0
0
Here and there and now and then, all sorts of thoughts about our current political dilemmas pop into my head, and I say, “That would make a good topic to blog about.” But then there’s just not enough to write about and the idea disappears from my consciousness, delegated to wherever those thoughts go. As Freud has suggested, however, it seems like ideas such as these never completely disappear, so let me end the year with some random musings about President Donald and his friends.
Poker players call them “tells.” They’re subtle indications, sometimes verbal, sometimes nonverbal, that indicate to others when a person is bluffing or misrepresenting. We know that Trump can be vicious as a name caller, but have you ever been surprised to hear Trump call someone a “fine fellow” or an “outstanding person” when he might have just as well thrown him or her under the bus. It’s a tell. It says, “Yes, I know that person has something on me. I’ll be nice to them so they’ll have no reason not to be nice to me.” Think Vladimir Putin. Think Rudy Giuliani. Think Paul Manafort.
I really wonder what the Conway household is like. Kellyanne is one of the most obnoxious apologists and attack dogs for this president. George seems like one of the few serious, thoughtful, and articulate conservative voices in this country. They’ve been married for 18 years, but only lately have they gone the way of James Carville and Mary Matalin. Is it a sham, a game they’re playing with us? Is there a long-term profit motive here? Do they have violent arguments and hot sex afterward? I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that household.
We know pretty definitely that Donald Trump has no patience to read reports prepared by any of the agencies, national security or otherwise, that have otherwise been must-reading for his predecessors. My guess is that they’ve tried to pare them down to bite-sized nuggets and found that they sit unread. That he gets much of his information from Fox News would be side-splittingly funny if it weren’t the case that he is the most powerful man on the planet. But that Vladimir Putin might have been the source of Trump’s “Russia-didn’t-meddle-but-Ukraine-did” beliefs is as ludicrous as it is believable. “Really, Vladi, that’s amazing, Thanks for telling me. I’ll have my people do something about that.”
“Loose cannon” is a term applied these days to people who are not only dangerously uncontrollable, but also unpredictable in strange and nonsensical ways. In a political era in which we have had many people who might deserve this designation, for me Rudy Guiliani takes the prize. He speaks gibberish, making claims and then contradicting himself, sometimes the next day, sometimes mid-sentence. He runs interference for Trump and colleagues, engaging in all sorts of self-admitted illegal and immoral activities, and then proudly trumpets them to all concerned. If only we could make sense of poor Rudy. But why worry, he’s only the President’s chief henchman.
The other day I witnessed one of the President’s lawyers defend prior remarks she had made, doubling down that Democrats in the House must hate America and everything it stands for, that Trump was denied due process in the House, and that there is not a single shred of evidence that he did anything wrong. I sometimes wonder how the brain works. I wonder whether to discard my belief that all people have a conscience Can she possibly believe this? Are these merely the talking points she has been told to deliver? Does she ever talk to herself, quietly and privately at night, and ask, “If I have any principles at all, how can I go on saying things like this?”
Is it bizarre to say that sometimes I actually feel sorry for Melania Trump? Young and beautiful, she sold herself to an old, disgusting orange man for the price of money, prestige, and a life of opulence. I don’t know what she is really like, in fact sometimes I fantasize that she’s really an intelligent woman collecting dirt on the Donald so that she can give him the ultimate comeuppance for cheating on her so often. She got what she sold her soul for, but likely more than she bargained for. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be isolated and insulted an hated by so many just because she hitched her wagon to the right—or maybe the wrong—man. But, Melania, you are imprisoned in a cell of gold, a cell of your own making. So I think I will reserve my good wishes and concerns, not for you, but for the innocent families that your evil partner has torn apart.
