Fun and Games at the Apocalypse

When Donald Trump first began ranting against the WHO, I thought he was talking about the legendary rock band and its socialist frontman Roger Daltrey, and not the World Health Organization. I mean, who in their right mind would ever rail against the World Health Organization right in the middle of a pandemic?

Well, eminently sane sociopath that he is, Trump is simply trying to deflect attention from his own bungled and belated response to the Covid-19 plague. His rationale, which like most propaganda does contain a grain or two of truth, is that the WHO had initially taken China's word for it that it had the outbreak under total control and not to worry. Taking a page verbatim from the classic authoritarian playbook, Trump himself proceeded to fly in the face of all fact, claiming that the crisis is under his total and absolute control, and not to worry.

And that got me thinking back to my original mistaken impression about exactly WHO Trump had been really ranting against. One of the rock band's biggest hits was Teenage Wasteland - which does sort of describe Trump's cabinet of sycophants and trust fund kiddies, including his very own Jared and Ivanka.  And that hit song in its own turn got me thinking that T.S. Eliot's famous line in The Wasteland has never been more apt. April is indeed the cruelest month.

Congress cruelly ignored the pain and suffering of the masses while it allowed the Fed to secretly give trillions of dollars of public money to oligarchs and corporations under the grotesquely named CARES Act. They govern neither in prose nor in poetry. As far as they're concerned, the initials T.S. might as well stand for for Tough Shit. You're on your own, proles. Tighten your belts and share the sacrifice.

And even as they turn the screws, they pretend to be aghast that some of the $1200 "stimulus" checks will be delayed because Trump has insisted that the Treasury affix his own name to them. He had originally wanted to sign them himself. So terribly, terribly shocking to all those who cling to their norms and cynical acronyms.

But it could always be worse. Trump could have insisted on sending out fake Monopoly money with his picture on it, as contained in his own cheesy version of the Depression-era board game.

 Unfortunately, the initial groups of recipients will not receive Trump's limited edition collectors' checks, because they will get the funds electronically, by direct deposit.

The people to receive the paper checks are among the country's neediest and most marginalized  -  that is, if they ever receive the money at all. They first have to locate a computer with a connection in order to access the Treasury's internet portal to apply to be last in line for the money. They also have to provide a physical address. And with so many poor people facing evictions (if they are not already homeless) both internet access and existence in a physical building are insurmountable barriers for them, even in the best of the worst of times.

Too many people with no money and no jobs had already lost their modest Baltic Avenue homes back in 2009, when Barack Obama bailed out the banks and enabled the same criminal bankers to fraudulently foreclose on millions of mortgages before renting the plundered property back out to the evictees at exorbitant rates. And the people, still lectured they have to be in the neoliberal game to win it, just keep right on landing on Boardwalk and Park Place, and told that they can never, ever pass GO. 

But since the masses must continue to be entertained lest they emerge from Lockdown and riot in the streets, we now come to the long awaited sequel to that classic buddy comedy, The Three Amigos.

Because two of its leading men have a well-known "frosty but cordial relationship" and the third marquee actor is given very few lines of his own, and because the plot also has an element of horror to offset the treacle, the movie's working title is Bernie and Biden and Barry, Oh My!

The opening scene has Bernie Sanders juxtaposed with a near-aphasic Joe Biden. The Vermont senator urges his supporters to "come together" and vote for his good friend. In case you don't get the message, Bernie's side of the schizophrenic screen bears a prominent "Biden For President" logo.

The Revolution is cancelled. Long Live the Elite Task Forces!

In a subsequent interview with the Associated Press, Bernie Sanders goes even further and as much as calls his supporters traitors if they do not vote for Joe Biden. The Revolution is cancelled. Long live the corporate Democratic Party voter-shaming!

The next scene has Barack Obama appearing solo from an undisclosed location. Some say he's holed up at his Washington mansion working on his memoirs, while others speculate he's social-distance partying at his sprawling Martha's Vineyard oceanfront estate. But since this is, after all, nothing but a movie, my guess is the setting was the famous $35 million Shark House in Hollywood, where the Obamas reportedly stay whenever they're in town to perform their Netflix and Democratic fund-raising duties. (Joe apparently needs tons of money to catch up with Monopoly Man.) Discreet predator that he is, though, Barry filmed his endorsement of Biden in front of the standard anodyne photos and knick-knacks rather than in front of one of the home's built-in shark tanks.

The audience cannot be expected to absorb more than one stingray or electric eel at a time, can they?

And Obama doesn't get top billing in The Three Amigos for nothing. His acting skills and his timing are as slick as they ever were.

Anybody can deliver a political endorsement speech. But only an Obama can actually pull off smirking a political endorsement speech. He can barely restrain his own cynical grin as he praises the miracle of millions of newly jobless people still being able to enjoy their expensive employer-based health insurance right in the middle of a pandemic.

Warning: the following scene is not recommended for sensitive viewers:

 Since every disaster comedy buddy flick must have a leading lady - and every revolution needs its Marie Antoinette - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is here to add her own nurturing feminine touch, straight from her luxury vineyard estate outside of San Francisco.

  Are you hungry because the grocery shelves are bare and you don't have any money anyway? All you need to survive quarantine and fend off disease is a wildly expensive stainless steel restaurant-grade freezer. Nancy says that you, too, can order one straight from the Internet and then stock it with a small fortune in designer ice cream.

Let them eat Haagen-Dazs! The all-American brand might sound Danish, but forget Nordic-style single payer health care. The confection that Nancy Pelosi favors is pure American capitalism. "We're capitalists. That's just the way it is."

In other words: T.S.

As Eliot  wrote in The Wasteland: "I think we are in rats' alley/Where the dead men lost their bones."

  “What is that noise?”
                          The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
                           Nothing again nothing.
                                                        “Do
“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?