I’m trying hard to be optimistic about the country’s government. At times it seems like a madcap tragicomedy featuring Trump, multicolored hair and pumpkin-colored face, at once oblivious, but also easily slighted, delivering daily shocks to our now-fragile democracy.
I hope Trump stays alive because Vice President Elon Musk — oops, sorry, J.D. Vance — might be worse. Or not. (Wait, both Musk and Vance are unthinkable, although you would not be blamed for thinking Musk is already the vice president while Vance has merely been dispatched to Europe to insult our allies.)
Meanwhile, back in the Oval Office, children are the new power accessory. Musk, who has 13 children, shows up for work (exactly what is his job?) with a son on his shoulders, the tyke wearing a mini-size cashmere overcoat and mouthing off at the President. What are we to think? That this ruthless genius (Musk, not Trump, silly) is “just like us?” Not quite. He has about a dozen children, including this one, whose name is X Æ A-Xii, and whose mother’s first name is Grimes. What’s most unusual is the fact that egomaniac Trump looks on placidly, almost lovingly, while Musk takes over and upstages him.
Musk has insinuated himself into the role (if not the name) of vice president. He wears a baseball cap, even in the Oval Office, while Trump is holding a press conference. Do not be surprised if all Oval Office staffers start wearing Trump baseball caps. I wonder if the Cabinet and Republicans in Congress will follow suit. If they do, I suggest the Dems wear beanies with mini-rotors on them, even if just for a day. Come to think of it, beanies with rotors would be a great way for members of Congress to signal that any speaker is spouting hot air. Is this speaker boring, lying, and/or running too long? Turn on your beanies!
Could Trump be losing his edge? He hasn’t mocked people with handicaps recently, and unless the Secret Service is being paid off, he hasn’t raped anyone either.
Maybe he longs for “what might have been” if his own older sons, Don Jr. and Eric, had become self-made billionaires and hung around the Oval Office with their children, his real grandchildren. Maybe his sons are not being phased out in favor of Musk, but they’re definitely not as omnipresent as Musk. And not nearly as rich either. And that matters to their father.
The situation is also a bit like Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, only in reverse. In the classic play, Biff and his younger brother, Happy, reminisce about their adolescence and bemoan their father Willy Loman’s criticism of them. Willy, ever the salesman, points out to his sons that although their friend Bernard is smart, he is not “well liked,” which will hurt him in the long run.
For Trump, of course, the equivalent of well-liked is boorish and ruthless. He would be horrified, and undoubtedly jealous, if his sons bested him in anything, particularly humanity.