Regular readers will have noticed that we failed to publish this past Tuesday. There are several reasons for this omission, including the exigencies of private life and the effects of personal laziness. However, we find it convenient to blame this, and essentially everything else, on the recent presidential election. To mark its conclusion and result, we offer the following editorial comment.
The Sherman Oaks Review of Books congratulates Donald J. Trump, Sr. on his election to the office of President of the United States.
Mr. Trump’s elevation to this, the highest office in the land, presents both him, and the American people, with a number of significant and, in this case, distinct challenges. Among them:
Mr. Trump will be faced with a job for which he has no aptitude and in which, he will discover over time, he has little interest. Like his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, he will enter office intending only to lower taxes on himself and his friends, and then play golf for four years while his colleagues and associates destroy the world. Sadly, unforeseen events — i.e., life itself — will disrupt this idyllic scheme.
Meanwhile, the formalities of the office will bore and annoy him. The necessities of diplomacy and politesse required of any head of state will make him surly and cross. Living in the White House — which he intends to do, if at all, on weekdays only — will confront his famous germaphobia with a nightmarish landscape of old things harboring Christ-knows-what ancient spores and bacteria; upholstered things, which, unlike his trademark environments of marble, steel, glass, and gold leaf, cannot be spritzed with Fantastik every ten minutes; and unlimited foot traffic of who-all knows what kinds of icky people. All of this will serve only to unnerve him and make him haz a sad. He will have to shake hands with literally everyone else on Earth. He’ll try to get out of it but tough shit.
He will have to read things. He will have to give talks before groups other than the roaring, chanting army of orcs before whom he campaigned with such preening pleasure. He will have to pretend to care about the one thing about which he is entirely indifferent, which is everything in the universe that is not him. He will have to pretend to believe in some kind of God, and to feign respect for those who believe in all other kinds of gods. He will have to pretend that he respects and admires the First Lady and other ladies as well. He will have to endure state dinners of unlimited tedium and, at the importuning of his own diplomatic staff, that consist of food other than steak, french fries, taco bowls, and KFC. He will have to pretend to understand, and respect, the ideas and opinions of people who spend time studying things, including scientists, economists, historians, and high school Honor Society members.
He will have to give at least one press conference, where he will face the possibility of being challenged when he makes up some bullshit answer, complete with bullshit statistics and bullshit citations of bullshit popular opinion.
But these are not the only challenges Mr. Trump will face. He will also find himself forced to confront an endless series of missteps, misstatements, scandals, criminal wrongdoings, and unbelievable epic clusterfucks perpetrated by his staff, his designated representatives, his Cabinet, his family, and his party. These scandals will involve money, sex, the money of sex, and the sex of money, in addition to prostitutes, children, bribery, play-for-pay, pay-per-vew, quid pro quo, dough-ray-me, and real estate.
He will, in short, find himself both gloriously triumphant and operatically self-pitying, more insecure than ever at the apex of his achievement, a figure of history and an object of loathing and derision around the world. People will thank him for things he didn’t do and blame him for things that aren’t his fault. The people whose respect he craves will pretend to respect him and will pretend that they’re not pretending. He’ll pretend to believe them and will, or will not, know that he’s pretending.
As for the rest of us, we face no less daunting a future. We will all of us be called upon to contemplate the words and deeds of the Trump administration and to make a judgment whether to shit or go blind. Those who voted for him will, as they realize he and his party have made their lives worse, enter so deep a state of denial as to resemble a vegetative coma. Those who voted against him will succumb to a bipolar state of alternating breathless hilarity and suicidal despair.
It remains to be seen whether or not Mr. Trump will serve out his full term. He may do so with aplomb. He may be undone by unscrupulous villains in his own administration, his own White House, or his own family. He may be impeached and, via a party line vote (Republicans Yea, Democrats Nay), be removed from office. He may fall victim to a real or fake heart attack and either resign, self-fire, or, with a note from his doctor with the strange hair, be allowed to go home early. He may, with the rest of us, be annihilated by climate change, alien invasion, or the giant meteor that has increasingly become the subject of so many of our prayers.
Whatever the case, we at The Review firmly believe that the future remains to be seen, and that only time will tell.
Matt Johnson
http://tinyurl.com/oall5zn
