A Ghost in the Machine

The only feature not mentioned was drool.

On his second day in court, charged with multiple felonies, the putative leader of the free world once more fell asleep. The man who has called the current president, “Sleepy Joe Biden,” cannot keep his eyes open in the midst of a trial that may put him behind bars and end any aspirations of retaking the White House. Journalistic observers described his “chin on his chest” and “jerking awake” while appearing “slack jawed” and “slumped forward” during the proceedings in the Manhattan courtroom. There is a chance that he drooled, though, and maybe those trained observers of men and events did not take note, distracted as they were by their mutual giggling. If there were cameras allowed in the courtroom, his desultory time before the bar might be the end of his dreams of political restoration.

The man who falsifies his face each morning with artificial coloring has worked even longer and harder at falsifying his life. Outside the courtroom, where he lectures without taking questions, he whined about the judge refusing to let him attend his son’s high school graduation, an important event for any father. The judge said nothing remotely close to Trump’s claim and refused to rule on the request, telling the defendant’s attorneys that he will decide at the time of the graduation based upon progress the trial has achieved.

Barron was less of a concern for his father, it needs to be pointed out, only four months after he had come into the world. Daddy was off at Lake Tahoe that month in 2006, hot in pursuit of a porn star who he wanted to convince to be nice to his naughty bits. When she acceded to his pleadings after vague promises he would help her get a legitimate break at a TV network, she discovered the already long-established fact that he was a liar, which years later prompted her threat to sell the story of their tryst to a tabloid. A side effect is that the man might not get to attend his son’s graduation, which is not that big of a deal since he did not show up for his other children’s matriculations.

According to the adult actress’ timeline, Barron was a baby and Melania was in her New York City golden castle nursing her infant son while the randy daddy was at a golf soiree in the Sierra Mountains of California. His investments in sexual relationships seem to have been as ill-advised as his real estate projects and casinos. A Playboy Playmate had also hooked up in 2006 with the man who would become democracy’s greatest mistake. Both women were paid in exchange for their silence during the 2016 campaign, but it’s how they were paid that has reduced a former West Wing and Oval Office occupant to a defendant. His lawyer, who will testify against him, set up a shell corporation to hide the the money transfers. A cascade of lies about the transactional sex and how it was disguised have led us to the first criminal trial of an American ex-president.

Photo by Max Letek on Unsplash

The even greater tragedy for the U.S. is that this man has taken control of the Republican Party and it is no longer a viable institution. Worse, the shredded remnants of the party of Lincoln have decided to put the country, and even the wider world, at risk with political intransigence. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who has compared himself to Moses and claims to use his Bible to guide his life, is also taking orders from a serial adulterer, pathological liar, fiduciary conman, and a Putin pal. While the Creamsicle Caligula gets his nappy time prior to his ultimate jail time, Speaker Moses refuses to move legislation that would protect the border because the new laws would also help the incumbent Biden with his reelection efforts. Those were his orders. Party over country.

Speaker Moses and his acolytes are not without projects, though. Measures they are considering, as Ukraine’s freedom slips away without U.S. assistance, include the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act, the “Liberty in Laundry Act,” (Give me clean white underwear or give me death!), “Clothes Dryers Reliability Act,” the “Refrigerator Reliability Act,” “Refrigerator Freedom Act,” (Let my Frigidaire go!) and, of course, the “Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act.” These are all part of the powerful Hands Off Our Home Appliances Movement, which seems to have taken, at least momentarily, precedence over money for Ukraine and Israel and the border. There must be horrors in our homes we never knew but we have members of congress who are much wiser and understand how to prioritize for our protection.

Moses finally has a plan, but it’s doubtful it leads his people to the Promised Land, or that he will get to see it either, which follows the ancient script. Like his self-proclaimed Biblical namesake, Speaker Moses might see the Promised Land from a distance but is not likely to get there if he betrays the radical right caucus by passing funding bills to help Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The Georgia congresswoman is likely to zap him with her control of Jewish space lasers and move to have the speaker’s chair vacated by a draconian rule accepted by the previous GOP speaker, who was also desperate for power and control. The new bills under consideration include a lend-lease program for Ukraine, a ban on Tik Tok, (political cyanide for the Rs), and authorization to sell seized Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s resistance. The biggest accomplishment of this congress, though, appears to be accomplishing an historic level of disfunction, which could be tossed aside if they just voted on a comprehensive foreign aid package already passed by the Senate. The half-awake bully in the courtroom is haunting their daylight dreams of achievement.

The most unsettling fact about what is happening in the lower chamber of the federal government is that it is a consequence of officeholders bending the knee to a man who cannot stay fully conscious through his own criminal trial. They want what he wants, even if it harms their country and its allies, which is a certainty. Ukraine is running out of defensive weapons and wonders why the U.S. and other western countries were willing to shoot down Iran’s missiles and drones over Israel but is unable to do the same in their fight against Russia. Do the Ukrainians not understand the power of the doddering old man down in Florida? His madness and demands make effective two-party governance impossible, which is what he and his followers prefer to a functional country. While he moans before the cameras about not being able to attend a U.S. Supreme Court argument about granting him immunity from his many crimes, the country he purports to care about comes undone and its stature falters among allied nations. The high court could cause even greater damage if it rules the president is above the law later this year.

The infection, nonetheless, continues to spread through the American body politic. Down in Arizona, a former TV news reader who is running for the U.S. Senate, told a rally crowd the “next six months will be intense” and we need to “strap on a Glock,” an automatic weapon that can kill with great proficiency. A stylish celebrity, she sounds like the former president but with different hormones and an even more refined disregard for facts. Her politics were formulated by searching for the shortest line to public office and the radical right was dramatically lacking in gender diversity. The language spreading across the right has not stopped suggesting that violence will be essential to win elections and take offices. The Arizona TV lady clearly does not care what happens as long as she gets attention and glory and money and public office. None of her thinking is original and comes from the Adderall addled mind of a future Riker’s Island inmate. Global geopolitics, meanwhile, are on a knife edge and Americans are fixated on a low-intellect ex-president on trial for money and sexual promiscuity.

Our future may be as uncertain as his.