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ACCORDING TO LIZ - The Bloviating Blob – aka Emperor Trump I – squeaked out a popular win only because so many Americans wouldn't vote for the U.S. providing weapons to murder more innocents in Gaza and around the world.
Monday, T-Dog opened his second term with the egotistical promise that his return to power presages a new “golden age” for America… simply because he’s in charge.
In his 29-minute inaugural ramble filled with lies and exaggeration – what else is new? – the Pastor President preached to the converted as if at a campaign rally with promises to defeat inflation, augment the power of the United States to end all wars and expand its territory, and fulfill his billionaire buddy’s Martian fantasy by unfurling the stars and stripes on the red planet.
Emboldened by his marketing maven background, he made more commitments to his pied piper troops knowing this was pure entertainment never an obligation.
“We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.” Greatest or those bringing the most disastrous of changes.
After all, the United States already is #1 – in armament sales and in meddling in other countries’ affairs, in losing wars and in developed nations’ healthcare outcomes, in billionaires, and in income disparities.
Was the Pontificating Pilate elected to raise consumer prices, alienate allies and women, escalate climate disasters, benefit buddies, manipulate the media, and foment more war in his quest for megalomaniacal stardom? Absolutely not.
But his fawning fellating followers just ate it all up.
Many of his promises were pushing more fabulist factoids – that there are only two genders, that climate change doesn’t exist, and that the Los Angeles fires were allowed to rage with no “token of defense.”
That he would “bring back free speech to America” – huh? And make the United States “a rich nation again” – double huh!.
And that tax cuts for the wealthy would not magnify the tax burden on the rest of us.
In a slew of post-inaugural pen-wielding, he created chaos by cracking down on immigration, canceling existing appointments at border points of entry without notice, and bringing a chill worse than the weather in Washington to businesses desperate for an expanding workforce.
The golden age of America is upon us because Fa-la-la-Donnie has his crown and because he’s happy-happy, everybody else must be so, too?
Yah, right. Not for anyone with a modicum of sanity.
Promises, promises. Within 24 hours of ascending the throne – wish it were one of vitreous porcelain – the Histrionic Heckler withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, the international pact fighting climate change, and from the World Health Organization, undermining the nation’s ability to fight the next pandemic.
And recommitted to gutting environmental policies protecting the planet and enacting steep tariffs which would grievously impact the economy and push prices for the people and profits for the profiteers ever higher.
The most despicable, a grievous act of contempt toward the rule of law, was to erase the most complex investigation in Justice Department history with the sweeping clemency, both pardons and commutations, granted all Jan. 6 rioters, almost 1,600 of them, the convicted and the still to be tried, those who violently assaulted police officers with baseball bats and chemical sprays, those charged with seditious conspiracy… including, presumably, himself.
And opening the door to further despicable acts of retributive (in)justice.
Instead of fulfilling his promise to support law enforcement, Pee-Brain threw his chamber pot over the 150-plus officers from the Capitol Police and the D.C. police injured or killed when that Toodle-incited mob stormed the Capitol four years ago.
What next?
Claiming the pillars of our society lie broken and in seeming disarray, Tweedle-dumber vowed to fix the country… as he prepares to blow up its foundations.
In calling his election “a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal” which is how he frames any opposition to him personally as an ongoing fight against enemies, foreign and domestic, and claiming he was “saved by God to make America great again” and “give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed their freedom” further demonstrates how completely self-centered, paranoid and unhinged is this new potentate of the un-free world.
Melania came dressed more like a queen than the first lady.
In just one symbol of vindictive pettiness, he ordered for the removal from the Pentagon of a new portrait of General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disparaged by Twitter-Thumbs as a “woke train wreck.”
Topping the surreal – the Lord of Debt has now remade himself as a crypto-billionaire, minting his own money as he swept into an office built on corporate greed, a pretty penny of which came from the South-Sea bubble pipedream of that illusory industry. Will he now turn the American economy over to a Pet Rock future? Here today and gone, gone, gone tomorrow?
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and Denali, the highest mountain in North America, as Mount McKinley? The Manifest Destiny of repossessing the Panama Canal, buying Greenland, and annexing Canada – when will his hubris ever end?
Rubbing shoulders with his tech-oligarch bros and billionaire benefactors should have given his hoi polloi a clue to who will be calling the shots for the next four years, but most seemed to be lapping up the celebratory atmosphere.
With Sharpie held high and in front of a crowd reminiscent of the blood-thirsty mobs at lynchings, his High-and-Mighty-ness executed a pile of distinctly detrimental (to the rest of us) decrees:
- declaring a national emergency over the U.S.-Mexico border, unlocking federal funds to build the border wall, making border security a military priority
- demanding an assessment of trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada, and initiating a new agency – the External Revenue Service – to collect tariffs
- declaring a national energy emergency and eviscerating regulations that limited the most predaceous of domestic oil production and mining
- slashing price protections on pharmaceuticals for working and senior Americans
- encouraging civil servants to denounce colleagues who support diversity and inclusiveness – a harbinger of Holocaust-style abuses to come
- reversing controls against private prison profiteering
- investigating the Biden administration “to correct past misconduct by the federal government related to the weaponization of law enforcement and the weaponization of the intelligence community”
- revoking the ban on discrimination in federal hiring and freezing most (and mostly needed) federal hiring
- demanding Democrats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board immediately resign, leaving it without the quorum needed to investigate, report on, and protect civil liberties in the government’s anti-terrorism programs
- ending the vetting of White House staff to be issued top secret security clearances
In promoting an agenda attacking the “Deep State” of previous administrations, the Demon now residing in the White House “painted the darkest possible picture of the state of the nation and the character of his opponents. And he set himself up as a kind of messiah figure, the man saved by God for the sake of national greatness. If you want to lay the groundwork for authoritarianism, that’s exactly how to do it.”
Or so opined David French of the New York Times. His colleague, Michelle Goldberg, announced: “The age of algorithmic feudalism has begun.”
There has been no mention of allies, global institutions, or the existence of climate change while Americans witnessed the rebirth of overt and predatory crony capitalism
Bureaucracy? Nope. It’s clear that the man with the tiny paws has determined to rule by decree and needs but a few minions to deliver his diktats.
The Brits have God Save the King.
Americans used to have God Bless America.
So help us now, we have to implore that the gods help curtail and contain the turmoil Tsar T is inflicting on America.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
