My taste buds never grew up. I like what the average two-year-old likes. When left to my own devices, I will often opt for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (after all, it’s The Cheesiest 🙂 ) or Oscar Mayer baloney on bread (although these aren’t as good as those of my youth, since TLOML refuses to buy Wonder Bread, thus depriving me of the opportunity to build my body in 12 ways). That said: of all of the grotesque appointments consummated since Inauguration Day (a close friend noted to me recently that the only qualified person President Donald Trump has chosen seems to be Stormy Daniels), that which is perhaps the most aesthetically absurd although not the most important is Mr. Trump’s becoming Chairman of the Board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His election is akin to me being named Chairman of the Board of the American Culinary Federation.
We regularly see reports that Democrats are “struggling to find their footing” as to how to respond to Mr. Trump’s policy blitzkrieg. This is enough to make one blink. Democrats should emulate MAGAs and alt-right media and KEEP IT SIMPLE: POUND INFLATION and ELON MUSK. If the economists one reads have any competence at all – you can take that one – inflation is not abating and Mr. Trump’s current and proposed tariffs will make it worse. Probably sooner than later, some DOGE initiative is going to cost a swath of Americans some benefit they rely on. Mr. Musk is more inherently unlikeable than former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ever was, and look how Republicans were able to demonize her. Democrats should strive to poison the general public perception of Mr. Musk – which will yield the side benefit of emasculating Mr. Trump. (I was more than a little surprised to see last week that Mr. Trump – who is particularly attuned to television images – let Mr. Musk and Mr. Musk’s son in the Oval Office while Mr. Trump was meeting with reporters; it was not a good look for Mr. Trump, visually diminishing him while further elevating Mr. Musk’s profile.) We’ll see whether the Dems — who since President Bill Clinton left office have seemed to believe that politics is, indeed, bean-bag — can actually mount an effective political counterattack. (Of course, such efforts will only matter if Trump MAGAs permit free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028, which I doubt; a telling clue to their long term intent will be whether Republicans seek cuts in Social Security and Medicare – emotive programs for Trump supporters that could potentially adversely affect their fealty – in future budget negotiations.)
Mr. Trump’s pardoning of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers convicted for their actions in the January 6, 2021, insurrection has provided the President his own private Stermabteilung.
As the Trump Administration digs in, I am heartsick at the havoc being wrought by Mr. Trump and his acolytes on federal employees whose careers are being wantonly and indiscriminately ruined, on our citizens who had the sense to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris but will be engulfed in the commencing maelstrom, and on the compromised and the destitute lacking the bandwidth to even come to grips with what a Trump presidency portends for them. At the same time, I am not nearly as distressed that the misperceptions of some Trump supporters will begin to rebound upon them. Those technology oligarchs who have sought to curry favor with Mr. Trump in recent months (not Mr. Musk, who will be protected by his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin) haven’t studied the history of totalitarian regimes closely enough; ultimately, the Trump Administration will come for them and their organizations, and break them. The admittedly more unfortunate cases will be those at the other end of the Trump spectrum. Although we will never know – the privacy of the voting booth being sacrosanct, at least up to now – if such could be determined, it would seem worthy of betting a dollar that each of the following will occur: the impoverished mother, who voted for Mr. Trump because of the price of eggs, who loses her SNAP payments; the elderly farmer, who voted for Mr. Trump because he hates the Woke, who has a family member die because the hospital formerly nearest to him closed for lack of Medicaid revenue; the Latino male, who wouldn’t vote for a woman, who watches undocumented family members deported, never to be seen again; and the black male, who voted for Mr. Trump because he was so manly, who is gunned down somewhere by some police officer emboldened by Trump rhetoric.
I know. You wouldn’t risk the dollar, even presuming the outcomes could be determined. It’s a sucker’s bet.
McCoy's Noise 