CSotD: Getting into some kind of spirit

I’m starting to get in the Christmas mood, but Dear Leader keeps dragging me back to Macroland.

John Cole suggests a nice blend of myth and reality, much better than all the “Trump as Santa Claus” cartoons, because he blends Trump’s personal desperation with the idea that, unlike George Bailey, he’s taking counsel from someone dragging him further into perdition.

He’s still bumming me out. Things here in Microland are just fine: I’m still on the walker, but I can take a step or two and I’ll be on the cane soon enough.

Meanwhile, the other kind of walker is working out very well: When she comes to the door to take him for his daily exercise, the dog whimpers and wiggles and is thrilled to see her.

All I wanted was for him to agree to go with her until I could handle snow and ice; excitement is a nice bonus.

 

And Mike Marland, our Granite State cartoonist, provides some backhanded comfort that I should probably feel guilty about: I’m in an affordable apartment with landlords who live up front and have no plans to change anything.

I do feel guilty about it. There’s an apartment complex next door with six units of families who are about to be thrown out on the street so it can be converted to a home for developmentally disabled adults.

That’s a great use, but it’s six families on Section 8 living the life depicted in Marland’s cartoon, if they can find housing at all.

One of the fathers works for a tow company, but all summer bought up old lawnmowers, fixed them up and sold them. Now he’s doing the same with snowblowers.

I forgive him the sound of small engines being tested because I admire his persistence.

And because, goddammit, his main job should be enough.

 

Mr. Boffo suggests a stance for people like me who have our own lives together, but I don’t think it’s much of a ticket to personal contentment if you have a shred of decency.

Which, of course, is the joke.

There’s an older joke that says a conservative is a liberal who got mugged, and I’ve actually seen that in action, but I bring it up here because, in the current economy, any one of us could be handed the cardboard box Monday morning.

Things in Microland are such that, even if you are the most selfish person in the world, you still ought to be an activist on behalf of the less fortunate because you could be one of them in an instant.

Except, of course, for the fact that you’re about to hit the Lotto and that will solve everything.

Meanwhile, back in Macroworld …

 

Jim Morin nails the state of the presidency.

Dear Leader has always been susceptible to conspiracy theories, including the whole Obama birth certificate thing, and he’s also been a sterling example of the politician of whom it is said “If you want to find out what he thinks, find out who he spoke to last.”

I’ve been reading “Anonymous’s” book, “A Warning,” which provides an inside look at the Trump White House. According to that source, there is a lot of effort put into trying to steer Trump in a responsible direction only to have him suddenly hit the Twittersphere with some nonsensical announcement in just the opposite direction or no discernible direction at all.

It all sounds terribly familiar.

I worked for someone similar, a brash bully who assigned derogatory nicknames to people he didn’t like, hired beautiful women who were not qualified for their jobs and sat through meetings ignoring what he didn’t want to hear.

He’d been a corporate VP at a major company, which sounded like we were getting someone dynamic, but what we were getting was someone on his way to the ash heap.

Fortunately, he and I clashed and he fired me. The cardboard box isn’t the worst thing you can be handed, because being there wasn’t any fun, and I got to watch from the outside as he continued to spiral down until his wife had left him and the owners eventually had enough and fired him.

But there’s no “outside” from which to watch this gullible nitwit, and if there was some dark humor in watching him chase birth certificates around the globe, there’s nothing funny in his latest nonsensical belief, and, as Ann Telnaes points out, nothing funny in where the Useful Idiot is getting his foolish, incredibly dangerous ideas.

 

And, as Kevin Siers points out, his defense amounts to not understanding our system of government combined with a blatant disregard for anything that prevents him from doing whatever he wants.

Which is to say that he not only doesn’t know what is in that document — and he keeps saying things that prove that — but he doesn’t comprehend the fact that it is paramount, that you can’t just dismiss the parts you don’t like.

When he was nominated, and then when he was elected, there was a hopeful theory that the Republican majority would rein him in and guide him towards responsible choices.

Instead, they have fallen into lockstep with him, which not only undermines current governmental practices, but adds credibility to his bizarre, self-serving anarchistic take on things.

Which in turn gives the Deplorables backup for their willingness to accept his world view.

Which in turn adds credibility to General Grant’s prediction of our next Civil War:

 If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason’s and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

I wish I could disagree.

Oh well, what the hell. I’m not going to stop caring about Macroworld, but at least my Microworld is in good shape.

If yours is not, I implore you to click on this link, a message of hope that I repeat each year on its shortest, darkest day.

Because blue is not a permanent color.