Columnists
Agent Orange
Ah, The Donald. Deep down inside y’all knew it had to happen. The 2016 American election was like that scratchy throat and slight fever that heralds the approach of a nasty cold. Sometimes you figure if you just think good thoughts, it’ll go away. Other times you throw everything you’ve got at it hoping to make it not happen. Either way it’ll be a cold. Like a favourite health teacher used to say, “a cold will only last for 10 days and after that time you’ll feel out-of-sorts for a spell and then you get back on track.”
The infection that is the American Republican Party, in particular The Donald is about to become a full-blown pestilence. It will last, one way or the other, for four years. As with a nasty cold, even the people who aren’t living in the same house will be affected. Like it or not, Canada will be impacted by the politics of the United States of America. And as far as I’m concerned, this is not the time to sit back and give Donald Trump a chance to prove we’ve been wrong about him. He’s already demonstrated, for the past decade of his Presidential campaign, that he’s the guy who cares only about himself and his business interests. And yes, I wrote “decade”. He’s been at this campaign to be the POTUS for a long, long time. If you know his story, you’ll know he’s soiled his own nest (many times) and he now has made it his mission to do the same to everything he can lay his tiny hands upon. It’s like a really, really funny, scary, stupid or farcical movie, except the world can’t fast forward to the end credits and can’t change the channel.
I am more comfortable with the thought of four years of Trump’s bravado if I keep in mind that many of the outrageous pronouncements he made during the campaign will never be carried out. I’m sure he’ll tighten up immigration controls, but I doubt he’ll ban all Muslims from entering the US. Building a wall? Well, the Drumpf apparently knows all about construction, or so he says, but the environmental lawsuits will set him back on his “flabby white arse” before the first load of cement and rebar is ordered. At best, this will become a doomed-to-failure make-work project. But it will create a host of go-nowhere jobs. As in “jobs, jobs, jobs”. As far as rounding up the millions of undocumented illegals goes, his Plan A is at best nonviable. It’ll be a logistical nightmare unless he’s going to rely on neighbours turning neighbours in for a bounty. As for his Plan B, to send the illegals packing, his four years will be up before he gets that far. At best he’ll increase border security.
On the lighter and brighter side of his term of office, the Agent Orange of the Oval Office will have fewer opportunities, and less time, to grope and grab. His every move will be documented, photographed and filmed. It’s a presidential fact of life. However, he has incited the greasier public to “feel free” to let their misogyny, xenophobia and racism bubble up and spill into the streets of his “great again” US of ’Merka. And, while The Donald’s love affair with foreign dictators borders on fetishism, it does make sense that the US should develop better relationships with countries such as Russia. Also, besides the “wall jobs,” Trump has taken a host of unemployables under his flabby wing to be his transition team and a headier list of less than intelligent folks will be in his Cabinet. Ah, the DunderTrump will be the man to watch for the next four years.
“Say what you will about Trump, he is not stupid. He is a smart man with a deep understanding of what stupid people want.” – Andy Borowitz
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