It’s been an interesting few weeks at the White House……….and in many houses across America, including mine. I now have no idea what my retirement plan is doing, and am disinclined to think about it at this point, since the word –“retirement” – has never been in my family’s vocabulary.
We could, but why would we? There’s something addictive about being productive at work that goes beyond self-interest; why quit when you’re having so much fun? Donald Trump is visibly having some these days, though his buddy and semi-adopted son Elon Musk is enjoying less fun in general since the uber-wealthy boy-man, like his mentor, wants above all to do good and be loved, havng “never done anything horrible,” at least on purpose.
How Musk thought his aims would be accomplished by arbitrarily and brutally axing a vast number of earned-legacy careers in government is past my comprehension, but he honestly believed we free-wheeling American folk would understand and cheer him on. So, still, does Trump, though the latter’s orange-sprayed certitude is getting less firm on his weathered cheeks and his vaunted resolve has been prone to frequent about-faces lately. Trump likes exaggerated risk, and is vastly entertained when large chaos erupts for his amusement, whether in his cabinet or in world affairs.
This is all a game - gotta stay ahead of the game, as any gambler will tell you, and Trump adores above all things the excitement and entertainment value of a pushing a slick public image before a rapt bunch of fans cheering him on like lemmings in a road race. But there’s a steep cliff ahead.
After all, it’s a jungle out there, and mercy is not thought of at the level of international finance and politics to which Musk – and Trump – aspire as uber-players. Such considerations smack of, God forbid, fear, weakness, gullibility and other nonmacho traits, which these two men, at all costs, wish to never have exposed.
Sorry guys. You’re up against a couple of practiced masters at the games of statecraft and domination, and the score is far from tied: Putin and Xi have long used men like these for toothpicks and barely burped; the grievous mistake made by anyone who jousts on that level with them in global affairs is the naivete of supposing that – after all they’re both human beings, they must think like us. No. Not.
Men who worship sheer power over other human beings to the extent that their wills function as automatons with blades attached, are not much concerned with the fate or opinions of you and me, nor those of our current crop of bumbling statesmen and supine congresspersons in DC.
As was sometimes the case during several previous U.S. presidencies: They – Russia and China – are playing chess….and we are playing tic-tac-toe……Every high school junior understands this truth: Players, eventually, get played. And Vladimir Putin has played Donald Trump and his auto-merchant remuda so easily and expertly, knowing exactly with whom he is dealing, that he has convinced the President that he – Putin – is actually sincere in both his flattery and promises to “consider” proposals to stop crunching Ukraine and destroying his own Russian army into cannot fodder, now replaceable from other Asian dictatorships.
The game of words is long over, and Putin has won. Sending a real estate developer to coax him off his mountain of fanatical goals to own all of Eastern Europe for Russia – again – is an exercise in futility and lack of comprehension astounding in a man who convinced enough American voters that he could stay upright on water to have achieved keys to the White House, twice. We, Americans, are now seen across the world, by those who love us not, to be vulnerable, and unreliable as well. Checkmate!
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
