Blast #245

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                                                          The Usual Suspect
 
                 It’s not as if we didn’t know what we were getting, right?  Thursday’s Twitter rant at Mika Brzezinski, the MSNBC co-host of the Morning Joe news program, didn’t show us anything we weren’t already aware of.  This President is a chauvinistic, misogynistic sexist --- but we knew that.  If you somehow missed what the Lothario-in-Chief tweeted yesterday, you can look it up (it ain’t pretty).  What we should really consider is how this man has surrounded himself with so many kowtowing, hypocritical sycophants, including members of his immediate family.  First Lady Melania tweeted that when attacked, her husband would “punch back 10 times harder.”   This from the First Lady who said the primary issue she wants to work on is cyberbullying!  Is the irony too great or are we living in some bizarre alternative universe?  And what about Ivanka, the “Special Assistant” to the President? In Town & Country magazine just this week, regarding her role in the White House, she stated: “I instead like to focus on areas where I can add positive value, where I can contribute to the agenda.  Policies around workforce development, around ensuring that barriers are removed from around the working family. Policies that enable that family to survive.”  Apparently that doesn’t include families where the Mom is a morning news show host viciously attacked in her father’s Tweets.  Where are those “positive values” she’s talking about? 
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                And then there’s Sarah (Chucklehead) Sanders, the Deputy Press Secretary, who comes from an Arkansas Bible-thumping family.  When asked if she would use Trump as a Role Model for her kids, her response was: “When it comes to role models, as a person of faith, we all have one perfect role model. And when I’ve asked that question I point to God. I point to my faith. And that’s where I would tell my kids to look. None of us are perfect. And certainly there’s only one that is. And I would point that direction.”  Apparently she wouldn’t point in Jesus’s direction with all that stuff about being one’s “brother’s keeper” or “turning the other cheek” --- fairly well known adages from the New Testament.  As Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out last evening on MSNBC, this White House seems to only have read the Old Testament with its “revenge” and “fire and brimstone” orientation.  Their defense (“they attacked us first!”) seems to go back farther than Hammurabi’s 4,000 year old “eye for an eye” since, like his “I get two scoops to your one” table manners, they ascribe to “two eyes for an eye” in “punching back 10 times as hard.”  Of course, in the land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King.

                        Beyond the sheer grotesque, petty sexism, though, we have to consider more than what this reveals about a 71 year old man-child because, like it or not,  he represents the United States, our country, to the rest of the World.  What does this mean to our relations with Angela Merkel of Germany or Theresa May of Great Britain (or the 13 other female heads of state around the globe)?  It is time for the Republicans and anyone else who believed “he’ll grow into the office” to accept that this is who he is and he is not going to change.  Look at his Cabinet!  Of the 23 positions filled, only FOUR are women --- and that includes Nikki Haley at the United Nations and Linda McMahon of the Small Business Administration (we won’t discuss Ben Carson being the only African American right now).  At the Department of Transportation, of course, we have Mitch McConnell’s wife (isn’t that convenient!), Elaine Chao (a twofer for Donald, an Asian woman) and at the Department of Education we have super donor billionaire, Betsy DeVos (who required a Mike Pence tie-breaking vote to gain confirmation).  And that leads to another problem with this President that, of course, has to do with telling the truth.

                       Remember all that “drain the swamp” campaign rhetoric and the vicious attacks on Hillary Clinton for speaking at Goldman Sachs for an exorbitant fee?   And claiming Ted Cruz was in Goldman’s pocket because his wife had worked there?  How does that square with Bannon, Mnuchin, Cohn, Jay Clayton (Head of the Securities & Exchange Commission --- like the fox in the henhouse) and Dina Powell (Deputy National Security Advisor) --- all being Goldman Sachs alumni?  Add Wilbur Ross and Rex Tillerson (and the list goes on, of course) and we see that all that campaign rhetoric was just that --- rhetoric to pull the wool over the low information, we-hate-the-Establishment voters.  As “Verbal” Kint told us in The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”  We now have a President who tells us he will “drain the swamp” and then populates his Cabinet with Swamp Creatures --- and his “base” applauds what a shrewd wheeler-dealer he is.  If you have seen that movie then you know that, like Keyser Soze, our President has spent a lifetime convincing people he is someone he is not --- and has profited greatly in doing so.

                                                                                                                  Sad.