I’m writing this an hour or so before this year’s State of the Union speech. As an old hand at backstage preparations, I can well imagine the excitement currently infusing whatever passes for a green room wherever the president is getting ready for his coming performance. And I can imagine the anxiety of the speechwriters, handlers, and medical personnel as Himself gets ready to face the world.
Like a dozen or so Democratic members of Congress, I will not be among his audience. There’s no point. The man lies so easily and constantly that years ago I ceased to credit anything he says. I can get the digests of the speech tomorrow, both pro and con. And if I were being honest (as with varying degrees of success I generally manage to be), I’d admit that what I’d be looking for, instead of hyperbole and outright mendacity, would be further evidence of mental deterioration. The digests I read tomorrow will largely explore the same question.
When we were kids, we liked a joke about the fellow who sat on a hillside above a single-track railroad and saw the eastbound express coming from one direction and the westbound from the other. “And what did you think?” asked the reporter.
“ ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘what a hell of a way to run a railroad.’ ”
Which is exactly the way I feel as I watch what’s called the Trump Administration trying to run the machinery of the United States. Having won the office by arousing its base with threats of an “enemy within,” runaway inflation, and alleged “ripoffs” by other countries supposed to be our friends and allies, we then seem to do whatever we can to exacerbate those probably illusory problems.
Surely there must be a better way to run a country (or any organization, come to think of it) than by making enemies at every opportunity. The president has been doing this for decades, first as a “businessman” inclined to declare bankruptcy and leave employees and contractors in the lurch. All of them, I’m sure, are silently waiting for a chance to get even, which they know they never will.
There’s no point reciting chapter and verse of the president’s professional history. It’s been part of public awareness for a decade. What’s becoming fascinating is the question of how long can he and his minions hold together a deteriorating situation.
Probably the main failing of an authoritarian government (which ours currently resembles closely enough to qualify as one) is its inability to recognize dissonant facts. Some of us recall that in World War II General Rommel, probably Germany’s most competent field commander, advised headquarters in Berlin in July of 1944 that the press of Allied men, armor, and materiel were irresistible, and that a negotiated peace was the best way out of a deteriorating situation. He was forced to commit suicide soon afterward. His opinions had been contrary to doctrine.
The Trump Administration gets at least as much negative information as the Berlin regime ever did. After tonight it’ll get a lot more. It’ll likely ignore it and attack the people who offer it.
President Trump keeps a schedule that, frankly, amazes me. Europe, Asia, Florida, New Jersey — I don’t know how he does it. Except for his frequent unscheduled dozes, his lizard brain seems alert and ready to respond, even if occasionally at a fourth-grade level. Probably his greatest vulnerability is that he can’t resist the lure of a camera and the opportunity to say something. What comes out, unfortunately, is often a garbled mess of windmills, beautiful clean coal, threats, complaints, and statistics pulled right out of the air. Every syllable and lapse is noted, as well as every bruise or anomaly. Many of us wonder, given his age and increasingly obvious impairment, and his genius for creating enemies, how much longer he can last.
There’s no doubt that we’re living in unprecedented times, the like of which the media cannot fathom or keep up with. It behooves those of us watching from the hillside as an apparently inevitable train wreck hurtles to a conclusion, to keep recording it all in our journals and letters. Probably very few people still alive could have believed, ten years ago, that we might come to this, and those not yet here may not someday believe that it did. In case we survive it, we need a record of it.
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