Friday, August 7, 2020

This Awful State Of Affairs

 

The Supreme Court has ruled that jails and prisons have no obligation to provide their charges with basic sanitary and protective equipment to avoid contagion with the COVID-19 virus. Nor must they test symptomatic inmates. This was a five to four vote along “party” lines (read, “ideological lines”). The five who believe that those filthy miscreants do not deserve even the most basic human decency or consideration were: Chief Justice Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush, or as I call him, “Bush the Lesser”); Justice Clarence Thomas (George H.W. Bush, “Bush the Greater”); Justice Samuel Alito (Bush the Lesser); Justice Neil Gorsuch (President Covfefe); and Justice Brett Kavanaugh (Covfefe).


The four Justices who found this ruling disgusting and illegal were: Justice Sonia Sotomayor (President Obama); Justice Ruth B. Ginsburg (President Bill Clinton); Justice Stephen Breyer (President Clinton); and Justice Elena Kagan (President Obama).


That, dear readers, describes our current predicament with the forceful clarity of a large bell. The voters have spoken! They voted too often for Republicans, and we all got saddled with a bunch of political hacks.


Our current president is still breaking every low bar ever established for the office. When I was in grammar school we were taught about the breathtaking corruption and incompetence of Warren Harding. The Tea Pot Dome scandal; the Ohio Gang. Harding was also a fanatic of the game of golf. President Seat Warmer is far eclipsing Harding in all categories of graft and corruption.


President Bush the Younger was famous for mangling the English language, earning the title of, “President Malaprop.” He would complain that he was being “misunderestimated.” And remember the classic, “fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice . . . well . . . you can't get fooled again.” President “Six Feet, Three Inches, 239 pounds, Golf Handicap 2.8” has surpassed Bush by a wide margin, and his failure to grasp the basic vocabulary and grammar of the English language continues to astound listeners.


Remember when he was trying to get congress to investigate the “oranges” of some tragedy of his own invention? (Origins.) He has also had a great deal of trouble enunciating on many occasions. (“God blesch the Uni'd Schatsh.”) I apologize if these are simple instances of loose dentures, but if they are mini-strokes it is cause for alarm.


Just reading off of a teleprompter exceeds the language skills of “President Between You and I.” The other day he was reading a speech which had him pretending to wax poetic about the beauty of the giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park. Most of us have heard of Yosemite, at least from the cartoon character, “Yosemite Sam.” For our genius of a president, it was a word of first impression. (“I have words, I have the best words!”) He narrowed his eyes, further enhancing the confused look that he always gets when he is attempting to read, and said, “er, Yo Semite National Park.” (As in Semite, someone from the Levant, a Jew or an Arab.) Then he said it again, so there was no doubt that the word, and it's meaning, were well outside of his experience of life.


Yesterday he came across the word, “Thailand,” in another struggle with the teleprompter. It's obvious to anyone that he never bothers to prepare for these speeches. He just shows up and wings it. So he says, “Thighland and Vietnam.” He knows the word, “thigh,” and there it was! Right in the text! I said he knows the word, I didn't say that he knows how to spell it. I'm sure that he rather likes thighs, youngish female thighs. So to El Presidente, it was “Thighland.” Vietnam he could pronounce, having devoted so much time in his youth to avoiding the necessity of going there. Even so, I bet that he couldn't find either place on a map.


Regarding Congress, please allow me to pass. I am under doctor's orders not to think about congress. They create in me an irreconcilable dilemma, a cognitive dissonance. How can they be, almost to a person, simultaneously not only so aggressively venal and corrupt, but also so bovine and malleable?

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