Sunday, April 9, 2017

More Tales from Trumpistan

There is turmoil in Trumpistan.  Its spokesman has turned into a bowl of cheese puffs.  Its Alt-Pres. has been demoted.  In fact, Ratso Rednose has lost his seat on the National Security Council, too.  Orange Boy has ordered the First Son-in-Law to put away the knives and make nice with Ratso and the rest of the schemers and plotters.

Who's in? Who's out? Who's up? Who's down? Why cheese puffs? What happened to the chocolate mints? It's like the bad old days in Russia. Pundits are panting over the picture of the White House meeting before Orange Boy ordered the missile strike on Syria.

Who's seated where? Who's scowling? Who's smiling? Sneering? Scratching his ear? Who was fer it, who was agin it?

Why did Orange Boy change his policy? He didn't change it, he never had a policy.  Well, he has one now: his policy is not to have a policy.  

He likes military toys.  The Tomahawks worked so well that he's learning the names of all the other missiles.  He's got warships sailing thither and yon all over the eastern seas. Gotta be careful they don't bump into one another.  Aircraft carriers can't turn on a dime, y'know.

He had a "working meeting" with President Xi Jinping of China.  Big diplomatic triumph, Trumpistan crowed.  Not if you read the newspapers in China. Their guy treated the American like a scolded schoolboy, they wrote, especially if you looked at the photograph of the two men seated on a White House sofa: Orange Boy slouching in a pout, Xi Jinping upright and stern, pointing a finger at the host.  The two presidents were supposed to “work on” another problem brat in the world, Kim Jong-un of North Korea.  Fat Boy, too, likes to play with military toys and has been shooting missiles in a manner that annoys his neighbors.  Orange Boy got no promises from Xi Jinping about controlling North Korea.

So what did he accomplish?  Well, some of the TV guys said, he looked really presidential when he shot those Tomahawks into syria while eating baked Alaska with his guest.  How can a fat, pouty 70-year-old manchild with a dead orange animal on his head look presidential?  Never mind the truth.  It was the designated narrative of the day: “Looked presidential.”

Rex Tillerson, the Exxon-Mobil warlord who has been made secretary of state, defined the North Korea situation one way: “President Xi clearly understands, and I think agrees, that the situation has intensified and has reached a certain level of threat that action has to be taken.”  Nikki Haley, the addle-pated United States ambassador to the U.N. saw it differently.  Xi Jinping might be dragging his feet, but the U.S. was quite ready to go it alone using force.  Who writes the scripts for these people?

ButOrange Boy had a really big victory in the Senate, you’ve got to agree on that, right?  Got his man Gorsuch confirmed to the open seat on the Supreme court, giving the fascist wing a 5-4 majority again. And all they had to do was kill the last vestiges of democracy in the upper house, changing the rules of operation in ways that had never been attempted before.

Trumpistan stands where once there was a democratic republic.  It wasn’t perfect, and recent regimes had presided over  symptoms of decay, but at least it retained vestiges of what its founders had intended.  Every now and then sane office-holders actually engaged in serious, civil debate.

But that was then.  This is now.  Bigly.