We here at The Daily Outrage (we being me and my able assistant, Señor Gato) tried to take a much needed rest for a couple of weeks, in honor of the season of caring, brotherhood, the Prince of Peace and all that, by not watching or reading political news. Señor Gato and I are not religious; we just wanted a brief respite from the aggravation.
Nice idea, but it didn’t work. The news seeped in anyway, as it is wont to do, and my blood pressure was raised accordingly. It took a good deal of therapeutically-applied red wine and dark chocolate to counteract the negativity created by the Prince of Lies, known otherwise on these pages as the TiC (see my 22 December 2016 post, “Cчастливого Рождества!”). Meanwhile, Señor Gato did what he always does at times like this: he napped.
Well, that was last year, and now it’s 2017. A whole year (actually, only 357 days) stretches out before us, filled with the promise of opportunity, understanding, and enlightenment. It also holds the promise of disaster, chaos, and deception, for such is the nature of the TiC’s looming regime.
Much has been written, in various places, about the lying nature of the TiC’s campaign for, first, the Republican nomination, and then, for the presidency. Mostly, at first, it was just Lyin’ Don who threw out all the lies, but eventually everyone in his entourage – his minions, you might say – joined in the lie-fest. It seemed clear at the time, and depressingly clear now, that these were lies that a great many of our fellow citizens wanted to hear: that America is no longer great; that Democrats, and Hillary Clinton in particular, are to blame for that decline in greatness; that American companies are moving American jobs to Mexico and China due to the incompetence and irresponsibility of Pres. Obama (who was born in Kenya, by the way); that crime is rampant in our cities and getting worse; that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from honest, working class Americans; that illegal immigrants are contributing to the (nonexistent) crime wave terrorizing the country; that a Great Wall (as the TiC now calls it) can and should be built along the entire length of our border with Mexico; and, that Mexico will be forced, by the TiC, to pay for said Great Wall. The biggest lie of all is the one wherein the TiC declares that only he can save us from this myriad of fabricated disasters.
These are not the only lies, of course. There are also the slanders and threats against the press, which are nothing if not bald attempts to intimidate those whose job it is to honestly report to the rest of us about the doings of politicians (and those who claim to be politicians, but who actually are nothing more than pathetic, self-aggrandizing reality-show stars).
Then there’s the question of intelligence. By this I do not mean the intelligence of the TiC himself (of which, the TiC has an extremely high opinion, contrary to the opinion of many others, myself included). That’s a good and proper subject for discussion, but I mean national intelligence: CIA, FBI, et cetera. Apparently, there are sixteen separate intelligence agencies within the Federal government (why so many, I don’t know), and all of them have agreed that the Russian government, on orders from Vlad the Taciturn, hacked into various websites and email accounts (the Democratic and Republican National Committees, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, among others), looking for information that could be used to disrupt or discredit the recent national election, and simultaneously help propel the TiC into the presidency.
They found what they were looking for, and funneled it to WikiLeaks, which promptly threw it all out into the cybersphere, where, along with a little help from FBI director James Comey, it helped nudge enough people into Lyin’ Don’s column to ensure him a new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. All of this in the aftermath of the TiC himself, during the election campaign, encouraging Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s email account. And of course, being BFFs, Vlad complied.
This is all bad enough, but the TiC, being a man of poor boundaries, thin skin, and extremely high self-esteem, has decided that the thousands of people in those sixteen agencies are incompetent idiots (Remember the Iraq WMD debacle of 2003!). Not only that, but the TiC knows, just knows, in his infinite wisdom, that such a thing is impossible, because, you know, hacking is difficult, and proving it is more so, and anyway, his bud Vlad wouldn’t do such a nasty thing after all the nice things Vlad has said about the TiC, and vice versa. No, no – of course not. And anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. Not only that, but that Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, is actually a great guy – despite what the TiC said only six years ago.
The actual fools among us are the ones who were taken in by the TiC’s act, because that’s what it was, and what it continues to be. I suspect they will eventually realize they’ve been had, and that the swamp the TiC railed against does not in fact exist, and that even if it did, the former generals and current billionaires comprising the TiC’s cabinet are not the crew to drain it.
They will realize that starting a trade war with China, spending billions of dollars to build an unnecessary wall that Mexico will never pay for, and ignoring the manipulation of our election (and who knows what else) by a not-friendly foreign power, will not deliver – or return – stewardship of America into the hands of angry white men who need simple explanations for complex issues.
They have helped elect the most incompetent, pampered, infantile president in our history, and we are stuck with him until 20 January 2021. In the ensuing four years, though, none of us should refrain from calling a lie exactly what it is, nor should we refrain from mocking the absurd and even dangerous pronouncements that will issue forth from the mouth of this man who, with every word and every deed, proves that he is the real fool.
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The Daily Outrage 