Doing the beautiful thing
Locking up kids is exactly like my paisley shirt.
Life is not fun for the President of the United States, even an Apprentice Pres who, under the new rules, gets to delegate important decisions to his wife and kids or to admit he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he discusses the niceties of wheat grading.
You’d think that would calm a guy’s nerves a bit, knowing that he’s not alone; to hear our loving, indulgent laughter as we shake our heads and shoot each other knowing looks:
He’s just a beginner, he’ll pick it up in no time!
But one ever underestimates how delicate a President can be as, with consummate skill, he turbo-charges narcissism to a level that, in less experienced hands, could easily be fatal.
Justin seriously underestimated this, as did Hillary, as did Barack, and as I hear their Christian names — at least names are still Christian, I mean, at least we’re still able to keep that up — those losers and back-stabbers rightfully twirl away into insignificance. These are ersatz people, pretend-friends, not besties like one thought, who simply do not realize that words hurt.
And as only one sensitive guy can understand another sensitive guy, so can I totally understand why Don is sulky from time to time. Totally.
This is a highly-strung creature, and were you to call him an “animal” he would surely be cat, not dog. You can’t, after all, do anything to a cat. You have to take its measure, assess its mood. You have to have an approach.
Every day another challenge, another gust of afflatus over the quivering strings of the lyre.
We fail to appreciate a poet manqué, who gives us a tantalizing glimpse of how life in the Free World would have unfolded under the leadership of Sylvia Plath. Screw NAFTA, it’s all about my wound. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through!
And I can’t help feeling for him when he’s all rattled and unnerved, so obviously feeling the born leader’s wounded pride that comes from so desperately wanting to push that button, being absolutely entitled to push that button, having, god only knows, any number of reasons to push that button, and yet time after time just having his twiny hwand unceremoniously slapped away.
Everyone from the cleaning lady to Mike Pence to the high-school kids on tour, everyone just hovering, watching him like an eagle, in coordinated shifts, twenty-four-seven.
Around three P.M. his blood sugar gets a teensy bit low and that’s when he drops the Big Guy in Charge persona, shows his soft, hypoglycemic, vulnerable side.
“Just one widdle push?” he whispers, that twiny hwand flutters towards the suitcase —
then everyone rushing up to him and SLAP!
Do you seriously wonder why he gets pouty sometimes?
Recently it’s been the child detainment thing, and he’s just pushed one way and pulled another. Is it right to detain very young children? There is a lot to consider, here! I mean, it’s easy for you, you can boohoo all you want, but are these children actual people that you should have compassion for? I mean ARE they people at all?
Or are they just tiny actors, like Ann Coulter said, pretending to be children, reading scripts written by liberals?
Now, we all know that Ann Coulter is a terrible human being, but what do you think of her as a pundit? Because I think, as a pundit, she’s a terrible human being.
There I go again. Falling for it.
But getting back to traumatizing children. This is the kind of hard decision-making a POTUS has to deal with, delicate or not. The rule of law says you can’t just lock people up, even though it’s handy and rules aren’t supposed to apply to you; and the moral law tells you that vulnerable, frightened children deserve, even demand, our love and protection.
But being good is for sissies and your base wants you rebellious and strong! Thus come the nagging doubts, the wavering. How can one ever determine the basis for a decision? No wonder he gets cranky and flip-flops!
Lock up the children, La La LA!
Unlock the children, La La LA!
Which one is this one? La La LA!
Hi-ho the President’s life!
He signs the order telling ICE to end the separation of children from parents, then later he’s sorry. He confides he wishes he hadn’t signed the order. No other President has been so open, so transparent, about his regrets. This, truly, is a man who has the guts to be himself, without shame.
It’s like when I was fourteen
and I wanted to buy this beautiful paisley shirt, and my mom made me get a sensible shirt, not the beautiful paisley shirt, and I dutifully got the sensible shirt. And I felt exactly the way Trump feels, now, after he lost his mojo, after he was browbeaten by Melania — who anyway doesn’t care, do you? Let them wear H&M! — after he broke down, went against his gut instinct and signed the order stopping those kids being locked up alone.
He did the right thing, but is he happy? You can tell how resentful he feels, how unmanned. How resentful he feels knowing he did the sensible thing, when he wanted to do the beautiful thing.
That’s like my beautiful paisley shirt. I know that feeling. You just don’t, some of you, understand how we men, in a world full of wives and mothers, are always sacrificing our dreams; always giving up the beautiful for the sensible.
He wants to lock up the kids, man. And I understand that.
Because it’s exactly like my beautiful paisley shirt.
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