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| "The Turtle and the Scorpion" tale |
Speech: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
(from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth)
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. Source: Poetry Foundation
Steve Bannon - before he became the president* whisperer, White House resident white supremacist Grand Poo-Bah and all-around jerk face (that always looks drunk when he's supposedly trying to be sober and serious), was an executive producer on "Seinfeld" - a comedy show literally about... nothing.
There was no particular theme to the show other than Jerry Seinfeld occasionally doing stand up, struggling at it but never going "poor." There was never any social commentary like other comedy shows - Good Times, The Jefferson's, Chico and the Man, All in the Family, Family Ties, Family Matters and most recently, Black-ish - would delve into. That would be WAY too serious. Because Bannon produced the show, it explains the lack of diversity in its cast and feature shots of New York City - one of the most diverse places in the world - with few people of color or other nationalities. Fans viewed Seinfeld's day-to-day experiences with his friends - especially Kramer - as a farcical escape from mundane reality. When the last show was broadcast, many in my office (at the time, Motorola) were depressed. I was not a fan, so I did not share in their angst on the disappearance of... nothing. Quora has a better summation.
Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" book dropped like a lead balloon from a Zeppelin with C4 strapped to it. The salacious charges most likely will be pushed back on by this administration and many proven false with respect to sourcing, but it's featured on Brietbart, and his 16 tweets didn't help (see "Related links"). The 20 revelations Newsweek summarizes you can peruse at your leisure. Numbers 3, 11, 13, 14 and 16 should give you pause:
3. Trump didn't want to win, and no one in his campaign thought he would win. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” former national security adviser Michael Flynn assured his friends about his decision to accept $45,000 for a speech in Russia.
11. As a candidate, Trump had no interest in learning about the Constitution, which he knew very little about. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment, before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head,” said Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to the Trump campaign.
13. Trump didn't enjoy his own inauguration. "He was angry that A-level stars had snubbed the event, disgruntled with the accommodations at Blair House, and visibly fighting with his wife, who seemed on the verge of tears," the book claims.
14. Trump reassured Melania that he would not win the election. On election night, when it became clear that he would win, "Melania was in tears—and not of joy."
16. Trump never reads. “He didn't process information in any conventional sense. He didn't read. He didn't really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate,” the book says.
He didn't want the job?
Could that be what this has been all about?
Speculation: I think it was really meant to be a long con. He'd be howling from the sidelines on Fox at the "Crooked Hillary Administration" as he talked their chief propagandists Hannity and O'Reilly to what would eventually be Trump TV, 24/7. Money is his god, and the con his altar. Being president* was an accident of our collective civics ineptitude and an antiquated electoral college designed to give southern, slave-owning states an equal footing with those damned, northern Yankees, which technically he is. But birtherism, Russian interference and bigotry at the first and only African American president; a little misogyny and self-loathing from the 53% of white women and hypocrisy from the 81% of "family values" white evangelicals that voted the p-grabber in, and we're at this epoch of a twitter feud between two infantile, bad hairdo, insane narcissists comparing the size of their nuclear button-schlongs.
Gripping his tiny own and howling conspiracy theories from the sidelines is so much more fun than the aforementioned conspiracy theorist having the nuclear codes.
The Olympic levels of obfuscation totaling 1,950 in 347 days (and counting); the roller coaster news cycles that focus on the next level of low from an obnoxious narcissist that underestimated the scope of the job he never wanted. A man who has dubious ties to organized crime and Russian oligarchs to cover for a lack of business acumen. A man that believes his own myths about himself, literally taking Karl Rove's "created realities" and making his own bubble/covfefe Twilight Zone. A president* whose not even intelligent enough to be Seinfeld: he's more like Kramer, gene-spliced with Archie Bunker in the Jeff Goldblum 80's remake of "The Fly."
He may yet "make America great again" if we survive this: by reminding us our federal republic is precious and without attention (or care), fleeting.
*The usage of the asterisk (*) next to president* I borrow from and attribute to Charles P. Pierce, a writer for Esquire magazine and frequent media commentator on MSNBC. He's also author of the prescient book: "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free." And so, despite his and other authors' warnings to the contrary, our republic is at the stage-edge of this cliff...
Related links:
"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump": Psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee on Growing Mental Health Concerns, Democracy Now!
Donald Trump's 16-tweet Tuesday tells the wild story of his entire presidency
Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Trump's Locker Room Talk and Nuclear War Talk Finally Converged
Jack Holmes, Esquire
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