Release the Donald!

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For a brief moment last week I thought our long national nightmare was over. Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News, where else, to explain the porn star thing and didn’t try to stick the ridiculous cover story.

Yes, she was paid to keep her mouth shut. Yes, Trump paid for it. The $130,000 just came out of Cohen’s monthly retainer. At last, Trump was no longer acting like a swamp politician — waffling, trimming, cowering and fabricating. He was going to be Trump. Corrupt, vulgar, sleazy and proud of it.

But wait, Giuliani said it wasn’t a campaign violation, because Trump was paying to keep the —false — allegation of adulterous sex from needlessly upsetting his latest wife. After all, he did not have sex with that women, Miss Daniels.

Well, that wasn’t very Trumpian. He’s supposed to be bold, bad and unapologetic. No doubt someone had pointed out that paying $130,000 to someone you didn’t have sex with sounded insane. Why pay to hush up something you didn’t do? So Melania wouldn’t jump to an expensive divorce lawyer conclusion? And there was more bad news. Apparently, no matter what Rudy thinks, paying extortion in installments for not having sex with a person can still be a campaign finance violation and/or tax violation.

Not content with the mess he’d made, Rudy quickly lurched off script again. The payoff, a couple weeks before the election, was not political, though he hastened to add, “Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton…” Right. so the payoff was political. Hillary would have not just cooked Trump’s goose but napalmed it. My God, such a scandal might even have negated all that meddling by those Russian trolls
Trump’s team was colluding with.

Despite Giuliani’s comic incompetence, it has pointed the way out of the dark labyrinth of sex, lies, and videotape that Trump finds himself in. Since he and his team can’t keep straight which phony story they are selling, why not just start telling the truth? Suppose he came out and said this:

“Of course, I had sex with a porn star, a “Playboy” playmate and dozens of other babes. Who wouldn’t? What do you think billions are good for? Greens fees? Yes, I grabbed all those women who said I did. It’s one of the perks of being a celebrity, like I told Billy Bush — same as those swag bags, the best seats wherever you go, and getting comped at Vegas.

“Also, do Americans really care what goes on in Russia? I don’t think so. And all those crooked oligarchs hiding money overseas has been very good for our business, as Don Jr. stupidly admitted. If you can’t make a killing as president, you don’t know how the system works. So, you bet I accepted the offers by Assange and Putin and Cambridge Analytica and Facebook to help steal the election. Nobody wanted Hillary, especially Putin and coal miners.

“It worked, didn’t it? And lifting sanctions on Putin was a small price to pay. You don’t like it? Tough. I’m the president. My base loves it. And nobody cares about complainers getting shot or poisoned by Putin. If they were worth keeping alive, they’d have their own bodyguards. I do.

“Guns? Buy all you want. Climate change? Doing something about it would be bad for businesses that gave a lot of donations to me and employs a lot of my voters. Let those snotty millennials do something about about it when their turn comes. My people care more about gas-guzzling pick-up trucks than a bunch of mangy polar bears.

“Diplomacy, who needs it? If someone’s going to run their mouth, it’s going to be me, not some wishy-washy compromiser from the State Department. And what’s wrong wth nuking Iranians and North Koreans before they can nuke us? However, if they want to put up a Trump Tower in Pyongyang or Tehran, we can talk. I’ll send Ivanka over.

“And by the way, Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller, YOU’RE FIRED! I want my Justice Department to give me justice and deny it to my critics. Attorney General Giuliani will see to that. And Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne, you can start packing. If I’m going to tell the truth from now on, why pay you to lie for me?

“I feel better already. How about you, America? This is the way MAGA is supposed to work —for me. I am the great and powerful POTUS. Tell Mattis to kill all the journalists, except Hannity, and burn all the books, except “The Art of the Deal” and this “Bible” thing my fans seem so fond of. But between us, turning the other cheek is for losers, and the meek inherit nothing.”

President Zero Sum

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We know from their words what the founding fathers believed. Madison and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers express their belief in the necessity for a government whose power is limited, with built-in safeguards against both the tyrant and the tyranny of the mob, because men are not angels.

Jefferson believed in a nation of yeoman farmers, Hamilton in an economy of private manufactures, but also to enable it a national bank and a vigorous public sector providing public works. Franklin spoke for personal frugality, ingenuity and industry; Washington for restraint, order, duty; Lincoln for a government of, by and for the people, all of whom are created equal.

A succession of presidents beginning wth Theodore Roosevelt believed government had a role in assuring the people a square deal, a new deal, a fair deal by conserving natural resources, controlling corporate rapacity, providing consumer protection, guaranteeing the right to freedom of speech and worship, and to be free from want and fear. They sought to protect the right to work and to provide security, justice, and equality. All believed in literacy, free speech, and a free press as bulwarks against demagoguery.

We are now ruled by a zero sum president who was taught at his father’s knee that life is divided into winners and losers. His philosophy scorns the win-win of compromise and meeting in the middle in favor of a winner take all universe. He has shown himself to be tone-deaf, if not actively hostile, to a balance of powers, to checks and balances, the granting of some rights to the state and the reserving of others to the people that are the essence of constitutional government.

Trump has spoken in favor of autocrats, and as if he were an autocrat. He describes the Justice Department as “his,” its lawyers no different from his private stable of attorneys, tasked with putting in the fix. He also speaks of “his” generals. The Us versus Them, my side versus your side dichotomy colors his every judgement.

In his mind, if immigrants to America win, then native-born Americans must be the losers. If we trade with other nations, then we must win — as measured by trade surpluses or deficits. And if we run a deficit, we must address the imbalance by banning imports, imposing tariffs or requiring the other side to purchase our products.

Clearly these notions are absurd. A nation of immigrants has prospered mightily by welcoming talents from elsewhere. And not every trade relationship can run a surplus. We don’t produce coffee or tea in this country so we must either quit drinking the stuff or be losers. Maybe that’s why Trump drinks only Diet Coke. But by that logic, countries in the market for crops we grow or advanced technological products we produce should refuse to purchase them. It would unbalance their ledger. Commerce and trade are cooperative endeavors, which may explain why Trump as a businessman was an expert in bankruptcy.

In day to day politics, we now behave on every issue as if a Democratic win is synonymous with a Republican loss. But if legislation benefits the people that both parties represent, should partisan advantage matter? Logically, no. But if you are wedded to never meeting in the middle, only having fights you can win, you will inevitably accomplish very little. Is nothing really better than a deal in which each side gets something?

Such behavior isn’t playing hardball or being “Tough” and “Strong,” two of Trump’s favorite words. It is often simply pigheaded, intransigent and self-defeating. Examples of how this need for a win at all costs leads to failure are everywhere.. Trump promised a middle class tax cut and a poke in the eye for Wall Street, but when the Republican Congress gave him the opposite, he took it. it was a win.

Beating Hillary and Obama is his idée fixe, so a “win” is defined as undoing anything they favored. Like Obamacare, even if doing so has actually been bad for millions of his voters. War has winners and losers. Diplomacy has compromise. The democratic Rule of Law is slow and involves give and take. Autocratic Rule by Fiat is swift and unequivocal. Guess which ones gets his water hot?

Trump didn’t create the gridlock and polarization that has made self-government in America dysfunctional, but his reflexive refusal to seek a middle ground, his toxic need to always win and to brand anyone who disagrees with him an enemy, to insist on a full loaf when the best he can get is a half a loaf promises a continuing inability to deliver on the grandiose promises that got him elected. The likely result will be to deepen the division and distrust that are undermining American democracy.

It is hard not to recall Shelby Foote, the Civil War historian, lamenting in the Ken Burns documentary the reason that American catastrophe became inevitable: “We failed to do the thing we really had a genius for— to compromise.”

The Errands Of My Ways

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I set out to run a series of quick errands at the shopping center five minutes from my home. Though it was Saturday morning, I figured it would take no time at all. Ninety minutes later, older, sadder and wiser, I limped home to lick my wounds.

First stop was the bank to make two deposits, one for my wife and one for my daughter. Lesson one. No good deed goes unpunished. The line at the drive-through window was daunting, so I gambled that going inside might actually be faster. I was greeted by a chipper man welcoming me to Wells Fargo.

This I took to be a feeble attempt to repair the image of a bank just fined $1 billion for cheating their customers on home and auto loans. After waiting with a half dozen other supplicants for the attention of three tellers, I arrived and said I wanted to deposit two checks in two different accounts.

For some reason it was necessary for the teller to get the assistance of a manager. The glad-hander at the door being the only one in sight, it took some time to gain his attention. Eventually he responded, unlocked the door to enter the tellers’ inner sanctum, looked over the transaction and showed the teller which button to push. It wasn’t clear whether the delay was due to human or mechanical malfunction, but I did note this delay represented a Wells Fargo innovation. Usually, money you try to deposit disappears instantly — Poof! — like an elephant in a David Copperfield illusion. Trying to get it back out is the time-consuming part.

I presented my second check and the account for which it was destine. By then Mr. Big was back at the door welcoming marks, but once again his approval for the deposit was required, So the same charade was repeated. If Wells had been half as scrupulous with their lending as with their accepting of deposits, they could have saved themselves a billion dollar fine. Of course, it will undoubtedly be passed on to their customers in the form of higher fees, hidden charges or reduced interest.

Next stop on the gantlet was the grocery and its pharmacy to pick up a prescription and a head of lettuce. The prescription went swimmingly, but trying to buy a two dollar item at a self-service scanner entailed a side trip to the second ring of hell.

The machine seemed reluctant to recognize the bar code on my frequent buyer card and that of the head of Bibb lettuce in a plastic clamshell. Turns out I was required to enter the quantity I was buying, despite the fact that the lettuce heads were individually packaged and priced at $2 per container, not per pound.

Then I unthinkingly tossed the separately bought and paid for bag containing the prescription medicine in the grocery bag with the lettuce, the better to have my hands free to scan my credit card. Bells and sirens were set off and a female robot voice accused me of putting an unscanned item in the bag. Luckily, a human came to undo this error before a Robocop could arrive to tazze me.

Finally, having failed to learn my lesson that hell is not just other people, as Sartre claimed, but the devices they invent, I went to buy a dozen bagels at the bagel shop. But to do so, I had to join another lengthy queue backed up because the customers outnumbered the bagelers by a five-to-one margin.

One of the employees had apparently not slept for a week. He yawned frequently and enormously and moved at the pace of a drugged tortoise. The other was anxious to chat with customers at some length about his study abroad program. If he’s studied something utilitarian, I felt sure he would not be earning his daily bread slathering cream cheese on tori of dough.

Forward inched the line as people ordered a single bagel, each with a different elaborate series of toppings for Sleepy and Chatty to assemble. Finally, just one person from the goal line, the customer separating me from victory whipped out a list of bagel orders – each unique – and enough of them to have catered a family reunion or fed a rugby squad.

I was tempted to interrupt to ask if they couldn’t organize the store to allow those without a need for a single custom-made bagel with, say, capers, cream cheese, onion, salmon, spinach, zaatar and maraschino cherries, to just grab a bag of bagels and leave. I also considered suggesting they make the slogan of the store, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Or imploring them to take pity on an elderly gentleman without that much time left and anxious not to spend the last few grains of sand in the hourglass in a line for bagels.

Instead, I dragged myself inch by inch another quarter of an hour closer to the grave while listening to the life stories of Chatty and the woman with the list as well as to an attempt to upsell her on their latest cream cheese flavor – sriracha anchovy. Moral of the story: If you have a home, stay in it. If you must purchase things, Amazon delivers. And rather than bank, use the mattress for the purpose intended by a merciful God.