The Wannabe: Don Corleone Trump

 “The Birch Society called for defending the police against charges of brutality, opposed putting fluoride in the water supply with the fervor of today’s anti-vaxxers, and fought efforts at gun control, which they depicted as the preliminary step for confiscation and a Communist takeover of the United States.”  James Mann, New York Review, June 23, 2022

Trump and his crime club will spend the next days and weeks engaged in a multi-media campaign to destroy young Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House advisor who dropped strong tea to the January 6 Committee and the American public on June 28. We learned a lot that was new regarding Trump’s behavior on January 6, namely that he was warned that many in the crowd were carrying weapons of some sort: spears, flagpoles, mace, body armor, and firearms, including Glocks and AR-15’s. We learned that the disgraced ex-president had a hissy fit in his armor-plated SUV, demanded to be driven to the Capitol complex, and got physical with the Secret Service agents riding with him when they refused to comply. We also heard of Trump throwing his lunch against a wall in the White House when the Dishonorable Doughboy, aka former Attorney General William Barr, refused to tell Trump what he wanted to hear. The Fat Man has a temper. 

MAGA-world will be oblivious to the revelations about their Hero & God, but anyone with a functioning mind saw Trump come across like a punk, a bloated, defeated, whiny little shit upset because he can’t have his way. It’s more clear than ever that Trump wanted an armed mob to storm the Capitol and disrupt the proceedings. He wanted chaos. He got his wish: people died, hundreds were injured, and one of the best things about America, the last trophy in our case -- the peaceful, orderly transfer of presidential power, a rare thing -- was tarnished. Trump the sociopath primed and then unleashed an armed and angry mob on the seat of legislative authority, with the entire Congress in session and the Vice President presiding. MAGA-world won’t care. Their man could sodomize a ewe on the South Lawn of the White House and MAGA-world would still praise him as moral and god-fearing, the prime contemporary example of American manhood. 

What smears and innuendo will Trump and Rudy G and the propagandists on Fox News hurl at Cassidy Hutchinson? What kind of dirt can they unearth or manufacture to ruin this young woman’s life? One doesn’t cross the big boss without consequence. But before we become too misty-eyed about Ms. Hutchinson’s fate, let’s recall that she was all-in for Trump, firmly on Team MAGA, a true believer. You can’t get as close to Trump’s inner circle and co-conspirators as Hutchinson did without first passing a loyalty quiz. Meadows must have vouched for his very young, only 23 in 2020, idealistic assistant. But credit must be given where it is due: Hutchinson has a better moral compass than 90 percent of the cowardly white men she worked with, several of whom have snubbed the Committee. 

Which brings us to the curious case of Mark Meadows, who, until the special hearing on June 28, had gone deep underground. Meadows began cooperating, then reversed course and sued the Committee, blew off a congressional subpoena, and was let off the hook when the DOJ declined to indict him. Why did the DOJ make that decision? Was it perhaps judging that Meadows was vulnerable on meatier charges down the road? Has some agreement been made with Meadows? We might find out soon enough because after Hutchinson’s testimony, Trump will turn on Meadows like a rabid wolverine. If Meadows eventually reads the sign on the wall and flips on Trump I will not be surprised. Meadows strikes me as someone extremely interested in saving his own ass. 

The Republicans now have to decide if they will continue to grovel and cower before a man who turned an armed mob on their place of work, continue to support a man who is demonstrably unfit for any political office, and continue to parrot that man’s malign fairy tales about election fraud. 

For The People

 “The purity and strength of Americanism are always threatened by contamination from outside and betrayal from within. The narrative of Real America is white Christian nationalism.” George Packer, The Atlantic, “The Four Americas.”

We won’t miss our democracy until it’s gone, and it appears to me that we’re well on the way to that eventuality. When it happens, and the reality of what’s been lost sets in, it will seem as if it happened suddenly rather than gradually. To me it feels like we are watching a theft in progress, a steady drip, drip, drip of statements, legislation, polls, stunts (the Arizona recount, for instance) appointments to key posts in the state bureaucracies that operate our elections, and Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP. Blocking a bipartisan investigation of the January 6 insurrection attempt and the events that led up to it is one way to fashion truth from lies. Don’t dig. Don’t corroborate. Blame Antifa thugs masquerading as MAGA members for all the damage and death; those agitators from the godless coasts who rode into DC on the wings of giant black bats with twelve foot wingspans and fire shooting from their talons. In Q-World, nothing is too outlandish. 

Trump lost, but his Big Lie lives. The bloated con man from Florida may very well succeed in creating history completely from a stew of lies and crackpot theories concocted in mildewy basements then propagated across the Internet and echoed by the FOX News/Sinclair Broadcasting/OAN universe. People who are either gullible or otherwise starved of factual information make easier marks. Ignorance is a tough, persistent opponent that doesn’t go down easily. 

Joe Manchin of West Virginia has leverage over his fellow Democrats. He can sputter incoherently about his love of democracy and bipartisanship while blocking his party’s efforts to defang the filibuster and expand and protect voting rights. If Democrats push him too hard Joe might slide across the aisle and join the GOP, giving Mitch McConnell his majority again. Joe’s not up for reelection until 2024 and has little to fear from West Virginia voters even if he were to switch parties. It’s not like West Virginia is a safe haven for Democrats. Trump carried the state by a whopping margin. Manchin can enjoy this turn as a Big Time DC Power Broker with virtual impunity. 

For The People. Sounds nice. Sounds aspirational, even inspiring, just follow the wisdom of the common American, who can be counted on to be magnanimous, decent, fair, and just. Sure. If only it worked that way. The last thing the Gilded Class and its political babysitters want is more democracy; the fewer people that vote the better for them. Maintaining minority rule requires a lot of hubris and a fair amount of engineering. Control over who can cast a ballot is good; control over how votes are tabulated and certified is better. 

 

Adrift on the River of Madness

 “More of the same means more disaster.” Chris Hedges

Why is Rudy Giuliani still walking around free? Why hasn’t Donald Trump Jr. been arrested? Why haven’t there been news conferences with federal officials so that journalists can ask questions about the complete security failure at the U.S. capitol on January 6, and the apparent help provided to the insurrectionists by some members of law enforcement? 

In regards to the latter, what we discover when we pull the covers off may be frightening. 

The House of Representatives has introduced an article of impeachment against Donald J. Trump. After what happened on January 6, you would think that most Republicans would agree that Trump’s immediate removal is necessary for the good of the nation. Of course, you would be wrong. A majority of Republicans support appeasing Trump and his violent MAGA followers. I guess they haven’t seen enough, even though it was their place of work that was stormed and ransacked, with the mob clamoring for Vice President Mike Pence to hang.  

The GOP ideology of power-at-any-cost renders all who believe in it blind. Some of the same Republicans who amplified Trump’s election fraud nonsense now caution that another impeachment will “inflame” the country. Never has the complete hypocrisy of the Republican Party been so obvious and despicable. After nearly five years of coddling Trump, shrugging off his boorish behavior, racist pronouncements, staggering stupidity, and apologizing for his authoritarian proclivities, the GOP has forfeited any claim to moral authority. Kevin McCarthy, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson -- all of them -- are traitors and need to shut their mouths; they’ve done enough damage. 

Pundits keep asking, are we at an end or a beginning? 

It doesn’t feel to me like an end, so it must be a beginning. No society as unequal as ours can long remain stable and peaceful. For the Americans who ransacked the capitol I have nothing but contempt; for those who believe Trump’s fantasies I feel little except pity; and for those who compare what happened on January 6 to the mass protests for justice that erupted after the murder of George Floyd, I feel a slow burning hatred. 

White supremacy implies white immunity. We saw it in action on January 6. 

The GOP ideology of power-at-any-cost renders all who believe in it blind.

The Proud Boys and others of the same ilk should be designated as domestic terror organizations and given no leniency. What is more likely to happen is a rash of new anti-terrorism statutes that will ultimately make it harder for non-violent groups -- like BLM, anti-war, and environmental activists -- to stage mass demonstrations. 

The river of madness in 21st century America stretches from 9/11 and the hysteria that birthed the Patriot Act and the War on Terror, to the illegal invasion of Iraq, the torture at Abu Ghraib and the indefinite detention of suspects at Guantanamo, to the bailout of criminal financial institutions in 2008, and the incompetent response of the Trump regime to the Covid pandemic. Both political parties have lurched right, and both have promoted the welfare of the wealthy few to the detriment of the struggling many. Both parties have happily coddled corporate interests, including Big Tech firms like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, all of which have too much power and far too much personal information about all of us. (Twitter gets no brownie points for finally banning Donald J. Trump.)

Did you notice that stock market indexes rose the day after the January 6 insurrection? After the seat of the legislative branch was attacked and five people died, stocks rose! If that’s not market perversity, I don’t know what is. 

The Senate Sedition Caucus:

Ted Cruz (TX)

Josh Hawley (MO)

Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)

John Kennedy (LA)

Roger Marshall (KS)

Tommy Tuberville (AL)

Thanks to the Lincoln Project for the above. Let’s not forget these collaborators or the 147 Republican House members who voted to contest the legitimate results of the election to mollify Donald J. Trump. Let’s also remember Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence and Lindsey Graham, whose support for Trump has been steadfast. 

End or beginning? I fear we will see more violence in the days and weeks ahead. The genie is out of the bottle and loose in the land. America is having a psychotic episode. 

Very Fine People

 “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I expected violence on the streets of DC today, but never did I think I would watch a mob of Americans storm and overtake the United States capitol, on the very day the votes of the Electoral College were to be certified by Congress, the people’s representatives. 

My first question is: how did that mob manage to overwhelm the capitol building so easily? Did the security people from all the agencies -- FBI, ATF, Capitol Police, Park Police, National Guard, Metropolitan Police -- not know Trump’s MAGA army was coming? Did they forget that Trump invited them to DC for a “wild” day. Did they not know in advance that Trump was making a speech this morning in the city, at which he was one-hundred percent certain to incite his audience with rambling madness about fraud, stolen elections, victimhood and grievance? Didn’t get the email? Clueless? Just assumed it would be another day in DC? 

Why was the DC security apparatus -- all those federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies so quick to mobilize -- and with such overwhelming force and numbers -- against the Black Lives Matter protesters last June, and so absent today? What accounts for the disparity? 

We must ask many more questions about that, and maybe take a good long look at the racial composition of the security forces. Something tells me we will find many people sympathetic to, and supportive of, white supremacy and white nationalism. Yes, we better look at the people with badges as well as the people in the red hats. 

Mitt Romney can usually be relied on to say the right thing, and he did so again this evening.  

I didn’t expect that January 6, 2021 would go down as a day of infamy in American history.

Around 1:30 eastern time, I checked CNN to see what was happening and saw the bold headline. I was at work, but couldn’t tear myself away, knowing that this was a seminal moment in American history unfolding in real time. The bedrock idea of democratic elections and the peaceful transfer of political and military power was under direct assault, incited by Donald J. Trump. 

Do not call those people protesters. That was a mob of domestic terrorists, of insurrectionists. Do not compare them to peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters. That mob was from the same tribe that stormed the Michigan statehouse and plotted to kidnap the governor. A pack of people who feel aggrieved, almost all of them white. Michigan was a dry run. 

Let’s ask more questions. First, how much of a punk is Josh Hawley from Missouri? Call him Blow-Dried Ted Cruz. What a sniveling, gutless punk. Waste of a fine education at Stanford and Yale. Who is Josh Hawley to question Pennsylvania’s election process? Nobody. How dare he condemn the violence on the one hand, so pious and squeaky clean, and on the other say he’s just innocently bringing questions to the floor of Congress for debate. He’s just a patriotic guy looking out for average Americans, not a shamelessly ambitious politician trying to hitch himself to Trump’s base. Hawley, rot in hell. 

How’s Ted Cruz feeling at this hour? Ron Johnson? Does Kevin McCarthy think his hands are free of blood? What about Jim Jordan? Mark Meadows? Are you fuckers proud of yourselves? All of you, and many more, supported Trump’s election fraud fantasies, fed the beast that escaped its tether today, and now you express shock that the beast went berserk.

Oh, the hypocrisy on display in America’s capitol today. 

If that had been a mob of black people, many would have been shot dead on sight by the authorities. No doubt in my mind. Just like those good old days Trump and his followers so deeply long for, those days and nights in parts of Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas. The good old days when black people could be murdered with even more impunity than they can be today. 

Didn’t Trump call himself the Law & Order president? 

Has Lindsey Graham seen the light? After kneeling before Trump with his mouth wide open for four years? After four years of running interference for Trump? After four years of making excuses for Trump’s idiocy, incompetence, and ignorance? Now, Graham has seen the light? Another punk with blood on his hands. 

I’m sorry for being all over the place, and angry, but I am pissed off tonight. I’ve got CNN on in the background. I’m following the voting and listening to people being interviewed. 

Several weeks ago in this blog I warned of this danger: Trump has the nuclear codes. That’s why, four years too late, there is talk of invoking the 25th amendment. Trump’s ego is melting down and nobody can predict what he’ll do. 

And what will Trump’s MAGA army do next? What’s their next gambit? They had a big day today, off the leash and full of vigor, running amok under Trump’s banner. They were treated gingerly by the authorities, few were arrested, and the majority were allowed to walk away without penalty. White immunity works. 

How many resignations will we see in the next few days? How many will jump the disgraced Trump ship before it crashes? Who will be on the bridge with Trump when it all comes to an end on January 20? Jared and Ivanka? Don Jr. and Eric? Lara and Melania? Rudy Guliani and Kayleigh McEnany?

The Isolation Diaries No. 37

“MAGA loves the black people.” Donald J. Trump

Complicit too long. Silent too long. Indifferent too long. And as night follows day, the moment of reckoning is here. The dream of justice and equality for African-Americans, for indigineous people, for immigrants from Latin America and Asia, so long deferred, punted, kicked down the proverbial road for the next generation to deal with, is here. As Dr. Cornel West put it, “This is America’s moment.”

For me, the most striking, astonishing aspect of this moment is the outrageous, inexcusable behavior of police forces all across this country. It’s not the actions of citizens, it’s the police in their riot gear, with their tear gas and mace and pepper spray and rubber bullets and flash grenades, it’s the police driving their vehicles into crowds of people, throwing people to the ground, shooting at journalists and camera crews, much like American soldiers and Marines did to the citizens of Fallujah in Iraq and all over Afghanistan for most of the past two decades. Americans don’t understand that a nation cannot be violent abroad and peaceful at home. 

Violence is our fetish, our juice, our faith, our mojo. I think I finally understand what Cormac McCarthy and Blood Meridian are all about.    

We must connect the dots between decades of economic, tax (the wealthy paying less and less), and trade policies, lumped under the umbrella of neoliberalism, with obscene, reckless, and wasteful military spending, a global apparatus of more than 800 military bases, with relentless privatization and under-funding of public services and spaces like libraries, hospitals, and schools. The political and economic masters of this country are so compromised by hubris that they forced a cruel starvation diet on the people and expected them to take it without so much as a whimper. 

The people are angry, demoralized, fed up, scared, tired of crappy jobs that pay a poverty wage, tired of going bankrupt when they become ill, as all people will, tired of being ignored by the powerful. Most of all, people are done with the hypocrisy of the American ruling class. 

We’re in the middle of a confluence, like the point where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. Treacherous waters. First, the pandemic, then the economic impact of shutting most of the country down, and then the murders: Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and finally, the sadistic killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, captured on camera like Murder Porn. The world saw it, and this time there was no way to explain it away, excuse it on some technicality, or claim the officer feared for his life. Not this time. 

Nothing more is required of black people. They aren’t required to get over slavery, to tolerate glorification of the Confederacy, to forgive the KKK. They have endured for centuries, marched, prayed, sang, contributed economic and cultural riches to this nation that can never be repaid.

To be clear about the American situation requires courage and honesty. Look not to the political elite, most of whom are more concerned about their tenure in office, their  appearance on Face the Nation, their next reelection campaign, and their investment portfolios than they are over the death of another black man. They say the right things but have no intention of turning their words into actions. Our president is the Coward-in-Chief, so limited and twisted as a human being that his one response to every problem is the same: domination. As long as someone else is wielding deadly force, Trump has an insatiable appetite for violence. 

Nothing more is required of black people. They aren’t required to get over slavery, to tolerate glorification of the Confederacy, to forgive the KKK. They have endured for centuries, marched, prayed, sang, contributed economic and cultural riches to this nation that can never be repaid. I’m a 61-year-old white male and the thought of a white dominated America fills me with terror; what a wasteland it would be. No, it’s on us white folks now, we’re the ones who have to get our minds and hearts right, to finally and forever renounce the idea that we are superior, chosen, anointed, selected, and born to rule. Peace and justice go together, but one cannot exist without the other. That’s the critical balance that’s missing in America. We have no peace in this moment because we who have power and money and networks have denied for too long the basic humanity of non-white people. Derek Chauvin is just the latest in a long, twisted line of racist cops. Chauvin not only sought to subdue George Floyd, he meant to dominate him. 

I listened to Gil Scott-Heron this morning and this caught my ear:

“And now it is your turn,

We are tired of praying, and marching, and thinking, and learning

Brothers wanna start cutting, and shooting, and stealing, and burning

You are three hundred years ahead in equality

But next summer may be too late.”

America is burning today, but the fire started long ago. What will we do this time, tamp it down or finally put it out? 

The Isolation Diaries No. 22

“No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.” Albert Camus, The Plague

American flags. Red MAGA caps. Camo hunting vests, jackets and pants. AR-15 rifles. Confederate flags. A few Nazi flags. Holstered pistols. Signs demanding liberty from lockdown. Don’t tread on us, the real Americans who want to get on with our lives.  

The protests against social distancing, business and school closures, curtailed church services, are likely to be the flash point, bound, sooner or later to take a violent turn. Egged on by far-right websites, FOX News, and Donald Trump -- whose administration issues revised social distancing guidelines on Thursday, only to have Trump tweet LIBERATE MICHIGAN, LIBERATE MINNESOTA, LIBERATE VIRGINIA, on Friday, further proof of how little coherence matters to Trump -- the issue morphs from public safety and health to evil government intrusion and an abridgement of personal liberty. How’s that for rhetorical judo? Who comes up with this stuff? The ever-servile and unscrupulous Bill Barr is on the case, opinning that his Department of Justice might support suits against governors who refuse to lift social distancing restrictions. To the slaughter, cries Barr. 

No protest thus far from Lindsey Graham or Devin Nunes or Marco Rubio or Rand Paul about states’ rights, federalism, and small government. 

Apparently, the protesters believe that some governors are deliberately sabotaging their state economies in order to make citizens suffer even more. Or maybe they believe the imposition of social distancing is a power grab by Trump’s many devious enemies. 

What Trump wants is obvious: to get the serfs and servants and toilers back to work to juice the stock market, which is central to Trump’s reelection. Human sacrifice. There are more than 22 million unemployed people in the US, and millions more in India, and China is still finding its footing. The global economy isn’t going to snap back any time soon. We’re at the start, the end is a dream.   

Watching clips of these protests, resisting the urge to dismiss them out of hand as the work of a small minority of misguided souls, which, despite media amplification I think they are, I wondered (for about ten seconds) how local authorities would react if armed African Americans or Latinos marched on a state capitol? Why is it that police departments treat armed white protesters with such leniency and tolerance? We know why, it’s the history of America, it’s white privilege in its fullest incarnation. We know this plot inside and out. White protesters gather; black and brown protesters riot. White people get in scuffles with the police; black and brown people assault the police. White protesters are deemed peaceable; black and brown protesters are deemed violent. 

What this pandemic has shown is that the vast majority of Americans are decent, kind, reasonable, adaptable, with enough sense to comply with professional advice that gives them the best chance to survive. New Yorkers, hardest hit, have been phenomenal examples of courage and grit. Those who take to the streets with their guns and MAGA caps and Nazi flags are a minority, but they garner an inordinate amount of media attention, far more than workers at Amazon and Whole Foods who have walked off the job for lack of protective gear. I feel, however, that the rational center will not hold, and too many states will cave to the desire for a normal feeling moment, even if that moment turns out to be a grave mistake as most public health officials believe it will. 

The HBO series, The Plot Against America, ended this past Sunday. Unlike the novel, where life returns to an FDR sort of normalcy, the series ends on a note of ambiguity. Did Roosevelt win another term, or were enough ballots destroyed to keep FDR from another term? We don’t know. Neither do the fictional Levins.  

Trump’s daily BS show, Fake President, continues to muddle along, one episode similar in tone to the one that preceeded it. Trump congratulates himself repeatedly for things he didn’t accomplish, blames anyone else he possibly can for his multiple, lethal failings, jabbers in circles and into blind alleyways and dusty doorways, lies, gesticulates, snarls and preens. He’s where he wants to be, before a camera, dictating the story, weaving a spell of deception and denunciation and denial and death.  

I stopped watching. I’ve seen enough. The question is the same as it has always been: what can we do about Donald Trump? I’m still of the opinion that Trump will not leave even if he loses to Joe Biden by significant margin. He’ll go immediately on the offensive with massive voter fraud claims, he’ll sue, and battle House Democrats with even more lawlessness than he has to this sad point. It’s still a long way to November. If you pay attention it’s easy to see what Trump’s trying to do, which is rewrite history almost as it happens. A few White House correspondents have finally begun to push back, but in general, the American press is too deferential to power. Trump should have fried over a spit by now. 

Coming home from a short stint in the office I ride up State Street. There’s more vehicle traffic today, some workmen, the homeless, and a solitary pedestrian or two. The man I saw camped in the doorway of a closed store yesterday has a female companion today; their belongings are spread out on the sidewalk. I see a UPS truck and an armored truck. 

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times must be pissed at Trump. Haberman was one of the reporters of the recent Times piece that detailed Trump’s failures. After calling the NYT fake news, washed up, soon to fail and disappear, etc., Trump used a cherry-picked audio clip of Haberman praising Trump for his China ban. So if the NYT is nothing but fake news, why is Trump using its reporting to make his case for him? Did Trump think no one would notice? Even you can’t have it both ways, Donald. 

I fear that cynical, power-mad people will make the Coronavirus about the Other, whether China, the World Health Organization, the poor, or immigrants. The ugly is never far below the American consciousness. The virus is the enemy, not the place where it originated. Pandemics happen, over and over. This one’s not over yet. 

It’s day by day. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 18

“The calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be.” Moshin Hamid, Exit West

The journalist I.F. Stone famously said, “All governments lie.”

Here’s a case in point, from the head of the United States government, Donald J. Trump, talking about the Coronavirus on January 22, 2020: “We have it totally under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

We cannot forget how badly Trump and his hodgepodge administration handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump fought reality for nearly six weeks, and that wasted time has undoubtedly led to death for many people. Trump was warned multiple times, as recent detailed reporting in the New York Times documents, and by multiple agencies within his own government that Covid-19 posed an imminent threat to the health and safety of the US population. 

Trump put his reelection bid ahead of the welfare of the American people. He failed in his sworn duty -- not that he ever meant to uphold his oath of office. He heads a failed administration, marked by chaos, confusion, vacant positions, and a revolving door of personnel. No wonder he can’t do anything right. Trump’s China ban was a joke, full of loopholes that allowed more than 40,000 people to enter the US -- after the ban went into effect.

Six critical weeks lost. Six. Critical. Weeks. 

MAGA-of-the-wrong-kind: the US leads the world in Covid-19 cases and fatalities. And no doubt we still lag behind when it comes to testing on a per capita basis. Tired of winning yet? Tired of the endless lies and self-promotion? Tired of the incompetence? Tired of the grift? 

Trump over-promises and under-delivers; he always has, always will, because he’s a ridiculous excuse for a human being who has neither the capacity to learn or evolve. Don’t forget what he said on February 26, 2020:

“And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

I wonder if Mitch McConnell refers to the Coronavirus as the Chinese virus in front of his wife, Elaine Chao? 

Today we bought 30 rolls of TP at Costco. Hats off to the workers at the Goleta store for the way they have adapted to social distancing; they quickly developed practices that get people in and out with minimal contact. I expected a long wait to get in, but this proved untrue. We walked right in and one of the first things we came across was a giant rectangular stack of toilet paper. Corona Gold. The only item they didn’t have in stock was hand soap. 

I start reading The Plague by Albert Camus. 

Blue Ribbon President

“Winning the vote required seventy-two years of ceaseless agitation by three generations of dedicated, fearless suffragists, who sought to overturn centuries of law and millennia of tradition concerning gender roles.”  Elaine Weiss, The Woman’s Hour

I rarely remember my dreams, good or bad, but the other night I had a doozy and it has stayed with me. It was the day after Trump launched his Twitter tirade against Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, four duly-elected members of Congress, which is, let’s recall, designed to be a co-equal branch of our government, not subordinate to any president and definitely not the Orange King. I must have gone to sleep wondering how this draft-dodging, philandering, tax cheat, who has failed his entire life at everything he’s tried except reality TV, gets away with it time and time again. There seems to be no circumstance that will either turn Trump’s supporters against him or inspire Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to launch impeachment proceedings.

Anyway, here’s the dream, or nightmare, depending on your point of view, as best as I can remember it. 

The big day finally arrived for the members of the North American Sheep Council. Six grizzled ranchers in two extended cab pickups traveled east from Sand Draw, Wyoming, towing trailers that contained eight award-winning sheep. Though the ranchers despised the Federal government, they were tickled pink to be invited to the White House by President Trump, and couldn’t wait to show the president himself just how wonderful the agricultural sector of the economy was doing. Bobby and Cliff and Clem and AJ and Emmett and Wade were tingling with anticipation. They had packed their best suits and boots, their MAGA hats and bolo ties. They admired Trump’s no-nonsense style, the way he stood up for America and heaped ridicule on the Democrats.  

The apple of their eye was Elvira, their prize-winning brood ewe, a beauty with a dozen blue ribbons to her credit, the most ribbons won by a ewe in the long history of the North American Sheep Council. On the day of their visit, Cliff led the sheep onto the South Lawn, Elvira ahead of the others, her head up and proud as if she knew she was about to be in the presence of the most powerful man in the world. She had been brushed and groomed, her teeth cleaned, and her hoofs buffed. Cliff was smiling so broadly with pride that his face hurt. 

The president emerged, surrounded by dignitaries and Secret Service, mounted a couple of steps to a stage, gave the thumbs-up sign to the ranchers, looked at Elvira and nodded his head with apparent satisfaction, clapped his hands and gave another thumbs-up. He made a short speech, most of which Cliff couldn’t hear, though he did catch the words “great” and “beautiful” and “our country.” The president then shook hands with Bobby and Cliff and Clem and AJ and Emmett and Wade. He told them he was proud of them and that they were the kind of men who made America great. Then Trump said something to a man in a dark suit and walked away. The man in the dark suit tapped Cliff on the shoulder, nodded his head toward the White House, and took Elvira’s leash and led the brood ewe away. Cliff followed, not quite sure what was going on, but a few minutes later he was sitting outside the Oval Office, and it was much quieter than he’d imagined, kind of like a museum, what with all the paintings on the walls and the chandeliers and the thick carpet, but then he heard a bleat, then another, and he knew it was Elvira, and she didn’t sound right, so he opened the door to the office and got the shock of his life. 

Hours later, when his whole world had turned upside down and reporters and producers from CNN and ABC and CNBC and MSNBC and The Today Show and TMZ and Good Morning America, and outlets from overseas, wanted to interview him, and get a photograph of Elvira, Cliff marveled that he’d had the presence of mind to get his iPhone out and turn the camera on. He wished he hadn’t let AJ and Wade talk him into posting the video he shot on Instagram, and he wished even more that he could get in the truck and hightail it back to Sand Draw, where his life was normal and quiet. And of course he was worried about Elvira, whether or not she’d ever be the same because the poor girl looked morose. 

The media storm hit harder than any blizzard Cliff had ever experienced, and suddenly he was at the center of it, accused by the Trump White House of being a loser with an axe to grind, of being an agent of Iran, a communist, a socialist, and in league with The Squad. The pudgy Attorney General, William Barr, went on all the networks and said that Cliff should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, though he never said what law Cliff may have violated. 

Kelly Anne Conway accused the Democrats of concocting the whole thing in an effort to embarrass the president, and that the video was fake, created in a Hollywood studio. Conway also accused Elvira of pursuing the president very aggressively, with no respect for his feelings. 

Trump then Tweeted that he was claiming executive privilege over the entire matter; William Barr immediately agreed that Trump had the Constitutional authority to do so. 

Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News and launched a tirade against Cliff, claiming that the rancher had trained Elvira to seduce the president. Graham called for Cliff to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.

When Mitch McConnell was asked if he planned to condemn the president’s behavior, the Senate Majority Leader replied, “Absolutely not. I’m from Kentucky.”

What really hurt was when Trump Tweeted that Elvira was not his type at all, and that she should be euthanized, and if she wasn’t euthanized, he was going to sue.  

Many Democrats demanded that Trump be impeached, that of all his crimes, high and low, his insults, his racism, his misogyny, this was the absolute worse, cruelty to a defenseless animal being far worse than cruelty to a defenseless Guatemalan or Salvadoran child. 

Nancy Pelosi went on all the networks and said that while she understood the feelings of her fellow Democrats, launching impeachment proceedings wasn’t practical because the GOP-controlled Senate would never impeach Trump. According to sources close to Pelosi, the Speaker was also concerned that if Democrats dug too deep into Trump’s dalliance with Elvira, the Republicans might fling the numerous peccadillos committed by FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton in their faces, hurting their electoral chances in 2020. Though roundly mocked for her cowardice, Pelosi refused to budge. “Don’t get me wrong,” Pelosi told reporters, “I don’t condone the president’s behavior, but I have more important things to do for the American people.”

Meanwhile, Cliff and the boys and the sheep finally hit the highway for home, shadowed for nearly 600 miles by a fleet of black SUV’s and an FBI surveillance drone.