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Eluding the Trumpster Dumpster

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Notes for Those Attempting to Flee the U.S. of A.

After the November 5th election, many voters are considering the possibilities of becoming an expatriate in a country where the next President (hopefully) could not touch them. After the recent threats to Mexico and Canada, this may not work.

There are two possibilities for a safe passage away from the Trumpster Dumpster. First, choose a country that the next President does not know exists. Here are a number of possibilities:

  1. Azerbaijan*
  2. Belize
  3. Benin
  4. Bosnia and Herzegovina*
  5. Burkina Faso*
  6. Burundi
  7. Cabo Verde
  8. Comoros
  9. Djibouti*
  10. Eritrea*
  11. Eswatini*
  12. Guinea-Bissau*
  13. Kiribati
  14. Kyrgyzstan*
  15. Lesotho*
  16. Liechtenstein*
  17. Malawi
  18. Nauru
  19. Niue*
  20. Sao Tome and Principe*
  21. Tajikistan*
  22. Timor-Leste
  23. Tuvalu
  24. Vanuatu*

To provide an extra level of safety from MAGA-hatted provocateurs, select one of the above countries marked with an asterisk (*). These are countries it is not likely the next President would be able to pronounce correctly enough to be understood.

Tomorrow’s Mug Shots

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Trump “Rally” in Grand Rapids, MI

As we head toward the culmination of another anxious election season, I suddenly had an inkling of what could happen. Donald Trump has always relied on rallies where he speaks with a bigly group of mostly young supporters with posters and MAGA hats at his back.

These rallies vaguely resemble the rallies that Trump’s hero, Adolph Hitler, staged in the 1930s. Of course, they couldn’t hold a candle to the giant 1935 rally in Nuremberg which was filmed by Leni Riefenstahl and released under the title Triumph of the Will. Now that was a real rally, with over 700,000 supporters in attendance.

Hitler Rally in Nuremberg 1935

The thought came to me that the whole Trump moment in American history will end badly. The electorate is largely made up of two groups:

  • People who hate Trump with a passion
  • People who idolize Trump with a passion (but who will come to hate him when they wake up and find out they have been used)

What I think will happen at some future date is that those faces at MAGA rallies will become a mark of shame, and that people will scan photographs of the rallies with magnifying glasses to find neighbors they could blame for their predicament, which will probably get worse over time. (Even if it doesn’t, the voters will think that.)

I look at cars that bear political bumper stickers and think, “What happens if they park their car in a neighborhood which is strongly ‘anti-’ their candidate?” That’s one of the reasons my car is devoid of bumper stickers and decals.

The blame game will only get worse.

On Doubling Down

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The Term comes from Blackjack

If winning is everything, it is important not to ever appear to be a loser. In reporting about politics, one often hears about someone “doubling down.” What that usually means is that one takes a position and sticks with it come hell or high water.

Probably the best example is Donald Trump who after four years still claims that he won the 2020 election, and that the Democrats and Joe Biden cheated him out of the presidency.

The term comes from the card game Blackjack. According to Technopedia:

Double down in blackjack is an option where you add an extra bet, equal to the initial one, and you only receive one extra card in the hand.

This feature is available in most blackjack games and is required for optimal strategy. However, it can be a risky move since you stand to lose more money in the hand. That is why it is very important to know when to do it.

Eric Cartman

Other than Trump, the person on television most associated with the practice of doubling down on almost every issue is Eric Cartman on the cartoon show “South Park” Typically, he will take a wrong-headed stance and hold to it until he fails openly and utterly.

This type of behavior is associated with a fear of making mistakes. The fact that we are human means that we will often make mistakes. It is far better to own up to them and learn from them than to double down on a dubious position. As writer Neil Gaiman wrote:

hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.

IIn my life, I have always distrusted people who always claimed to be right. That’s just one of a thousand reasons I would never vote for Trump or any of his ilk.

Is It Curtains for Trump?

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No, It’s Not Biden or the Justice Department This Time

It was during the 2016 presidential campaign at a stop in Sioux Center, Iowa, when Candidate Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? … It’s, like, incredible.” It was then that the Candidate began to believe in his own invincibility. All those rallies with adoring MAGA-hatted spectators must have further convinced him.

What Trump did not take into account were the people who did not like him. That number has been growing—slowly, perhaps—but steadily. So steadily that a grand jury delivered an indictment for 37 counts relating to the mishandling of archival materials that were stored at the ex-Prez’s compound at Mar-a-Lago.

Take note that it was not President Biden who indicted him, nor even the Department of Justice. It was a number of average citizens serving on a grand jury that were appalled by the Trumpster’s manipulative dealings with the National Archives, and by the fact that papers relating to the military strengths and weaknesses of the United States were being shown around to Mar-a-Lago visitors and members.

Was Trump showing any of these papers to his good friendsNorth Korean President Kim Jong Un? Recdcep Erdogan of Turkey? Xi Jinping of China? Vladimir Putin? Three of the above dictators may well be at war with us at some future date. Isn’t that espionage?

This could be bad news for the formerly thought-to-be-invincible former president. Am I surprised? No.

Keep Him Occupied

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Trump Appearing in New York for Another Deposition

Yesterday, I was surprised that Bill Maher on “Real Time with Bill Maher” came out against the 34 felonies with which the Trumpster is charged relating to the Stormy Daniels case. Apparently, he thinks that Americans don’t care about sex-related charges against our presidents, thinking of how Bill Clinton’s popularity soared despite the whole Monica Lewinsky affair.

I say that it is best to keep MAGA Man busy with lawsuits and criminal charges—enough to keep him busy for the rest of his days. This is on the same principle that it is best to keep a toddler busy so that he doesn’t get into more mischief. And here the stakes are considerably higher than mere mischief.

Wear the man out defending himself, looking out for ever more lawyers to stiff. When he is kept busy in this way, there will be fewer incendiary rallies en route to becoming president again. It’s like tying a 100-pound weight to his legs.

If you read this blog, you know I dislike the man. That doesn’t stop me from seeing the humor of the situation.

All these court cases are like the death of a thousand cuts. One can make a case for him being a martyr the first time, but what about the 70th time? or the 7 times 70th time? It may just do the trick.

When He Was Cool

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A Young Donald Trump With First Wife Ivana

Now that his karma is finally catching up with him, my thoughts have turned to the young Donald Trump, when he was actually considered to be cool. I am thinking of Trump at Studio 54 being kowtowed as a celebrity. Here was a real estate mogul married to an exotic Czech model named Ivana. He still had a reasonable amount of hair and even looked sort of handsome. This was in the period before he became a reality TV star on The Apprentice in 2004. And definitely before he took aim at the presidency.

The moment Trump came down that gold-plated escalator of the Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, everything turned into a brown and murky covfefe. After ex-wife Ivana died last year, she was interred at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ as part of an elaborate tax dodge. In fact, the golf course had to be consecrated so that the Catholic Ivana could be buried there. As a certain ex-president would say in its nightly tweets, SAD!

As time goes by, there will be a lot more to be SAD about. The current indictment is only the beginning of the ex-president’s troubles. Whatever you may think about him, you wouldn’t like to be in his shoes.

It’s Coming for YOU, Bubba!

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Look for It the Day Before Election Day!

Ever since that grim day in November 1916 as I twisted and turned in a hotel room in Quito, Ecuador, I have come to the conclusion that something is not right with the universe. I am reminded of Casca’s words in Act I Scene iii of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar:

A common slave—you know him well by sight—
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join’d, and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain’d unscorch’d.
Besides—I ha’ not since put up my sword–
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me: and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
’These are their reasons; they are natural;’
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.

What I am referring to is the news that an asteroid might strike the earth the day before the November 3 “fraudulent” election that will confirm Donald J. Trump in his role as dictator for life.

According to CNN, the asteroid is just a shade over 6 feet—the size of our presidential pretender. I cannot help but think that it will land in such a way as to set fire to our great leader’s impressive bouffant hair-do, and possibly burn him to a cinder in his size 12 shoes. If that happened, it would surely show that there is some justice in the universe.

 

Dostoyevsky Describes Trump Voters

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The Supporters of Trump: A Great Mystery?

I am re-reading the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky translation of Fyodor Dostoeyevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Suddenly, I saw the following passage, which predicted the emergence of Trump and his supporters:

Man really is stupid, phenomenally stupid. That is, he’s by no means stupid, but he’s so ungrateful that it would be hard to find the likes of him. I, for example, would not be the least bit surprised if suddenly, out of the blue, amid the universal future reasonableness, some gentleman of ignoble, or, better, of retrograde and jeering physiognomy, should emerge, set his arms akimbo, and say to us all: “Well, gentlemen, why don’t we reduce all this reasonableness to dust with one good kick, for the sole purpose of sending all these logarithms to the devil and living once more according to our own stupid will!” That would still be nothing, but what is offensive is that he’d be sure to find followers: that’s how man is arranged. And all this for the emptiest of reasons, which would seem not even worth mentioning: namely, that man, whoever he might be, has always and everywhere liked to act as he wants, and not at all as reason and profit dictate; and one sometimes even positively must (this is my [i.e. Dostoyevsky’s] idea now).

 

Serendipity: The Art of the Deal?

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Let’s Not Leave Foreign Policy to Rank Amateurs!

The following is the first paragraph in an article in the April 18, 2019 issue of The New York Review of Books entitled “What Happened in Hanoi?”

Shortly after the success of The Art of the Deal (1987) made Donald Trump a supposed expert on negotiation, he lobbied the George H. W. Bush administration to put him in charge of arms reduction talks with the Soviet Union. The position went instead to Richard Burt, an experienced diplomat and arms control expert. When the two men met at a New York social event, Trump pulled Burt aside to tell him what he would have one—and what Burt should do—to start off the negotiation. Greet the Soviets warmly, he said. Let their delegation get seated and open their papers. Then stand up, put your knuckles on the table, lean over, say “Fuck you,” and walk out of the room.

Burt didn’t follow Trump’s advice, to which which we owe the fact that the world didn’t end in a nuclear holocaust well before the start of the new millennium.

The News: All Trump All the Time

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In Whatever Direction You Turn, There He Is!

In Whatever Direction You Turn, There He Is!

Every time Trump is mentioned on the news, Martine either hits the mute button or turns the channel. The problem is: Donald J. Trump is everywhere. Whether one is watching ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, BBC, RT, or France 24, the news seems always to feature our lunatic president and his stumbling failures.

It’s not my problem, because I never watch the news—except on the Internet. And there I am in complete control of my news feed. I know that could be a problem, but no way am I going to watch Breitbart or Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly without shooting my cookies. I can generally tell right from wrong, and I know that everything our Trumpery president represents is very, very wrong.

So don’t worry. I won’t push Trump at you unless he really gets to me and makes my temperature rise. I really prefer to write about books, films, places, history—anything but the Cheeto Monster with his orange leer.