Essence of Trumpism
 

Jim Moonan asked, over on General Talk, if anyone has been able to create proverbs or sayings to capture how so many do so much to harm themselves by loving or even tolerating Trump. Of course, many have already tried in prose and verse, but shall we try again? Post verse, prose and proverbs, if you’re so inclined.

OK, I’ll risk it.

Self-Annihilation

The purpose of propaganda, the Church and Hitler knew,
is repeating lies until the victims think like you.
Seamlessly, your victims will adhere to you as one,
and fusing finally means that the “new normal” won.
Make us Great Again and we’ll soon feel at home,
our unity community a la the Stockholm syndrome.

Do people 'harm themselves' by tolerating Trump? How might one not tolerate him? By marching uselessly up and down in front of public buildings at weekends when he and his administration aren't there? No. The English polymath Jonathan Miller observed of his atheism that 'I live my life without reference to God. I don't spend time not believing in Him.' Live your life without reference to Trump: do other things more socially useful.

When an administration's policies are destructive, it's socially useful to oppose it and the policies.

Not everyone has the luxury of living without reference to Trump. In that regard, as a white cisgender male without urgent financial needs, I'm among the luckier Americans (not to mention those overseas who are hurt by his policies). But I still have responsibility for the government that represents me.

There may be more useful things to do than marching, but it's not useless to express one's opinion, be part of an activist community, or show those Trump is attacking that one supports them.

A lot of us marched up and down when they were about to repeal Obamacare, and then they didn't. I have no doubt that the walking up and down was instrumental in saving healthcare for many millions of people

Points taken, Roger and Max. I suppose I just reacted badly to the idea that those so much as tolerating Trump harm themselves by doing so. It seems to make activism mandatory, somehow, and I don't feel that can be right.

Adrian, Trump isn't a problem that will go away if you just ignore it. The real question we are facing now is whether our constitutional system is strong enough to keep Trump from installing himself as dictator. As some wise man said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

People watch a lot of reality TV — and today the flashy, combative presentation styles of reality TV and television news are often virtually indistinguishable. After hosting 14 seasons of The Apprentice, Trump was already thoroughly ingrained in a lot of people's minds as a 'straight-talking, tell it like it is' successful businessman. Viewers may have laughed at him a little (the hair, the tan), but many also respected and laughed with him — a large part of that show's appeal was a sort of manufactured schadenfreude at seeing contestants' incompetence and pretentions exposed by Trump. No other politician has had this kind of lengthy, controlled exposure and image-defining before running for President.

To answer Ralph's question, I think Randy Newman put it pretty well in his song 'Rednecks' (writing in character and about someone else)

'Well, he may be a fool but he's our fool
If they think they're better than him they're wrong'

I do think the mainstream news media, including its nominally liberal sections who are so aghast at Trump now, have a lot to answer for, for giving his 2015/16 campaigns so much exposure and airtime because they were 'entertaining' and good for ratings.

Adrian. a non-existent God can clearly do us no harm, so there is no point in spending time not believing in him. Trump's existence, on the other hand, is all too horribly real, and I agree with Max and Bob that, for those able to do so, it's better than nothing to try to find ways of kicking against the prick.

Adrian, your analogy to living your life without reference to God is absurd. Atheists are not afraid of God taking their basic liberties while they ignore him, or sending them or their children to war, or befriending our enemies because if helps his own business, or demeaning America, or declaring himself God for Life. And so forth. There is little, today, that is more socially useful than aggressively opposing Trump.

The Flam about Flynn? A pardon for him?

Trumped up is soon tamped down.

A pig and his trough are soon parted.

A POTUS today, pig shit tomorrow.

Loving pain, they love the devil.

The clown’s delusions breed confusion.

You can put an outsize necktie on a pig, it's still Trump.

Vote Trump once more and you'll never have to vote again.

All that is necessary for evil to flourish is MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

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Adrian, I like the ominous tenor of your pithy summation. Methinks it hits the spot.
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Proverbs on the POTUS

The Drunk-on-Trump are Foxoholics

Trumpism's tribes are tacit traitors

Trump’s a tricked-out Skinhead

Trump’s amok, a feckless fuck

Trumpism tramples Truth

Trumpism is Sadism

Trumpism’s Tribes are Terrorists

Trumpism treats Toddlers like Turds

Trumpists War with Fecklessness

Nineteenth-Century Con Man
 

Captain Simon Suggs says, “It is good to be shifty in a new country,”

And POTUS (President Of Tacky Ugly Shiftiness) is a big fan.

Weaponized Words

He shoots his mouth off frequently,
targeting imagined foes
and critics with frivolity,
firing lies as his nose grows.

His soldiers march with grave demeanor,
repeating him in slavish thanks.
They’ll take a bullet for their Fuhrer,
Trump, his weaponized words blanks.


Agonic Aspirants

The agon of the geezers:
Both of them were pleasers,
Biden cool and white,
Sanders red and tight.

And our own poet laureate speaks truth to power in her final collection in that role...

https://blackcapsule.org/2019/02/25/swearing-in/

That's terrific, Ann. Thanks for the alert!

Non-Stick POTUS

Teflon Trump
We’d like to dump
Rails from his stump
He’ll shoot a chump
And if a clump
That’s Anti-Trump
Attempts to bump
Him on his rump
That’s wide and plump
He’ll shoot the chump
‘Cause cops won’t jump
To third-degree pump
Teflon Trump

For a saying that best captures the harm done to someone by loving Donald Trump, I don't think I can improve on the self-idolising President's own words:

"I do want corruption, always."

“Believe me, I do want corruption
Always, for ever and ever.
Without it, no way I’d be POTUS today -
I couldn’t have done it, no, never.”

Don’s Midas Touch

Santa failed to bring Don gold,
so Don, a tot forever young,
tweeted Santa was too old,
then Santa filled his sock with dung,
but Don declared that it was gold

Donald Duck
 

DONALD DUCK

Donald, when will you learn to duck
slings and arrows coming your way.
Soon you’re going to run out of luck.
Donald, when will you learn to duck
and avoid being covered in muck;
hubris will never stop the spray.
Donald, when will you learn to duck,
if you weren’t God, you’d start to pray.

A poem of mine published by the late Les Murray in Quadrant.

Donald John Trump
gosh what a chump
turning this country into a dump.

Back on the stump
like a foul lump
turning our country into a dump.

The Necessity of Prayer

When presidents preach of their righteous ways,
the atheist sinks to his knees and prays.

(published in Asses of Paranassus)

placed for publication

The Hoax

see it at Jerry Jazz Musician


https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-ide...152649383.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/12/u...rty-death.html

At the Shite House

When POTUS lies, the world sighs.

He came. He saw. He blamed.

Lie. Steal votes. Repeat.

Dirty tricks. The fix. He sticks.

Traitor Trump. Trump’s Troops. Tough Moms.

Incite violence: Film for campaign ads.

If he loses, T declares martial law.

Whatever is is corrupted.

Loving pain, they love the devil.

The clown’s delusions breed confusion.

Aping the mob, he loves to rob.


T is for Treason

“Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

John Harrington (1615)

Tightened:

If treason prospers, none dare call it treason.
(Certainly no Republicans)

D C Comix

Child-mannered Donald Trump
enters Walter Reed
and changes into
a super zero!

Look dad! Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
No son—
it’s Stupidman!

I’m sorry son.

The Efficacy of Prayer

(Ruth Bader Ginsberg died on September 18th. Her dying wish, cynically ignored by Trump and his vile enablers, was that she should not be replaced until a new President has been elected. On October 2nd, Donald Trump announced that he had contracted Covid-19.)

Said God, responding to a humble prayer from RBG:
“Give Trump the virus? Done! And thank you for reminding me.”

“You’re the President, not some crazy uncle”—
Savannah Guthrie
“Actually.......”—
Mary L Trump

Trump: The anus horribilis of this annus horribilis

Trump's the Grump who stole not only Thanksgiving and Christmas but the whole of 2020.

My last verse on the perverse POTUS

On Last Looking into The Art of the Toxic Tweet

After John Keats

I have travelled where the Truth is sold
and many shady DC leaders seen:
found DT’s Towers and his clubs have been
where golfers faithful to the POTUS trolled,
and learned of brilliant deals, harsh and cold,
that won the USA as his domain.
Yet I never heard words so insane
until Trump’s toxic tweets gushed brash and bold:

I felt just like a scanner of the skies
who fears Korean missiles screaming down,
but dreaded, even more, Klan rebel cries
when POTUS praised his racist tribes—white men
rejoicing that his tweeted lures and lies
compelled a bloody coup in Washington.

Let's hope it's the end of the ogre!

A NEW HERMAN’S HERMIT

There’s a kind of hush all over the world
except for the squelching of sour grapes!
Now his fallacious flag has been unfurled,
there’s a kind of hush all over the world.
Now that his tiresome tweets have un-twirled,
he’s throwing a tantrum behind the drapes.
There’s a kind of hush all over the world
except for the squelching of sour grapes.
The more he crushes with ferocious feet,
the tastier the wine of his defeat!

Teflon Trump
 

I pray for one day when Trump is not reported on and depicted. It's like a bad dream.

Trumpus Tyrannus

Trump the Teflon Tyrant
living by the sea
hates both you and me
and our democracy:
A raging, spiteful elephant-
king of the GOP.
In him they finally see
their monopoly.

For Trump, the heaven sent,
they sing with gospel glee
that they will soon be free,
enslaved in harmony:
chorus of a tragedy
dreamt by Tyrant Trump.

The Old Boot in the Face


“Guys, guys, guys, come watch! I’m about to do the Boot in the Face!”

“No, thanks, we’ve seen it a million times.”

“But I do a great Boot in the Face! You guys love the Boot in the Face!”

“Show us the Loop de Loop! That should be fun! Let’s see a Loop de Loop!”

“… but I do a great Boot in the Face! Let me do the Boot in the Face again …!”

And as the dusty channel button found itself being progressively pushed at last, so Fascism perished from the Earth.