Am I wrong to take a slim measure of hope from Donald Trump going after paper drinking straws?
"I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work," Trump wrote Feb. 7 on Truth Social. "BACK TO PLASTIC!"
Kind of a self-own, isn't it? Have you ever had trouble using a paper straw? I haven't.
We know just how vindictive and trivial Donald Trump can be. But could that be a good thing? Because if he's going after paper straws and the Kennedy Center, and everybody who ever crossed him — that has to be a distraction from his central task of tearing down our country and transforming it into a dictatorship, right? Maybe a little?
Yes, a hallmark of fascism is total control of society. Mussolini told Italian men what kind of hats to wear. The devil really is in the details. But there is only so much effort that can be made and, if three weeks in, Trumpolini is raging against paper straws, well, that's at least a few seconds he isn't gutting American government. Maybe he'll just dive into the weeds and never come out.
Wishful, I know. Is optimism premature? With three years and 49 weeks to go. Or is optimism essential?
I find myself groping toward it. Otherwise, the reality, of privatizing our government under the lash of Elon Musk is too horrible to contemplate. Truly, we are in the hands of our enemies, and I don't think a conquering power would move with this rapidity. Even the Chinese Communists gave Hong Kong a couple years of breathing room before voiding their freedoms. Lawsuits are being filed, judges making rulings, but the old system is buckling already.
Yes, a hallmark of fascism is total control of society. Mussolini told Italian men what kind of hats to wear. The devil really is in the details. But there is only so much effort that can be made and, if three weeks in, Trumpolini is raging against paper straws, well, that's at least a few seconds he isn't gutting American government. Maybe he'll just dive into the weeds and never come out.
Wishful, I know. Is optimism premature? With three years and 49 weeks to go. Or is optimism essential?
I find myself groping toward it. Otherwise, the reality, of privatizing our government under the lash of Elon Musk is too horrible to contemplate. Truly, we are in the hands of our enemies, and I don't think a conquering power would move with this rapidity. Even the Chinese Communists gave Hong Kong a couple years of breathing room before voiding their freedoms. Lawsuits are being filed, judges making rulings, but the old system is buckling already.
So where are we? As I've said before, hope is the last coin in your pocket when all your money is gone. The liar, bully, fraud and traitor can't win, ultimately. America will not be undone — not completely undone anyway — by a man who believes in nothing, who completes nothing, who mistakes intention with result, and needn't achieve anything when he can lie and say he has and his army of groveling dupes believes him.
Don't get me wrong — there will be much suffering and innocent people will be hurt. They're already being hurt. But as we go through this, remember Losey L. McLoser will, ultimately, lose. Of that I am convinced. Or trying to be convinced, anyway. If he succeeds, if he has a third term then bestows the presidency upon Donald Trump Jr. as a kingly token, then we were never the strong democracy we thought we were. Now that I say it, it sounds obvious.
The strategy has been to "flood the zone with sh-t", overwhelm the people with just sheer number of outrageous moves, calculating that the majority will go unopposed. I hope this one is a sign he's starting to run out of ideas and is, ahem, grasping at straws for garbage to throw out there and troll people with. He's going to run out of gas and/or get bored and hopefully the opposition and the courts can start to catch up. Maybe I'm also grasping at straws for some hope here.
ReplyDeleteThat's the headline! I started with "The first straw" and didn't like that, so changed it to "Straw man" which was only adequate. "Grasping at straws." Perfect. Thank you Mark K. I've never plucked the headline out of the comments before.
DeleteAww shucks :)
DeleteI liked "straw man", a good description for Trump, with his stupid hair, a scarecrow, a brainless effigy used as a distraction and an idol by oligarchs, religious fanatics, and hateful idiots of all stripes.
Donaldo Trumpolini! (aka IL DOUCHE! )That's the ticket! Been using that one for quite a while. Along with Agolf Twitler (Der Furor) and Orange Julius (as in American Caesar). As a rule, my mood dictates which one I impose on the reader (see what I did there?)
DeleteI remember as a kid, all we had were paper straws & they seemed to work for the one drink.
ReplyDeleteHe is truly a sick & depraved lunatic, not only for this, but now firing the entire Kennedy Center board & making himself the head of it. I expect it to be renamed after him soon & his rotten children to be the rest of the board.
And every week, a mandatory Lara Trump concert, where she screeches out some alleged songs & all the rats for miles around run away in terror!
You’re kidding that no one has an issue with paper straws, right? I mean it’s a fairly commonly discussed complaint. See below. And I say this as someone who loathes the current president and is fairy sure he’s going to end this country as we know it.
ReplyDeleteThe articles below make some well reasoned arguments about the debate. You know whose argument isn’t well reasoned. The guy who signed an EO.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/04/12/i-hate-paper-straws-even-as-an-environmentalist/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/style/plastic-straw-alternatives.html#commentsContainer (With some customers complaining about paper straws (the colder the drink, the faster they disintegrate)…)
He desperately needs to feel powerful. If his edicts are being reversed (albeit temporarily) by the courts, and other countries resist his inane real estate proposals, he comforts himself by being tyrannical about petty things, instead. All those media moguls who fell over themselves to pre-emptively bow to him will soon learn why you must never negotiate with terrorists.
ReplyDeleteI woke up the day after the election and thought to myself, "I never lived in the country I thought I lived in".
ReplyDeleteI really believed the things I was taught in civics class were real and true. Turns out most of my classmates weren't paying attention.
I knew that many weren't paying attention. I just didn't realize how their disdain for academic and professional "elites" could be weaponized into support for a rich con-man, felon and traitor whose entire project involves making things better for his fellow economic elites, at the expense of our classmates' own actual economic interests.
DeleteOptimism is belief. Belief is strength. If "hope is the last coin in your pocket", guard it well. It's valuable currency.
ReplyDeleteAs for "the devil is in the details", I've come to believe that, with Trump, the Devil is in the chaos. Trump is chaos incarnate.
I would have agreed absolutely with everything you wrote. It's what I told myself after the election and as he announced the bumbling fools he was going to appoint to his cabinet. But what I was not expecting is that while Trump is distracted with paper straws and making the Kennedy Center great again we have Elon, unelected and unconfirmed, doing horrible damage. So far he has absolutely destroyed USAID and CFPB, and he's barely getting started. I am usually an eternal optimist, but wow, we are so screwed.
ReplyDeleteExactly! While Trump issues proclamations. Musk is the "straw boss" getting the project going.
DeleteTrump against paper straws? We’ll, it certainly isn’t because he doesn’t suck!
ReplyDeleteAs an epithet, It’s right up there with Lincoln’s “He Freed The Slaves”, isn’t it: “He banned paper straws”. A gravestone engraving for the ages.
ReplyDeleteStrraws, Superbowl, Kennedy Center, it's all candy for his children. More substantial issues to come. Project 2025 is the program.
ReplyDeleteFrom your mouth to God's ears.
ReplyDeleteHe’s already planning his third term.
ReplyDeleteIt’s total folly to comfort ourselves with the notion that this will all end when Trump is gone. He’s just a useful fool, the one who held the door open for all the cretins who are really running the show, and this cabal of think tanks and lobbyists have been preparing for this moment for decades. With every passing day, they’re consolidating control and restricting the ability of the opposition. His cabinet appointees are a bunch of idiot Yes-Monkeys, but the unelected “advisors” lurking in the wings, whispering in his ear and handing him executive orders to sign are diabolically smart. You can bet they’re already lining up his successor. So we got that to look forward to.
ReplyDeleteRachel Maddow broadcast a list of at least ten Losey Mc Loser appointees who have run for elected office as Republicans, and all have one thing in common...they LOST. Some of these losers even lost in the primaries.
DeleteThey were emphatically told by the American voting public: "WE DON'T WANT YOU!" And now they are being forced upon us anyway. So we not only have the gibberish of the Gibbering Orange Gibbon, and his toilet cabinet of Yes-Monkeys, but also an evil cabal of publicly rejected GOP losers. Along with President Musk.
Six more weeks of winter? Six more weeks of these folks, and our democratic republic is history.