We know the traditional children’s bedtime story about Chicken Little warning that the sky is falling, so I shall not repeat it. The updated version, given at a 24 February session of the recent gathering of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee, in National Harbor, Md., is Donald Trump’s. As reported in a New York Times article, much more than a falling sky will befall America if Joe Biden is re-elected in November.
In Trump’s apocalyptic re-telling of the old tale, Biden’s re-election to a second 4-year term would bring multiple, overwhelming disasters to America. Here it is:
If Mr. Biden is re-elected for a second four-year term, Mr. Trump warned in his speech, Medicare will “collapse.” Social Security will “collapse.” Health care in general will “collapse.” So, too, will public education. Millions of manufacturing jobs will be “choked off into extinction.” The U.S. economy will be “starved of energy” and there will be “constant blackouts.” The Islamist militant group Hamas will “terrorize our streets.” There will be a third world war and America will lose it. America itself will face “obliteration.”
Fortunately, Trump offers an antidote of comfort—his promise of a better tomorrow if he is re-elected after an interruption of 4 years.
Mr. Trump promised on Saturday that if he is elected America will be “richer and safer and stronger and prouder and more beautiful than ever before.” Crime in major cities? A thing of the past. “Chicago could be solved in one day,” Mr. Trump said. “New York could be solved in a half a day there.”
As experts in many fields know, many children’s stories are scary as all get out. If another person’s hallucinations can scare you, Trump’s hallucinations must terrify you.
It is one of the easiest things in the world to dream up apocalypses to make ignorant, insecure people fearful and desperate for relief. So it is with Trump scaring the bejesus out of his gullible followers. Although Trump is not a preacher but a cult leader, he and his gulls resemble generations of hellfire-and-damnation or health-and-wealth preachers and their credulous Christian followers. They have not learned from previous fleecings and, instead of changing their ways, seek the next Chosen One. For Trump, his story has a happy ending, win or lose the election. Making chumps of those whom he swindles for self-enrichment or legal expenses, he will laugh all the way to the bank. Thus ends the story of Trump as Chicken Little.
The other story is of Trump as Little Chicken. It is another of the easiest things in the world for weaklings to dream up heroic tales of their holding up the falling sky, of warding off apocalypse. In a second term, Trump says not only that he will do it, but also that he will do it easily, in little time. He asserts and likely believes that he alone can solve crime in Chicago in one day, in New York in half a day. How does the Little Chicken do it? Apparently, by saying so (i.e., issuing an Executive Order), just as God did in creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. All God had to do was say let there be something or other, and, lo and behold, it was so. Only after God said it, did He pronounce it good—proof that he was winging it, not knowing that it was good before he created it. Likewise, Trump’s phone call to Zelensky, which he later called “perfect,” not just “good.” Trump presents himself as the god who his chumps think he is.
Here is where the Little Chicken part comes in; Trump chickens out. All chickens have foot spurs for fighting; Trump’s bone spurs, which prevented him from fighting in Vietnam, also prevent him from fighting the apocalypse. First, he fails to say how, if elected, he will save America from multiple collapsing systems or end crime in a day or less in at least two major metropolises. To be fair, if all he-as-god has to do is say something to make it so, there is not much “how” to explain. But it should be easy enough for him to just say that he will speak up, then do so when the time comes.
Second, he refuses, if not elected, to prevent for the good of America the collapses of Medicare, Social Security, health care generally, public education; the demise of millions of manufacturing jobs, insufficient energy, and blackouts;—and get this—the roving bands of Hamas terrorists in our streets;—and more—a Third World War, which will “obliterate” America when it loses. To be fair, Trump has never done anything for the public good if there is nothing in it for him; he remains consistently transactional. But, if he-as-god claims that saving America is so easy, it must be that he is chicken-hearted because he fears revealing his inability to live up to his imagined, pretended heroism, the weakling’s dream.
I use a children’s bedtime story as a framework (flimsy) for humorous satire (a flop) to poke fun at Trump, his implausible proposals, and his pompous pronouncements. I might have written directly about a very sick but very dangerous man who imagines himself as possessing a divine right as president, thinks himself the law above the law, and is a threat to all living under his rule: Hispanics first, LGBTQ+ and Muslims next, other minorities eventually, Jews last. This nightmare is a long way from my childhood bedtime stories but not from a childhood nightmare. When I was 10, I knew enough about fascist Germany to imagine that I might live long enough in America to die in a concentration camp—a possibility, thanks to Trump, not unimaginable today.
Indeed, my nightmare has enhanced vividness because of the fascist propensities of Las Cruces officials, especially councilors who purport to be Progressives. They—Abeyta, BenComo, Corran, Flores, Gandara, Graham—accepted the creation or operation of the secret Public Safety Select Committee. Three Councilors on the PSSC were Gabe Vasquez, incumbent Congressman from the 2nd District and candidate for re-election; Abeyta, who took his place, lost her race for a second term, and now does make-work for Sheriff Kim Stewart; and Gandara, who lost her race for mayor. Others on the PSSC were mayors, a city manager, city attorneys, a city clerk, police chiefs or deputies, fire chiefs or deputies, and others on call. Such a clandestine committee focusing on police policy and practice is the prototype of an organization which can evolve into a clandestine cell threatening, not protecting, citizens and their rights, especially in a little city like Las Cruces, which cares little about good, honest government, with transparency and accountability. Thus, to avoid both after its unexpected exposure, the Mayor suddenly and secretly disbanded the PSSC, and he and all Councilors refused my two emailed requests to explain why. So, given my understanding of the latent antisemitism of many city officials, particularly all three police chiefs, I have the nightmare of being among the first to go to camp.
No comments:
Post a Comment