While I don't disagree with Garrison Keillor, I do worry some over our
continuing to focus most of our attention on Donald J. Trump.
Frankly, I would relegate him to a Comic Book Character, The
Trumpster, and turn Batman loose on him.
The real threat to that which we have called, "Our American Way of
Life", will be under attack by those cabinet appointees, once
confirmed and turned loose to "Make America Great" again. This, by
the way, is code for, "Make America White".
Donald J. Trump, always the Showman, will continue to distract us with
his twitters and his outrageous contempt for anyone who dares to think
differently than President Trump, distracting us all from the carnage
and plunder taking place in this once beautiful Land.
Carl Jarvis
*****
Manchester Union Leader, Sunday, 2017_02_12
By GARRISON KEILLOR
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a joint news conference with Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 10,
2017.
> (REUTERS/Jim Bourg) THE CONSTITUTION does not allow
13-year-olds to become President and now we can see why. The Boy President
proudly holding his latest executive order up for the cameras, to show that
he knows right-side-up from upside-down. Bringing his Supreme Court nominee
onstage ("So was that a surprise? Was it?") Hanging up on the prime
minister
of Australia. His homage to Frederick Douglass ("someone who's done an
amazing job") for Black History Month. Twittering about the "so-called
judge" who stopped the Muslim travel ban. Pictured in full smirk at the
National Prayer Breakfast, preening, bloviating ("In towns all across our
land, it's plain to see what we easily forget - so easily we forget this,
that the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success, but
by
> our spiritual success") on a scale of bloviation equal to Warren G. Harding
and the great gasbags of the 19th century. You think, let the man be
President but please don't put him in charge of the Weather Service or
Amtrak or the TSA. His homage to the Navy SEAL killed in the botched raid
in
Yemen showed off his style. He has only one, the Jerry Lewis Telethon
style:
"Very, very sad, but very, very beautiful. Very, very beautiful. His family
was there. Incredible family, loved him so much. So devastated - he was so
devastated. But the ceremony was amazing."
Bill Murray destroyed this style,
so did Ray of Bob & Ray, Ring Lardner, H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Mark
Twain and every satirist who ever lived, and here it is, still walking
around, and it will be the voice of our government for years to come.
Senate
Republicans have been blessing his Cabinet appointees. They might have
balked at Ben Dover for secretary of defense or Hedda Hair for secretary of
state, but the nominees were fairly respectable, compared with the man who
nominated them. They showed dignity. They didn't sit before a Senate
committee and talk about their great TV ratings. They tried to address the
subject at hand. They didn't say, "What an honor. So many great senators
here this morning. So very very important to all of us. Beautiful people.
You do incredible things. So very special."
The National Prayer Breakfast is
one of those deadly official pieties, like sand burrs that you can't get
rid
of. Every elected official must now wear a flag pin; more and more public
meetings now begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, grown people whose
allegiance used to be assumed now required to stand and salute the flag,
like obedient grade-school pupils. Why not recite the multiplication tables
and the parts of speech? And then there is the official Prayer Breakfast,
which shows the reason for separation of Church and State: because
politicians corrupt the Church. Jesus was rough on those who pray for show,
but there was the Boy President complimenting the Senate chaplain for his
fine prayer, as if it were a performance. He went on to gas about his agent
and his TV show and to say that as long as we have God, we are never alone
and to say that he grew up in a "churched home" and that it is faith that
keeps us strong. He also announced that we are not only flesh and blood: We
each have a soul.
> I'd like to believe that he does have one and that we just
haven't seen it yet. I would've been moved if he had said a prayer at the
Prayer Breakfast. A classic Christian prayer, such as "Lord God, You know
that I am unworthy to be here as President. You know that I have lied and
worked hard to incite fear and intolerance and to capitalize on it
politically. I have seduced your believers and made myself their Great
White
Hope, even though I am not one of them and never was. You know that I am
not
capable of executing my duties as the American people deserve. Lord, I come
to You in my unworthiness and shame and I ask You to take this 'cup' from
me. I wish to go to Iowa and join the Trappist monastery there and take
vows
of silence and poverty and learn carpentry or some other useful trade and
draw nearer to You in poverty and prayer. This I pray in Your Name. Amen
and
Amen."
> Had he been in the Spirit, he would've said that. But there will be
more opportunities to come.
> Garrison Keillor is an author and radio
personality. .
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