As nuclear winter continued settling over the White House Saturday, Donald Trump’s little piss ant of a press secretary ditched his parka and gloves and scurried out of his fallout shelter to bobble in front of a podium to lecture the press about size.
And then, just like that, he was gone — presumably to cower with his blankie far off to the side of the raging orange furnace that was venting all that heat from pictures he was glowering at on his 650-inch flat screen TV.
St. Louis, Chicago, New York … Los Angeles, Nashville, Madison, Wisconsin … Denver, Seattle … Frankfurt, London, Paris … Washington, D.C. And on and on. Millions of people turning out in open defiance of Big Heat.
One day after a few hundred thousand (maybe) turned out to watch the furnace blare, spit and spew about our failing State, a few hundred thousand more than that showed up exactly ONE day later, and right in front of his blistering eyes to send the message he is simply incapable of hearing: “You got us all wrong, pal. You no more understand your country than you do those intelligence briefings that fly far above your decaying brain.”
But where were these people in July and August and September? October …? Where-in-the-hell were these people when it counted most on Nov. 8?????
History is writing those after-action stories as I type. And in blood. People are taking stock. Scratching their insides until they bleed. Your theory is as good as mine.
Was it apathy? Yes, that’s part of it. My God, 44 percent of us could not be bothered to vote. Was it a candidate, who despite looking and sounding unlike any other presidential candidate in history somehow managed to project more of the same? Could be, which makes the fallout from the November blast all the more bitter when more of the same was exactly what this county needed and needs — er, with apologies to the standup opposition like the KKK. Was it that Clinton was a woman? Well, of course, that’s part of it when 63 percent of our white men voted Trump and only 31 percent for Clinton. Misogyny is real, terrifying and dangerous. And now it spews its dark heat from the White House. Things are far more dangerous than we think they are.
Mostly, though, what went down on Nov. 8 was a result of the shoddy work of an above-average country. Certainly not a great one. As I’ve typed before, we have bumped into greatness several times over our short history, and not a minute too soon. Most of the time, though, we settled into pretty good. On June 6, 1944, we were awesome. On Nov. 8, 2016, we failed miserably. See what I mean?
One day after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, I got a call from a French journalist. I was newspapering then, and in Germany. She wanted reaction on the election. I had to be cautious about my opinion, but no matter, it was her words that said it all: “You Americans can do the stupidest things,” she said clearly crying, “And then turn around and do the most wonderful things, like elect a black man to be your president like Obama.”
I have thought about this gal and her words many times since Nov. 8.
When January 21, 2017, is chronicled it will read, “The day America started being great.”
Which makes the heat from the nuclear furnace all the more perplexing. Trump is usually far better than this. And by “better” I mean “calculating.” Instead of sending that dope out there to compare crowd size, he should have told him to say this: “For over a year, Donald Trump promised to make America great — not awful — again. Believe me. On the very first day of his historic, can-you-believe-how-awesome-this-is? presidency, America was very, very great today.
“And thank you. Any questions?”
