"No king he"

     

     

     The Washington Post did a poll this week, asking 1,000 Americans whether it is a good idea for the president to send the California National Guard and the United States Marines into Los Angeles to quell violent protests that broke out over the increasingly common practice of masked immigration police snatching people off the street, dispatching them to unknown dooms in foreign hellholes.        
     Forty-one percent think it is a good idea and support the policy; 44 percent oppose the suspension due process and the rule of law, and 15 percent just aren't sure.
     I read that, and thought: I've got to dig that yarn out of my closet and begin focusing on knitting. Because really, if that's where we are, in 2025, then why bother addressing issues at all? The same 40 percent of the country that have been huzzahing Trump since he went down that escalator in the peach-toned hell of Trump Tower almost exactly 10 years ago are with him still, the same bare half majority puts up an increasingly exhausted, dispirited and failing opposition, while a staggering 15 percent strokes its chin and thinks, "Golly, I just don't know what to think...."

     If you're looking for a bright side — and at this point any kind of optimism might be part of the problem — 52 percent of the respondents to the poll said they disapprove of Trump's immigration policies. With 37 percent — a solid third plus change — saying they're all for kneecapping our economy and nation by enacting a cruel policy of isolation and xenophobia. So long as that bare majority doesn't go into the street and raise their voices...

    We're allowed to give up, right? Maybe because I turned 65 on Tuesday, but it struck me that this swine of a man, this jabbering dupe of a president, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson's sharp description of Nixon, will be the sun in my sky for years to come. Maybe forever. Because even after the corporal human being, to stretch the term, is no longer with us, the concept of a president as dictator, as king, as unopposed figurehead, will continue. I have a hard time believing J.D. Vance can just pick up where he left off. 

    But then again, I have a hard time believing any of this. Always have. Which might be why he wins. The American media, slow on the uptake, raising a finger and offering a weak, "hey!" as MAGA world rushes by to ravish and destroy our country.

     Knitting. He hadn't been campaigning a month when, dispirited, already, I suggested it might be time to divert myself from the parade of bad news and focus on yarn craft.

     "I could be the knitting reporter, covering the yarn arts beat," I wrote on July 6, 2016. "As the presidential campaign veers deeper into farce, a bone deep revulsion sets in at the prospect of reaching my hands into the mess and trying to arrange its gloppy, putrid contents into some kind of order. Knitting seems so pleasant by comparison."

    I'm tempted to apologize for that — preemptive surrender. Or maybe I should be proud. Nothing was working. This entirely unfit buffoon was striding toward the presidency, and I was groping for a new way to register dismay and desperation. It wasn't true surrender, but desperation disguised surrender. Didn't matter. 

     Anyway, it's 3 a.m. No wonder I'm tired. Saturday is "No Kings Day." Welcome to the club. Here's something I wrote on the subject, reflecting on the "TRUMP" sign going up at Trump Tower by remembering Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias."

     Shelley notes the stone pharaoh’s face: Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.
     “Sneer of cold command” sort of evokes Trump, the man, does it not? I only met him once, when he was in town drumming his Atlantic City casino. No king he; Trump needed a shoe shine and a haircut.

     I wrote that 11 years ago, in 2014. Before the man was even running. Then, in the giddy optimism of youth, I predicted the sign would be down in 12 years. Now, it seems more likely that, by next year, all the buildings in downtown Chicago will have Trump signs. He's never going away.

     So yes, last night was one of the rare days I went to bed without a blog post for the next day. Not sure why I didn't write anything. Following the news from Los Angeles, I didn't see what there was to say. That this is bad? That it's a dry run, and if the president can send the Marines into a city, over the objection of the mayor of Los Angeles and the governor of California, then he can send them into Chicago to arrest J.B. Pritzker for saying something mean. You don't need to be paranoid to see that coming, just look a little ways down the road.