steven Miller. EPA, also suffering under budget cuts, has undergone an apparent name change, from Environmental Protection to the Environmental Pollution Agency, and Donny’s so-called Executive Orders are aimed at bringing that organization up to speed under its new name, a metamorphosis reminiscent of ‘firemen’ in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
We’re all the worse off for this, with Defense Secretary Mattis saying he’ll need more bullets and children in mining country now about to share drinking water quality with the kids in Flint, Michigan. This has been sold to the intellectually challenged as pabulum going by the comic book acronym MAGA. Presidential pronouncements which historically began with such words as ‘Four score’ or ‘Ask not’ have been replaced by ‘#UNFAIR’ or ‘#SAD’, the caps ostensibly lending gravitas to what in better times would have been called by its true name: whining like a baby.
This is Cryin’ Lyin’ Donny’s America. It’s ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’, and all them snow. It’s a land where fentanyl addicts in the Midwest think their problem is immigrants.
All is not lost, however, pilgrims. The system that is the heart of America’s government was purposely constructed by the Founding Fathers to neutralize such affronts to rationality and sanity, honesty and integrity the embodiment of which is Trump.
The Founding Fathers had true ‘gut feel’, not the fat belly nonsense of this high BMI White House. They knew well the demons that reside in the souls of many, and similarly knew how the siren song of a self-serving Narcissistic false populist lunatic might grab a majority of the electorate by the short hairs and lead it to destruction. They knew that eventually there would be a Donny Boo Boo, a clownish oaf with delusions of grandeur, a penchant for authoritarianism, and an ego as fragile as a pimple-faced teen. They established a government that differed in as many ways as possible from the monarchies or petty dictatorships from which many had fled, so as to limit the damage of Trumpian absurdity. They knew.
In a world where the pace of technology is making the poorly educated redundant and unnecessary, and where no alternative exists for the displaced to turn, many are desperate to embrace false gods. For many sad souls, reality is giving way to myth, science to superstition, dreams to false hopes. Such people are susceptible to opportunists, buffoons or miscreants. There are things the dreamers want to hear---nay, need to hear---and the cynically malevolent will step in to say anything and everything the real ‘left behind’ in society demand. Keeping it simple helps, too---simple is easier to grasp---as Donny’s base tends to reside on the far left side of the IQ Bell Curve. MAGA works on them, even if it has no actual meaning, and most certainly has no plan behind it. Words are good enough for this crowd, even if empty.
In Donny Boo Boo’s life that strategy has worked. He ran his business like an autocrat, championed self-promotion and myth over actual achievement, and had such a total lack of integrity that it allowed him to do everything from stiffing small sub-contractors, to abusing the US’ bankruptcy laws, to filing more than 3500 lawsuits, to playing off the hopes of poor and unaccomplished students by creating a university every bit as fake as his family coat of arms (which he stole/plagiarized from a member of the British Peerage).
All of that was enough to land him a ghost-written book and a Game Show, and that visibility enabled him to get elected by the audience that has also helped make the Kardashians rich. Being both intellectually and physically lazy, Donny thought he could pull the same stunts in the actual halls of power, in that incredibly complex and largely self-correcting system set up some two and a half centuries ago when our nation had a critical mass of brilliant people. The Fat Man is being disabused of his silly notion daily.
Donny was wrong about taking his Game Show persona on the road…the road being Pennsylvania Ave. Dead wrong. He took on all the wrong battles, and tried to fight the battles with outdated and inferior weapons. His aim has also been terrible, shooting himself in a foot shoved in his mouth while his head is stuck up his ass. It ain’t pretty, but it is entertaining to watch him flail.
As for the self-proclaimed ‘dealmaker’, his brief clownship has already put that myth to rest. Donny is the proverbial sucker at the poker table, unaware of his chump status.
China---the ‘currency manipulator’ who has been ‘screwing us forever’---hosed him, and has gotten lordship over East Asia as its spoils, plus a Ford Motor plant Trump once claimed he had kept in America. (All ‘President Eleven’ had to do was grant some trademarks to Donny and disappear a few folks who were questioning work conditions in First Daughter Strumpetka’s sweatshops, plus act properly impressed when Donny was eating chocolate cake and blowing up some sand with $100 million worth of Cruise missiles.)
Saudi Arabia diddled Donny with a sword dance and a fake ‘arms deal’, won support for its genocide in Yemen, and may have enslaved an American vassal state for its regional battle against Iran.
On the home front, all those Carrier jobs are still going to Mexico. Sorry, Indiana, the election is over.
The most visible of Donny’s checker playing, however, comes in the form of James Comey, who took Donny to the woodshed and beat the man-child silly. Donny Ball, for lack of a better term, is best illustrated using a sports analogy, so let’s PLAY BALL!
Donny spent his life in Little League, but fancied himself playing the seventh game of the MLB World Series. He thinks his 40 mph hanging curveball will fool professionals.
Donny’s pitch was ‘tapes’. Like everyone else, Comey knew the world would hear those tapes about the same time it would see the video of the infamous Dancin’ Muslims of New Jersey. It was Trumpbluff, which is to say it had all the believability of a 3-year old’s lies.
Comey, with at least 60 IQ points more than the bloated gasbag, took Donny's pitch deep and went 'yard'. Trump continues trying to perform a victory dance, refusing to look at the scoreboard. He wants people to think he's Cy Young, when he's just about to be Cy Yonara.
The system will win in the end. Checks and balances. Actual public servants. Real patriots. The DoJ, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Financial Crimes Division of the US Treasury, the Special Counsel, the free press, the 1st and 25th Amendment---that combination will take Donny and his interlopers down. The brain addled, whose ‘knowledge’ comes from Internet Charlatans and ‘Performance Artists’ (e.g., Alex Jones), and whose grasp of reality is as firm as a 95-year old former wet nurse’s breasts, choose to call our American system “Deep State”. Apparently it bothers the moonbats that the Founding Fathers were wise enough to anticipate a Trumpian wannabe autocrat in some American future and established a means of reigning in such an affront to decency. Yes, what the ‘bad chemicals’ crowd calls Deep State, the Founding Fathers called Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Sinister it is not, nor is it hidden. It’s in the Constitution.
Those who know are now sitting back, quietly, letting Donny dig his own grave. He is being manipulated by the judicious use of leaks (most from his own White House by people anxious to save their credibility for a post-Trumpian DC job), none of which endanger national security, but each of which puts the shovel back in Donny's hands and gets him digging anew, whether it's in the form of a childish Twitter Tantrum, a Faux TV interview, badgering of the DNI, DCI or DIRNSA, or an offhand comment to a Russian FM or Ambassador. Deeper and deeper his hole goes as his own frailties are used against him.
There are also paper trails everywhere of Donny's 'previous life' as a Game Show Host and cartoon character, just as there are for his similarly cash-strapped and over-leveraged son-in-law, who was seemingly so desperate for funds to cover his 2018 balloon payment of $1 billion on 666 Fifth Ave, that he insinuated he was willing to go all Kim Philby in return for funding. At least that is how his ‘back channel’ offer to Kislyak is being investigated. The charge, if it comes to indictment, would be ‘conspiracy to commit espionage’, which incidentally is the charge that took down the Rosenbergs and gave them a date with Sparky at Sing Sing. If Boy Wonder is innocent, he has nothing to fear, but if not, he might consider remaining in the Middle East, where he's currently making a bad situation even worse.
It's probably the seventh inning. Stand and stretch. Grab some more popcorn and a beer, because this show is truly a kick. Donny's still throwing it fat and juicy right in the batter's wheelhouse, and balls are continuing to fly out of the park. The manager in the dugout, which is to say the system, is getting ready to pull him and send him to the showers, or DFA him to Little League---and that only if he is lucky enough to avoid State-issue overalls that match his face color.
Enjoy the rest of the game.