Loud and Unruly

“…It's my own design, it's my own remorse, help me to decide, help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever, everybody wants to rule the world…” Everybody Wants to Rule the World…Tears for Fears… To put it politely, American politics seem to be a little goofy, right now. The newly elected president seems hell bent on alienating everybody, foreign and domestic, and it’s fair to ask where we are headed.  I’m not quite sure. I’ve never seen anything quite this crazy, and that includes being in college during the 60’s days of rage. We have a president whose completely off the wall and showing no signs of getting his shit together anytime soon.  As I predicted back in January, Trump and Musk had their “falling out”, it was bound to happen. You can’t put two narcissists and their monster egos in the same room and expect anything different. Both are prone to quibbling, temper tantrums, and name calling. I don’t usually agree with much of anything AOC says, but she hit the nail right on the head when she said, “…the girls are fighting”.  I doubt I’m the first guy who’s raised an eyebrow at Trump’s hissy fits, emotional outbursts, hurt feelings and penchant for junior high school name calling—make of it what you will. Things went from weird to weirder when Trump started around with his on again, off again tariffs and got it shoved right back in his face. I imagine a few world leaders talked on the phone and came to agreement about how they’d handle Trump and his tariffs. All the tariff “dust ups” accomplished was screwing with the stock market and losing working Americans a lot of money in their 401K’s. Trump is, and will remain, a scam artist. After using his presidency to sell bibles, guitars, tennis shoes and bitcoin, he’s progressed to million dollar “pay for play” dinners at Mar-a-Lago, and shaking down Qatar for a 40-million-dollar jet. His MAGA supporters have a blood oath with Trump, but swing voters don’t, they just liked him slightly better than a screwed-up Kamala Harris. MAGA sees little wrong with most of this because Trump still says all the things that are music to their ears. Few, if any, of his promises will ever come to fruition, but it doesn’t really matter. Trump simply repeats the standard laundry list of cultural wars, law and order, religious and blue-collar values, and then sits back and smiles. He understands MAGA voters have nowhere else to go. What are they going to do, pull a Democratic ballot and vote for AOC?   Except for the federal courts, there’s no emergency brake on Trump, no advisors or cabinet members who’ll say, “bad idea…could be a problem…maybe, we should rethink this, Mr. President…” Trump won thanks to swing/crossover voters, but they voted on specific issues, not cultural wars, or emotion. The honeymoon will be short lived, because swing voters are an impatient group, looking for specific economic results—as they say, “…hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…” I can never remember who said it, either Shakespeare, or some L/A divorce lawyer. You don’t hear a whole lot from the Democratic leadership, I’m guessing they’re using Muhammed Ali’s “rope-a-dope” trick and letting Trump punch himself out in front of the midterms in 2026.  The democrats have their own bundle of problems, not the least of which is finding a way to get back those swing voters who walked away from Kamala Harris, shaking their head--but that’s a story for another time. This will be an interesting, if not troubling, couple of years, because as the song says, everybody does want to rule the world. As the federal courts and congress, looking at the midterms, begin a quasi-organized resistance to Trump’s excesses, you’ll see him grow louder, more confrontational, under more stress, and his health will begin to fail- he's a perfect candidate for a stroke or a heart attack … like I said earlier, it going to be loud, unruly, and pretty interesting….