Come, Mr. Taliban....

 

It looked so easy from afar. Donald Trump moved into the executive mansion nearly thirty-two months ago seriously believing that he could effortlessly tackle the toughest job in the world; the spoils on victory would be his for the taking. He must realize today, deep down inside his psyche, what a complete mess he has made of things. Calling his latest blunder a "debacle" is being too kind. Allegedly inviting the Taliban to Camp David for peace negotiations, and then announcing that the offer had been withdrawn before anyone understood that it had been made in the first place....This is statecraft for crazy people. Even John Bolton and Mike Pence thought that concessions to the  very people who attacked the United States eighteen years ago on Wednesday was a spectacularly stupid idea. When the day comes that Bolton and Pence are the most reasonable people in the room, look out your window for flying pigs. Can you even imagine the massive shit-fit the loony right wing in this doomed country would have had if Barack Obama had attempted anything as ludicrous as that? It gives me a serious case of the giggles just thinking about it.

And yet in spite of everything, support for this sociopathic knucklehead continues to dwell at somewhere between thirty-five and forty percent. What does that tell you about us? Two days ago an acquaintance of mine, a forty-three year old woman I've known for many years, said to me in my living room, "Donald Trump is the best president we've ever had. I like him because he speaks his mind". Her willful ignorance alarmed and angered me. It took every bit of self-restraint I could possibly muster to hold my tongue. No amount of persuasion could make her understand that perhaps sending this guy to the White House was not a very good idea. This woman is no backwoods hick from rural Mississippi, this is a supposedly mature person living in New York's Hudson Valley. The conversation so depressed me that after she left, I went back to bed. There are some days when consciousness is not a viable option. I'm serious.

This is going to end badly, but I repeat myself.

There are some talking heads who are reasonably speculating that The Donald called off the whole thing for no other reason than politics. He might have been advised that talks with the Taliban will surely fail, and that waiting until the eve of the 2020 election would be the better part of expediency. Whatever the case, he has surely made a dangerous situation in Afghanistan more perilous for the men and women who are stuck there wearing American military uniforms. It's a cinch that the longest war in American history won't be ending any time soon, and that the bloodshed will continue without pause.

Just when you thought that this disgusting administration could not possibly outdo itself in sheer incompetence, they lower the bar yet again. I want to say that the only good thing that will come of the Trump era will be the eternal eradication of conservatism in America, but that would be wishful thinking on my part. From where I sit on September 9, 2019, I give Trump's chances at re-election next year at about fifty-fifty. In addition to consciousness, optimism is also not much of an option during these dark days in the history of Idiot Nation. Think of what might have been, what we could have been. Look at what we have become.

Fuck it, I'm going back to bed.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED LISTENING:

Democracy is coming to the USA

by Leonard Cohen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEDSRP3yNPo

 

 

Get the fuck out of the way.