Second time as farce, again

Sometimes the only way to calm my anxieties is to come to the computer and attempt to write something. Trump’s capture of the President of Venezuela and his claims that the United States will “run” that country until a proper transition (to what, I wonder, democracy as practiced by Trump and his minions? Ha!) has led me to the computer. I need a desert island to avoid him and Lotus land has not yet proved d sufficiently adequate. Or maybe it is I at fault here because I don’t able to cease doom-scrolling. I recognize that Trump’s braggadocio has stolen the script from the words of President Mckinley at the takeover of the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century. President McKinley had then said, “That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men (sic) for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our mapmaker), and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States, and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!” Trump said, “We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country." That it will be a Christian thing to do seems for this administration de rigeur. First time as tragedy, second time as farce. It is of course no accident that 20% of the world’s oil reserves are in Venezuela and with the take-over of the country the United States will be running Venezuela and its oil fields. Stephen Miller, ha said that the United States would now exploit Venezuela oil reserves. Trump’s friends I am certain will make a killing financially while Venezuela will suffer the killing more physically and spiritually. I learn that much of China’s oil comes from Venezuela. I wonder how that might play out on the world scene. Vladimir Putin will benefit from Trump’s aggression in Russia’s war against Ukraine. And will the Chinese leadership assume that militarily taking over Taiwan is now internationally sanctioned given Trump’s takeover of Venezuela?  Recent imperialistic interventions by American presidents in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan did not go well. For Trump to declare offensively that the Donroe doctrine, now renamed from the doctrine known as the Monroe Doctrine that declared that the United States controls the Western Hemisphere gives Trump permission to accomplish whatever he pleases to assert American imperial aims. As with his golf course, his business owns it: And the man puts his name on everything. He owns the world he  declares. America First? On the one hand Trump reminds me of the agenda of Charles Lindbergh who accepted medals from the Nazis and thought that the United States ought to control the world that he flew over. First time as tragedy, second time as farce. 

            These so-called leaders act out of an absolute ignorance of history and with a braggadocio and insensitivity that continues to appall me. That is, they choose to believe that their actions justifying this invasion are for the good of the nation invaded and will be beneficial to the country that has accomplished the invasion.  These leaders claim that their actions are not motivated by a grasp for greater or selfish aggrandizement of personal gains, but the reality offers a different picture. But I think that if there is anything personal to be gained from a political action then that action must be carefully scrutinized. No one but his henchmen were consulted. Congress was not consulted. And the effronteries continue. For example, Trump’s decision to abandon leases for public golf courses in Washington D.C. enhances his own private golfing enterprises. To justify this move he claims that the golf courses have not been carefully maintained, but what exactly are his criteria except his own series of private golf courses on which only wealthy people can play!  President Trump, who spends many weekends golfing, has floated the possibility of redoing the district's courses. "If we do them, we'll do it really beautifully," Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The Trump administration, it reports, “prides itself on getting the job done for the American people and partnering with others who share that same goal," said the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service.  But I think that privately owned golf courses can certainly be maintained up to the owners standards but those standards ought not to be applied to public courses where exorbitant member fees control access and diversity. If Trump has anything to gain personally by his actions he should not act.

            And so  ere dining at a restaurant. In walked a couple, the man looked certainly over 60 years of age. He was wearing shorts and a white t-shirt. On the back of the shirt screenprint was a map of the United States showing the red states that voted for Trump and the blue states that voted for Harris. Under the map the caption read, “We saved America.” Ha! The economy is in serious trouble, the threats of war increase, and as Trump boasts, he is not troubled by the concept of troops on the ground. Maybe the President has no children or grandchildren to sacrifice to the wars. For this past year of his reign, the rule of law has been ignored, Congress has been neutered, and the President acts as if governing the country is not so different from running his businesses and with the same intention: to grasp power for power’s sake and to make more money for him and his friends. Despite the man’s t-shirt, the man’s vote has not saved the country, but rather aligns with Trump’s bluster that he knows exactly what must be done to Make America Great Again?) and that he asserts complete control over everything. Any fool can now see that his belief in complete knowledge and control is the cry of a fool. In this administration the popular demand, America First, translates into “As long as I can profit it’s America First, but as for everything else, well, the country be damned so long as I can gain.” The criminality of empire building went out of fashion many years ago if it ever it seemed au courant. Those people too stupid to recognize the dangers in the President’s actions or who actually support the President’s policies are not the deplorables as Hillary Clinton said but the despicables. And the incivility and nastiness of President Trump by his words and actions provides sanction for their exercise of vulgarity.

            And still remain anxious, but that is another story,