The Blind Pig Finds an Acorn

“Say no more to treating people like things and corporations like people.” The Reverend William Barber

Another crazy week in TrumpLand. Who else but Donald Trump goes to meet one of our perennial bogeymen and babbles about building condos on the beaches? Despite the fulminations of Rachel Maddow and what passes for the liberal media ( what a joke), the bumbling, idiotic Trump might actually have done something good in Singapore. As Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying, “even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then” and if nothing else, it’s better and safer for the world when nuclear armed nations are talking, rather than threatening, one another. Every now and then a rank amatuer pulls off a miracle. Of course, Trump returned from Singapore talking as if North Korea had already disarmed, the whole matter done and dusted, just like that.

What a simpleton.

But then you turn around and look a the deplorable, cruel and inhumane treatment of migrant children at our borders, separated from their parents by order of the diabolical Jeff Sessions, and the reality of the Trump Junta comes screaming back into one’s face.

I imagine Kim Jong-un leaning toward Trump and asking, “So, Donald, what was it like to fuck that porn star?”

The United Nations -- yes, that despised body -- released its report on extreme poverty and lo and behold the U.S. is doing great! 40 million Americans living in poverty; highest infant mortality rate in the developed world; our citizens live shorter and sicker lives; our access to clean water and sanitation ranks 36th in the world; and, of course, we retained our title as the undisputed leader in incarceration. Can’t touch the USA there! Take that, Vladimir. For every one you jail, we jail ten.

The World Cup is underway. The three teams I am pulling for are France, Belgium, and Argentina. France because of N’Golo Kante, who plays his club football for Chelsea; Belgium because Eden Hazard is one of my favorites and also a Chelsea man; and Argentina because I’d like to see Messi get the international monkey off his back. How fun was the match between Portugal and Spain? Cristiano buried that free kick to rescue a point for Portugal before he kicked the ball, you could see it in his face.

Maybe the thrill is gone, maybe it never was. It’s Father’s Day and I’m thinking of my dad, the smell of cigarette smoke on his coats hanging in the closet of our house on Ardilla Drive, and how little I knew of his interior life, what he thought and believed, what gave him joy. Ironically, I knew my father-in-law more intimately than my own father; they’re both gone. I’ve tried to lay down some markers for my kids so they’ll know who their old man was, but by the time they know, I’ll be gone, too.

And so it goes.