It’s an understandable mistake, I think. Trump has really been eat-pray-loving his way through his first month as the most dangerous man on earth, seeding so many potential atrocities – including, perhaps, the breakdown of the republic itself – that human consciousness has been reduced to a panicked blur, a zoetrope of galloping despair. There are simply too many emergencies to hold all of them in your mind at once. Cecily Strong captured the feeling on this week’s Saturday Night Live: “Let me just say, you’re doing too much. I want one day without a CNN alert that scares the hell out of me.”
For instance, here’s what happened in the past few days in Trump’s America, off the top of my head:
• After Kellyanne Conway’s rumoured banishment from Sunday-morning cable news shows, the lucky public finally came face-to-face with senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who revealed himself to be a lizard who got a little too far from the heat lamp.
• Miller announced, with all the poise and charm of a bottom-tier meninist YouTuber who is one rejection away from a school shooting, that peasants shall not question the supreme leader and voter fraud is totally real. (It’s still not.)
• Ivanka, presumably, continued to pretend that she would ever in a million years have talked to Miller in high school.
• On the bustling patio at Mar-a-Lago, Trump discussed strategy regarding North Korea’s ballistic missile launch with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, revealing that – in essence – he is selling access to classified meetings for $200,000 a pop to any bored, rich Florida dick. This is completely normal and good, unlike emails.
• Michigan Republican party secretary Dan Adamini resigned after calling for “another Kent State” to deter anti-Trump protests. In 1970, the Ohio national guard shot dead four student protesters at Kent State University. Dan Adamini thought that was a good thing. The dead college children.
• A Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma introduced a bill requiring women to get approval from their male partners in order to have an abortion. He then referred to women as “hosts” and was pelted with many pairs of grateful panties.
• Michael Flynn resigned from his post as national security adviser after it was discovered that he discussed lifting sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump’s inauguration, deliberately undermining Obama’s attempt to punish Russia for interfering in the election – almost as though the Trump campaign was not particularly upset about said interference! It’s claimed that Flynn then lied to Mike Pence about it, which Pence hated. Also, it turns out that Flynn was talking to the Russians way back before the election, which means this whole administration may be implicated in some enormous treason for which it cannot make Flynn the sole scapegoat.
• Reminder: We still have not seen Trump’s tax returns.
• Intelligence agencies are reportedly withholding information from Trump because he – the literal president – is a security risk.
• Veterans on their way to support the “water protectors” at Standing Rock report being targeted by law enforcement, who apparently, like this administration, are anti-water.
• Nearly 200,000 people have been evacuated from the area around Lake Oroville dam in northern California, because the dam has a giant hole in it, because America prefers to spend its time protecting itself from refugee children instead of maintaining a safe and functioning infrastructure. Governor Jerry Brown requested federal aid from Trump (who has previously vowed to “punish” California for refusing to join him in gleefully and gratuitously destroying the lives of immigrants), but so far Trump has neither responded nor made any public mention of the impending disaster.
• He did, however, find time to tweet this: “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!” My mom says I’m cool!
The common housefly lives for about four weeks and, in that time, lays about 1,000 slimy white eggs. One can’t help but wonder: how much does the fly know? Can the fly sense its own mortality? How competent is the fly? Is the fly crapping out eggs willy-nilly on pure wild instinct, or is it cannily exploiting its brief lifespan in order to maximise personal power and profit and ensure the political dominance of its offspring with the help of two other really racist flies? Does the fly even want this job?
We may never find out. You cannot talk to a fly. All you can do is squash the eggs.
