Wednesday, December 12, 2018

The Wall Plus Russiagate Equals Distraction

Donald Trump is rattled about the Mueller investigation. Therefore, the Democrats colluded with him on Tuesday to change the subject from his legal woes to The Wall and the usual pre-Christmas government shutdown threats. The only thing they have to fear is that their marketing of Fear to the rabble is less successful than it used to be.

So Trump once again played his grotesquely seductive spider part to perfection as he sent his always-irresistible invitation to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to join him in his sticky oval-shaped web of a parlor.

The House Speaker-in-waiting and the Senate Majority Leader played their own supporting roles reasonably well, mawkishly casting their desperate gazes and pleadings toward the whirring TV cameras in the room as often as they directed them at their arachnoid host. 

Vice President Mike Pence had even less of a supporting role, because his non-speaking function as Chief Toady consisted entirely of swiveling his little white metronome of a head at the Democrats to Trump and then back again. To his credit, though, he was able to maintain a stolid manspreading pose throughout the skit that had him glued in the chair next to his more voluble manspreading boss. 

I don't know who was in charge of the sound system for this latest episode of the Trump Reality TV show, but somebody certainly neglected to give Pelosi a proper working microphone. Trump boomed out his incoherence, and even Chuck came through loud and clear as he vied with Trump for the opportunity to interrupt Nancy at every turn. Pelosi sounded like she was talking through a mask of cotton wool as she wonkishly and patiently and ineffectually attempted to lecture Trump on the mechanics of legislation.




It was a performance designed to show Trump at his bullying superior best next to the schoolmarm persona dreaded by many an American male even long after he's escaped the physical classroom. Trump succeeded mightily in showcasing the Democratic leaders as the hapless weaklings they are. Schumer was reduced to sputtering that Trump had lost two states, when he should have used his TV time to wax indignant over the very xenophobic idea of a Wall to keep out refugees and immigrants.

For her part, Pelosi carefully saved her (strategically leaked) anti-Trump vitriol until after the meeting, when it would be least effective. If only she had questioned his manhood right to his manspreading corpus and right to his sneering face, then it might actually have meant something. 

But that's not what Democrats do. They portray themselves as emotionally and intellectually superior victims in a futile attempt to create some space between GOP corruption and Democratic corruption. The maintenance of their smugness is more important to them than, say, agitating for Medicare for all and a federal jobs program. 

The Wall and the Shutdown of Doom episode momentarily deflected attention away from Trump's legal woes for the space of one more Trump-orchestrated 24 hour news cycle. With the corporate media and their talking heads so busily talking among themselves about impeachment and Oval Office manners and the "unprecedented" bicker-fest among America's top political leaders, there simply have not been enough resources left to cover matters of more pressing concern to the ordinary people who have been co-opted into giving these chronically weak people their very powerful jobs.

There certainly hasn't been enough time to cover the immensely popular Yellow Vests movement in France, other than for the occasional editorial bemoaning of President Emanuel Macron's imperialistic style and his failure to tamp down the discontent as ably and as glibly as his neoliberal pro-bank American counterpart, Barack Obama, so recently did.  

3 comments:

Anna Radicalova said...

Schumer's remark "When the President brags that he won North Dakota and Indiana, he's in real trouble" struck me as an arrogant, elitist putdown of the people of those states.



Jay–Ottawa said...

Our citizens love these spectacular chapters of government I make available, live from the Oval Office. And this is a tremendous service you have rendered, Karen, tremendous and nicely done to show my outreach to the people directly as well as through their tremendous representatives, Nancy and Chuck.

Just incredible how you do it too, Karen. Spectacular post. You’re on the short list for my next press secretary. Who better to spank the disrespectful White House press corps?

Just let me say that after we finish the Wall––by the way, I think you journalists should capitalize the word Wall––and everybody sees how well the Wall keeps out terrorists and diseased people, highly communicable diseases, I might add––by the way, ten terrorists caught by our brave ICE agents recently, spectacular––we should consider building Walls around the three branches of government––please, just let me finish Nancy. Somebody get Chuck a glass of water. What could be better than Walls to uphold the separation of powers? Tremendous idea. Separation of powers: Walls.

Along with that idea, I am proposing that the record of proceedings for all branches of government be made top secret. That’s right, and on a need-to-know basis only. Everybody knows the Congressional Record is a joke mined by grad students to make jokes about government and public service. That’s got to stop. I sympathize with the grad students. They make a point: half of what’s printed in the Congressional Record is inserted after the event. Those speeches never happened outside the printer’s workshop. Talk about faux news. Incredible.

As for Supreme Court Decisions, only lawyers can understand that stuff, so let’s make the decisions available only to authorized lawyers, nice lawyers, and then as a cost-saving measure, only by paid subscription.

As for laws and other documents from the Executive Office, these must be kept secret for reasons of national security, except when leaks would be helpful to national security. Twitter will serve as the new Federal Record. That way I can hide what I've already done, which is tremendous, and keep terrorists guessing about my next move.

Tremendous ideas. Good Walls make America great again.

voice-in-wilderness said...

I liked Pelosi's performance, I think she hit just the right balance of push-back. I only wish that she or Schumer had asked about Mexico paying for The Wall (note caps!).

I notice that there are several people who can goad Trump and he does not go off on the expected Twitter tirade. Avenatti baited him again and again and Trump never responded. And I would have expected Trump to be internally hemorrhaging over Pelosi's ex post facto remarks about his manhood and comparing him to a skunk, but no tweets.