TRUMP Is NOT Entirely My Fault


American Bird of Prey - The Turkey Vulture Capitalist

The election of 2016 was a calamity. All calamities are bad, as Kitman’s Law states. As the Electoral College meets today to confirm the calamity, I have prepared a few remarks to remind myself of what will go down in political history as the most horrendous exercise of the franchise since the election of the last businessman president, Warren Harding in 1920.

After a year of study, investigative reporting in depth, computer analysis of judgments rendered by the best editorial staff money can buy, and general deep thought by all involved, sorting through all the great people of achievement in need of recognition and confirmation, Time magazine went out on the limb and nominated as the person of the year for 2016, Donald J. Trump.

I disagree.

Assuming the vote was not rigged or hacked either by the Russians or some fat kid in bed in Terre Haute, and despite his success at becoming President-elect by being the second choice of close to three million of his fellow Americans, Donald Trump is the same man he was in 2015.

As a man who was considered trustworthy enough to become a possible Secretary of State so eloquently put it:

“Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing Americans for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.”

Mitt Romney was too kind.

The real heroes of 2016, the persons deserving honors are the minority who elected a con man to the highest office in the land, the idiots without whom this calamity would not have been possible.

Not all of his voters were idiots, of course.

There were those who suffer a psychological impairment, medically known as Hillaryophobia, or the fear of Horrible Hillary in the Oval Office, instead of being locked up in Gitmo.

There were those who voted for him because of his hair-do, or being mesmerized by those little hands, as if sending signals to the Democracy Improvement Bureau at the Kremlin.

There were those who admired his literary skills. The pen, it has been said, is mightier than the sword. Mightier still is the Twitter account. It will be an outrage if the President-elect doesn’t get this year’s Pulitzer Prize in letters of 142 character or less.

Some people liked his business smarts. Not paying taxes was the greatest contribution to civilization since the invention of hair spray.

And still others were impressed by his business ethics. Stiffing the working people who built the palaces bearing his name aided the bottom line. Paying them would have made it a lot worse than the $968 million in debt he racked up as an entrepreneurial genius, according to his last tax audit (1996), which gave some insight into his four bankruptcies and nine failing businesses bearing his guilt-edged brand name.

With his gift of gab, the President-elect’s greatest achievement may have been making some of us believe that he was a friend not only of the poor but the middle class.

How proud they must have been when he filled his cabinet with rich people even richer than himself. It showed he would be the president of not only billionaires but the ordinary millionaires.

He said he would be draining the swamp of Wall Street insiders, only to stock his incoming administration with the few Goldman Sachs fat cats who had not served Crooked Hillary.

For diversity, the man of some of the people is surrounding himself in his cabinet not only with plutocrats, but generals. Was he ignoring General-President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex?

I feel especially bad for my fellow Americans who actually believed his promises. He won’t be building a wall. He won’t be repealing Obamacare. He won’t be keeping us out of stupid wars.

Somehow, after 15 months of the primary and campaign, some people still did not seem to understand the President-elect’s rhetoric. He was the unique individual who was not committed to what he said before. He would be the kind of president who is allowed to say anything that popped into his hair.

The key to breaking the secret Trumpian Code:

Whatever he says, expect the opposite to be true.

For example, his new tax code designed to benefit working people and middle class will make the rich richer. That’s what rich people do.

For those who want a fat, sweaty, seventy-something man who is acting presidential by running around the country on a concert tour like a rock star; a vain, egomaniacal, inexperienced, unqualified man who thinks it’s okay to have the First Family serving as co-president (except for Barron); a man who believes it is fine to keep in the same pocket personal as well as public business; a man who is more interested in conflicts than conflict of interests; a man who doesn’t need intelligence briefings since he says he is so smart (“I am well–informed; I watch the TV news”); a man who will raise the art of bait and switch to a national institution; a man whose administration will make Warren Harding’s Tea Pot Dome Scandal of 1923 seem like the heart and soul of good governance…

Well, you’ve got your man of the next eight years. Let’s all hum along as the Trump Family Chorus sings “Hail to the Chief” in the White House shower, if the ensemble even bothers to use it.

At this critical time in the history of the Republic, I am reminded of the words of an earlier calamity-watcher:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”*

It finally came true.

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* H. L. Mencken in the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920.


 

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Marvin Kitman
Dec. 19, 2016

Marvin Kitman is the author of “The Making of the Preƒident 1789”, HarperCollins, and in paperback, Grove Press, available at Amazon and quality book-sellers. His other books include “George Washington’s Expense Account” by Gen. George Washington and Marvin Kitman, PFC (Ret.). Google them.