The Soft Parade

Drumpf continues to careen out of control. Calling up world leaders like they were high school buddies. Telling Pakistan how “fantastic” they were, accepting an invitation to visit, offering to help with whatever problems they have (we have avoided any such statements for decades due to the Kashmir dispute and their possession of nukes). Congratulating the dictator/”president” of Kazahkistan on 25 years of success (he was a dictator for two decades, then elected president with 97% of the vote. Right.) Telling the new British PM to “drop by next time she was in the States.” My God. Maybe they can have pizza together.

He claimed to save Carrier jobs from moving to Mexico. But in actuality, he had Pence not resign the Indiana governorship in order that he could authorize $7M in tax breaks for Carrier, so that Carrier would only ship half of the 2000 jobs to Mexico. The Trumpeters all claim this as proof positive of his campaign pledge to bring jobs back, lacking the wit to realize that no jobs came back from anywhere, that a 1000 jobs left, and not because he punished the offending corporation, but because he gave them millions in taxpayers’ dollars.

He’s started a completely unprecedented (as is everything about this out of control megalomaniac) “Thank You” tour. Instead of focusing on the transition, or receiving daily intelligence briefings, the egotistical Orange Fool is holding rallies everywhere, acting like the campaign was still in progress, but apparently with the sole purpose of touting his win, bashing enemies he’s already beaten, and absorbing the praise of the mindless. He cannot live, it seems, without constant adulation.

As for me, I continue to be deeply depressed by every aspect of what is coming. The media, on the other hand, continues to normalize him. It seems that even the so-called “good guys” will simply lay down and wait for the chariot to roll over them. Except for Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnel and Joy Reid. Thank god for them, and especially Rachel. If the day comes when she stops making the obvious point, I will know the fight is truly lost.

Pelosi was reelected as minority leader, proving that the Dems have no plan or even real intent whatsoever of impeding the coming disaster. Tom Ryan from Ohio had great ideas and fire in his belly, something we desperately needed. Instead, we got the same old same old. Damn it! Why won’t somebody make a real effort to do something?

But then I realize that there’s nothing to do, except hunker down and hope there’ll be something left to salvage when the storm of stupidity and greed passes.

Welcome to the Soft Parade
All our lives we sweat and save,
Building for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say,
Somehow to defend this place
Everything must be this way,
Everything must be this way, yeah
The Soft Parade has now begun,
Listen to the engines hum

Jim Morrison


© 2016 Chuck Puckett