'Can you believe it?' said Vicki Chalmers. 'He wants to take Greenland!'
The tummler was at it again, lion tamer, the prince of the big top, a Barnum & Bailey clown, the man on the flying trapeze, a President like none before, a larger-than-life master of ceremonies, orchestrating high wire artists, bear-baiting, freaks, and magic shows.
A man who flips off reporters, squires beauty queens, jets off to Mar-a-Lago for a fantasy weekend with his celebrity friends. A man, bigger than any African Big Man, a trophy hunter, leader of the safari, baton twirler, king, courtier, and emperor.
'This is the last straw', said Vicki, disconsolate and at the end of her rope. Saturdays on the Mall protesting No Kings, demonstrations in front of the White House demanding retribution and the President’s immediate impeachment, shopping carts full of petitions delivered to Congress to begin impeachment, to rid the nation of the tyrant before it was too late...and here he was readying the army to invade a sovereign country, a member of the EU and NATO, a friend, an international ally, and a strategic partner.
'What's the world coming to?', asked Vicki, shaking her head and watching the cardinals peck for seeds on the ground beneath the bird feeder. 'Damn squirrels', she thought, invading the territory of finches, sparrows, and her beloved cardinals. And an image of Donald Trump flashed before her - he, the predator, the bully, the invader. A few acorns were not enough, and he had to push and shove his way to fill himself with someone else's feed.
'Unconscionable', shouted Vicki at the bay window overlooking her garden where the squirrels had now chased away all the birds and were feasting on their seeds. 'Horrendous...unspeakable'.
Trump had strangled her like this many times, left her speechless with his mad, insane actions, barreling his way down Independence Avenue in unholy pogroms, storming the halls of the nation's government in a Kristallnacht of terror; sending phalanxes of Gestapo SS into Minneapolis rounding up refugees and asylees, handcuffing them and tossing them like so many slabs of meat into cattle cars.
Vicki was not the only one aggrieved by the President's actions. The editorial press wrote about 'the New World Order...the Donroe Doctrine...American hegemony...a rewrite of American foreign policy...' but they were just as flummoxed by Trump as Vicki. All historical yardsticks were of no use, nothing to measure the President's performance, no familiar touchstones, markers, or indicators. It was all new territory.
All that was left was the bilious Trump hatred by women like Vicki, full of rage but inchoate, gagging, and choking on their own bile, unable to form words, sentences, or thoughts to describe the man. 'I hate him', said Vicki turning from the pastoral scene in her garden and looking at her friend Marge. 'I hate him'.
Of course as common as Vicki's apoplexy was in Washington and in liberal communities up and down the coasts, the rest of America simply rocked back, put their feet up and watched 'Trump being Trump', a vaudevillian, a Borscht Belt comedian, but a man with balls, chutzpah, and insouciance. 'The new boy's club', said the New York Times, referring to the triumvirate of Putin-Xi-Trump, the cabal that rules the world and does what it pleases - take Ukraine, cleanse Han China of the pesky Uighurs, and take Greenland.
However only the liberal press, the claques of the liberal Left, actually take the President seriously, that he will come ashore in Greenland like the Allied landing in Normandy, storming ahead under the cannonades from naval warships. Nothing of the kind will happen, of course, only a lend-lease arrangement, guest workers, investors, developers who will remake the island into one big data center, profits for Denmark, the US and the world.
At worst it is a saber-rattling intimidation of the new American foreign policy, a watch me! Machiavellian statement of purpose; but nothing like the scenario of military assault and occupation foisted upon the public by the mainstream media; but of course Trump loves to read about the Left's hysteria - sticking his finger in the eye of credulous journalists has been his modus operandi since his arrival on the political scene. Nothing new there.
Trump is enjoying it all, chortling with his rich friends and powerbrokers, his equally outspoken and outrageously provocative cabinet. Not only was Venezuela, Iran, and Ukraine in his sights, but if that weren't enough, having a go at Greenland would be the latest show in the three-ring circus. Why not? There is nothing stopping him, no tethers, no harness, no traces. He is his own man on a roll with little thought about his future, his legacy, or his memory. The cheers of the crowd and the scuttling of his tormentors is enough.
Donald Trump’s opening campaign salvo in 2024 was vintage Trump. The image of Joe Biden, pale and cramped in his basement, wearing a mask, afraid to go out, and speaking tired nostrums was priceless. His caricature of the screeching, cackling Kamala Harris was worthy of Shecky Greene. The ‘protesters’ outside the arena were not exercising their freedom of speech for an important cause, but thugs, looters, anarchists, and miscreants. ‘Bad people’, the President said, nothing laudable or respectable about them.
His West Point story, or “The President, The General, and The Ramp” was worthy of Eddie Murphy’s raw one-liners and Steve Martin’s physical comedy at their best. His imitations, his accents, his build-ups and pauses had a comedian’s timing. His lambasting of the Left’s toppling of the statues of Jefferson, Grant, and Washington showed the comedic master’s understanding that ridicule, not umbrage, gets laughs and exposes the idiocy of the cancel culture.
Every Northern Liberal, shouted Trump, has a slaver in his family tree; a greedy, land-grabbing capitalist, and anti-Semitic misogynist, so what’s the big fucking deal? He went after the secular, anti-religious liberal creeds. “Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, No Human Is Illegal, Love Is Love, and Kindness Is Everything” have replaced the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.
Trump posed and postured, strutted, and shambled; was at times garrulous and and at others curt. He played to the audience, to his faithful, and to the millions of others who have grown tired of progressive cant, civil disorder, and knee-jerk complicity. It was a speech which put the Democrats on notice. They had years of a free rein, their own purposeful, righteous political Woodstock. Now it was time to bring in the cavalry
Donald Trump is a man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, vaudeville, and Barnum & Bailey. He is the first candidate to understand – and embody – our deliberately illogical preferences, our passionate anti-intellectual populism, and our anti-establishment moral rectitude. Issues don’t matter for either him or for his supporters. Not even Ronald Reagan stirred so many legitimate aspirations. No more logic, issues, and moderation. The way forward is visceral, and absolute. There is no on-the-one-hand-on-the-other dispassionate consideration here. The circus is the message.
Trump has always played fast and loose with the facts, and by so doing has invigorated his base and enraged his opposition. His supporters know that there is no such thing as ‘the truth’ – everything is distorted, manipulated, transformed, and reconfigured to suit political ends; every politician is venal and self-serving; and that there is no such thing as higher values in politics. So his supporters love Trump’s railing at the media’s fake news; at his dismissal of Democrats’ Salem witch hunts and rigged trials; at his low blows and irremediable politically incorrect references.
Trump is enjoying it all, chortling with his rich friends and powerbrokers, his equally outspoken and outrageously provocative cabinet. Not only were Venezuela, Iran, and Ukraine in his sights, but if that weren't enough, having a go at Greenland would be the latest show in the three-ring circus. Why not? There is nothing stopping him, no tethers, no harness, no traces. He is his own man on a roll with little thought about his future, his legacy, or his memory. The cheers of the crowd and the scuttling of his tormentors is enough.
Vicki doesn't get it nor ever will. Her compass has been set, her direction mapped, her energies, her will, and her life aimed towards a progressive Utopia. She doesn't realize that the era of commiseration and impossible fantasy are over.
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