After final passage of the  Trump “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” members of congress gather on the White House grounds for a  rousing  round of congratulatory back-slapping and congregate around the press podium and microphones.  Representative  Paul Ryan steps up to speak.

     Executive, Legislative Celebration   

Ryan:  “Mr. President, it is an honor to stand here and celebrate with you.  We could not have accomplished this without your exquisite leadership.  The people of America can now finally experience real economic progress as we initiate entitlement program abatement in the coming years.  You are truly an inspiration.”

Ryan steps away from the podium and is replaced by Senator Mitch McConnell

McConnell: “Exquisite leader and Inspiration indeed Mr. President.  But you are more than that.  You are a great man and unparalleled  political thinker.  Just look at your accomplishments.  Your deregulation initiatives have set the tone for a new America powered by coal.  No one has ever done more to make sure our country leads the way in keeping this planet pleasantly warm. The whole world is appreciative. You have set so many records- why it’s impossible to keep track of them all.   Just take a look at how you made sure our mining industries have handy access to all our pristine water resources.  What an economic triumph!  If I might interject a personal note Mr. President, my favorites of all your deregulations are the ones involving air quality.  We kind of had to sneak some of those by the general public, but boy will they be in for a nice surprise when they find out what they are inhaling is not nearly the same as what they’ve been used to.  Like you say, Mr. President, it’s all about jobs.  Once we get all the air around us to be more interesting, like it was in the good ol’ days before all these darn regulations,  there won’t be such a thing as unemployment.  And now our coal miners can get down in there and do their work without fear of cumbersome safety regulations.  You’re really taking care of our miners Mr. President, just like you promised.  I speak for Kentucky and the entire nation when I say thank you Mr. President.”

McConnell steps aside to make way for Senator Orrin Hatch who has been tapping him on the shoulder for the last 30 seconds.

Hatch: “What a momentous day for us all Mr. President.  Not only are you an inspiration and exquisite leader, great man and unparalleled political thinker, but even more importantly, after this day, it can be stated undeniably that you are a great president, and I dare say without a doubt in my mind, no, it’s no dare let me tell you, it’s a fact.  With this tax bill you will go down in history as one of the greatest- no, not one of the greatest. You will be recognized as the absolute greatest president- ever. And I’m not talking just here in America.  I mean in the entire world.  Every democracy on the planet will praise you and seek your advice.  I, along with the entire state of Utah and everyone in America thanks you Mr. President.  By golly these new tax laws are really going to get the economy moving.  You can bet there’ll be all sorts of new construction going on now that all our hard working corporate executives have so much extra cash to fund the new wings on their mansions.   Dog gone it this tax bill is so dog gone good even dogs will love it. Like you Mr. President, my wife owns a pass through entity, and man o man with the tax windfall she’ll be getting next year, if I know her, and believe me I do, she’ll be treating her two little pooches to all of those top shelf items at Pet Smart.  Mr. President, once again I want to tha….”

Hatch stumbles a bit as Vice President Mike Pence shoulders him aside and takes control of the podium.

Pence:  “That’s right Mr. President.  This country is so thankful to have you guide us into the future.  You are absolutely an inspiration and exquisite leader, great man, unparalleled  political thinker and of course I second that thing that you are, as of today, the greatest president to ever walk the face of the earth.  Certainly as we reflect upon all of your accomplishments everyone is amazed.  But it’s more than presidential accomplishment.  Take a look at your life.  From humble beginnings you took charge of your own future, and with only the several million your father gave you, you parlayed that and the bankruptcy and tax laws of this great country with the astounding, and perplexingly generous gullibility of the American public and created a massive fortune for  yourself.  And wow, with this new tax law of yours you have carved out an even bigger fortune.  By eliminating benefits for veterans, students and orphans and all those fakers who claim they have some rare disease, you were able to save that well deserved golf course deduction.   You represent the epitome of the American dream.  Why we don’t even know how massive your fortune is because your great team of lawyers, and as we all know our country is great because we are a nation of laws and such, your great team of lawyers has buried  the true value of your wealth amongst a huge volume of paper at the IRS.  American families are so grateful to you, especially those burdened by that ridiculous estate tax.  Looking out for your children is the most important responsibility a man has, and you have profoundly demonstrated how a simple man can provide untaxed millions for family and friends with the flamboyant stroke of a pen.  You have taken the power of the presidency to an historically new level Mr. President.

So impressive is your dynamic life, Mr. President, I have to tell you I have racked my brain in search of an example of a life of comparative import.  And in that desperate search, I tell you I have found but one- only one- that stands alone in mirroring your magnificent stature.  The man I’m referring to resides in those pages of the sacred book we know as– the Bible.  Mr. President, like all good Christians I know you use that holy book to guide your life. I don’t know about you, but when I read the Bible I am always struck by the power of the miracles surrounding the life of Jesus.   As you stand before us as President of the United States, most everyone believes that your election might be the single most impressive miracle to have ever occurred in this country.   Mr. President, it is such a privilege and honor to serve you, and I think it is only fitting that now, as we move into the future with these momentous new tax laws at our disposal, that I and this august body  bestow upon you the official title of— Supreme Almost Divine President of the United States of America.”

After a few seconds of stunned silence, hysterical applause breaks out throughout the congregated group.   Much back-slapping and hand shaking quickly generates a state of exuberant pandemonium and congressmen begin to fall to their knees and bow before the newly anointed Supreme Almost Divine President of the United States of America.  Curious clouds mysteriously develop overhead, but no one engaged in all the rapture seems aware.  The sky turns forebodingly black, and suddenly  massive, multiple bolts of lightening are hurled into the crowd.

First, there was the explosion.   Witnesses say  body parts flew everywhere.  One man saw eye balls blown away from their sockets and roll down the street.  The blast was quickly followed by a raging inferno.  Later it was reported that bystanders were commonly awe-struck by its intensity.  What really baffled everyone interviewed however was how not one of the elected officials participating in the ceremony survived, yet there was not a single reported incident of an injury to onlookers.  When the blaze subsided and the smoke finally cleared,  a smoldering mass of charred flesh and bone was all that remained on the White House grounds.

Heavenly, Judicial Condemnation

*****************************************************************************

It’s been a year of confusion and despair.  That is why I thought it would be a nice gesture to give this story a cheerful ending during this season of hope and joy.  Happy New Year to All!

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See this? This American Land  You don’t necessarily have to read the article, although if you appreciate nature you will likewise appreciate what David Brooks has to say.  I just wanted to rub something in.  I just got back from spending a week in the Teton National Park, pictured at the top of this article.  It is a majestic place, and when planning vacations I make it a point to include a visit here whenever possible. I don’t like mentioning how beautiful the area is, because then you might get the idea you have to go there and I really don’t want you cluttering up my space.  But it is a national park, preserved for all of us to enjoy, so it is only fair that I put my personal feelings aside and hope for the best.  I’m from Wyoming, so when I was a kid my father took our family to the Tetons many times.  The first time I laid eyes on the imposing beauty of those magnificent mountains it took my breath away, and that reaction occurs even to this day.

There are many, many places in our country that are similarly striking and if you are the type that truly does appreciate nature you probably hold a special place in your heart for one of those places.  Chances are it is one of America’s national parks or monuments.  Which brings me to another article with a heading photo of a place in my home state, and it really pisses me off.  Making America Polluted Again.  It is very true that Trump has little interest in policy and practically makes it a point to stay disconnected from any kind of agenda.  The one constant that holds Trump’s interest though is a bazaar, pernicious obsession with the destruction of the environment.

Why?  “I’m, like, a really smart person,” to quote the guy.  He apparently attended a prestigious college- Wharton School of Business, but he leaves to the imagination how accomplished a student he was since he won’t release his transcripts.  Was his educational experience totally related to business and devoid of any academic course involving the humanities?  Growing up, did he live his life walking only along concreat paths and amongst nothing but a forrest of tall buildings? Something in the Brook’s article struck me.  He points out that Trump is “Untouched by wilderness, by the awe and humility that comes with the encounter with nature.”  The closest thing the man has to any kind of naturalistic epiphany is the boner he gets when he visits one of his golf courses.  For a very enlightening perspective of how he feels about golf, get a look at the August edition of Sports Illustrated ( First Golfer ).  It’s a long article, but worth the read if you want a different perspective of how this privileged man has lived his life.  I think you would find how he has screwed local communities out of their educational tax revenue by manipulating the tax assessment of his golf courses in his favor particularly galling.  What caught my attention personally was how he equates golf with status.  Deep into the article he states people should “earn” the privilege to golf.  WTF?  I don’t play a lot of golf, but Geezuz I don’t feel like I’m something special when I do. I do have my own special rule when I’m on a course though.  That’s everyone in my group has to stop off at the clubhouse for drinks every 3rd hole.  I have found that does wonders to tilt the field of competition towards my level of incompetence.

What Trump infers of course is there is no way in hell you are going to play on one of his courses unless you reside in the economic class that can afford to pay his gaudy membership and rental fees.  Only the pampered rich dare belong.  What an asshole.  Instead of playing golf every weekend, I think it would be a good idea if Trump spent a week just relaxing within the confines of one of our beautiful national parks.  Perhaps take a book along, one of those large informational ones about the spectacular places in our country, the kind that has few words but lots of pictures to help him out. Should be a good way to prod a neophyte into appreciating the world around him.  There is a good chance what David Brooks postulates is correct.  Perhaps what we all need is a reconnection with the land.

This is rich. The Sun and the Moon.  Most people probably saw this somewhere, but it is worth mentioning once more that it would be in the president’s own best interest if someone took his phone away.  Somehow Trump thinks this meme tweeted by one of his devotees was worthy of his retweet.  It’s a well known fact the man has the attention span of a gold fish, but if he thought it through he would realize this is hardly flattering.  We know English grammar and vocabulary were not exactly his scholastic strengths, and obviously any kind of subject involving history must have been a challenge for him.  But now maybe we have an understanding of where his climate change denial comes from.  Science class must have been a big bother to him.  He probably felt it was more important  to get a a good look up little Lucy’s skirt than it was to pay attention on the day his teacher explained a solar eclipse.  Actually you couldn’t ask for a more appropriate analogy to the Trump presidency.

We had a former president who was a bright star of  intelligence and dignity, was eloquent, diplomatic, principled, and respectful, and then along comes the next one and the light went out.  And an eclipse only lasts for a short period of time.  Let’s hope there is something merciful on the horizon and the Trump  presidency moves into its short and final stages.

The reaction of course is something we should expect from this man who seems so desperate for attention and adoration, but not only did President “Thumbs for brains” appear clueless about the meme itself by retweeting it, but it turns out the sender of this ironic tweet is a practicing white supremacist.  Once again, how appropriate.

I think I have mentioned I read a lot. It’s the way I cope, living day to day in Trump world.  Lately I have developed a curiosity about things that are existential and philosophical.  Probably a big waste of my time.  I should be watching sports on TV.  I like to read about evolution, and books about that topic will inevitably ask the big questions, Who am I and Where did I come from and How did I come to be here?  Well shit, I know who I am, at least I know my own name.  And I came from hard working parents who were raised in the the corn belt with midwestern values and settled and raised their family in a very conservative western, overwhelmingly white, state.  I never saw a black person in my home town and it was not until I went to college in Omaha that I had any contact with members of that race.  And I am embarrassed to say that in spite of having absolutely no interaction with a black person, when I was young I had prejudices against them that were of course unfounded and ridiculous.  Those misconceptions were a product of my father, a member of the “Greatest Generation,” the generation that saved the world from Naziism but paradoxically had engrained in it feelings about black society that ranged from prejudicial naiveté, as was the case with my father, to outright hateful bigotry.

Stupid Dicks

But I grew, matured, and became aware of racial/social injustice, and believed that, slowly but surely, as a country we were progressing likewise.  And so It is upsetting to me to see something so disconnected from American principles like we all witnessed in Charlottesville Virginia earlier this month.  I know who I am.  But who are these stupid dicks and where in hell did they come from?  Those are the big questions I have.  What was striking to me and particularly alarming as well was the fact that the white supremacist faction during this demonstration was pretty much all young men.  What I expect to see at these supremacy gatherings are old farts, men my age who still have not been able to cast aside the prejudices of their fathers.  I see far more men of the generation behind me participating in these nefarious demonstrations.  It is a generation that by now should have a better grasp of racial issues and  a more flourishing respect for humanity.  I can’t help feeling that instead of our society evolving forward with more understanding and compassion, it is slipping backward and becoming  more prejudicial and tribal.

I seriously doubt the morons carrying tiki torches and screaming racial and religious insults were in Charlottesville to express disapproval of removing a statue.  They were there to foment trouble and express hatred.  And yes there were those with an opposing viewpoint that felt it was important to take a stand and physically confront the rabble of white supremacists.  Certainly that is regrettable.  But to say there was a moral equivalency between the two groups, as did our ignorant, unhinged president, is absurd.  One side was spewing racial and religious hatred and the other had members among it that became lamentably but understandably incensed enough to react.

Perhaps people should take some time off from their busy programs of harassment and give serious thought to role reversal.  Envision a time gone by where your white ancestors were abducted from a far away land, chained together and stuffed on slave ships for a couple of months, forced to labor in a foreign country of ruling blacks, and were whipped, raped, mutilated, hung and abused in every way imaginable,   Of course there were no legal repercussions for any of the atrocities because slaves were considered property and in the eyes of a slave holder had little connection to humanity.  And lets say after a bit of time a large segment of the black population decided there should be an end to all the cruelty, but another segment of the black population decided it was not about to relinquish its peculiar institution of inhumane conduct and thus raised an army that initiated a treasonous war with the intension of governmental separation.  Then that war took the lives of over a half million of the country’s black men, but as horrible as it was, at least it once and for all put an end to the practice of white enslavement.  And imagine that even though slavery was officially abolished, a good percentage of blacks maintained an erroneous sense of superiority over the white race, accompanied with practices of intimidation, and inaugurating upon it one indignity after another.  You can bet as time moved along the white population would not appreciate seeing any kind of reminder about that scandalous past.

To those legitimately  participating in this demonstration or any other for sentimental or historical reasons and think it is important to save these statues, personally I would not argue your point.   Save all those statues of Confederate soldiers, but put them in museums all around the county and attach to each a narrative that explains what the Confederate South in America stood for, which was slavery, intolerance, and an appalling example of man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man.  It is indeed important to save history, but it is just as important to remember it.

Is this guy for real?  Every time I think Trump can not possibly be any more shallow, he finds another way to drain the pond.  This son of a bitch is absolutely nuts.  Seriously.  There is something wrong with a person who is so completely absorbed with himself.  And nothing gives him a boner like a crowd of cooperative people, his most recent mark being a huge gathering of teen age boy scouts attending a Jamboree.   Of course none of them can even vote, but that didn’t stop our megalomaniacal president  from turning the event into one of his ego-stroking campaign orgies.  I think he was even surprised by the chorus of jeers and cheers he got whenever he pulled something from his bag of trigger words and phrases.  It is truly a sad day in America when the president of the United States thinks manipulating a group of pubescent boys into a chanting frenzy by denigrating a predecessor is setting an appropriate example of patriotism.  It’s the Boy Scouts of America!  They are supposed to be out there promoting God, country, and civic duty, but president shit-for-brains just could not resist the temptation to provoke the impressionable group into giving him one of his adulatory orgasms and in the process humiliate them and the entire organization.  The man is absolute pond-scum.  And that also goes for the ass-kissing members of his cabinet standing right behind him and encouraging him with their shit-eating grins.

I was a boy scout, loved being a part of it and learned a lot from participating.  Fortunately I was never subjected to any maniacal  rantings by a flakey adult.  The organization has a law.  It begins “A scout is:” and after that is just twelve words. Here they are: Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent.  It might be smart if the scout leaders of each troop in attendance do some recon when they get home and suggest the youngsters do their best to purge their brains of the self-angrandizing and incendiary rhetoric uttered by Trump at this Jamboree.  It should be easy to make their point.  Do you see any of these attributes in Donald Trump?  Maybe “clean,” but only because he is a paranoid germaphobe.  If you could be prosecuted for violating the Boy Scout Law, Trump would get a life sentence in a federal prison.

I wonder what is upcoming on the Trump quasi campaign trail?  If he sees a huge gathering of migratory geese resting along a river bank while he is flying in Air Force One, he’s likely to instruct the pilot to land so he can go tell his feathered friends what a smashing victory he had in Wisconsin.  I heard there is a national Girl Scout conference scheduled in a few months, and boy would he love to weasel in a speaking invite there.  Mom’s, if you have even the slightest inclination that might happen, and any knowledge at all of previous Trump behavior towards young women,  you might want to consider tagging along on this one.  Of course you must be ever vigilant lest you be grabbed yourself.