The past several months have been a Trump-loather’s1 dream. Watching the big guy’s world go sideways in so many ways—well, it’s so satisfying that one can’t help but wonder, “When did I ever get everything I wanted all the time?” It’s as though “science” had perfected a peppermint ice cream that causes you to lose weight, as though you could eat your way to that flat, hard stomach you’ve always dreamed of.
Which is how “trompe-l’œil” (French for “fool the eye”) gets into my head. Because I’m worried. It’s a little scary that the Republicans can’t get anything right. Lyin’ Paulie Ryan, for example. I always knew he was a fraud, but I always thought he was, you know, a knowing fraud, that when he needed an extra trillion dollars to balance a “budget” and he put in an asterisk labeled “spending reductions to be determined later”, he knew he was lying. But, apparently, not! Apparently, when he slipped in one of those little stars, he’d give himself a psychic fist pump/fist bump! Nailed it! Crushed it!
Otherwise, how could he have served up that steaming serving o’ crap aka the American Health Care Act and have expected any sentient Republican to vote for it? “See, Paulie,” the average Republican probably told him, “most of the people in my district make less than $200,000 a year, so your bill wouldn’t really help them.” But Ryan still bulled ahead, and pulled the profoundly ignorant Mr. Trump along with him, who, naturally, got into a pissing match afterwards with the “purist” House Freedom Caucus, who got drenched with presidential urine as thanks for saving the entire Republican Party from enacting a disastrous piece of legislation.
Badly as Ryan fucked up, over a great matter, that seems to be trivial as compared to the way the Trump White House and House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin “Sometimes I lie” Nunes have fucked up over a little one, a stunning farrago of falsities apparently intended to “prove” that Donald Trump wasn’t being absolutely batshit insane when he claimed “Obama tapped my phone”, even though he was.
Yet it’s likely even Nunes will be topped by the return of Mike “Howlin’ Mad” Flynn, a man with all the restraint and charm of a rabid Weimaraner. Flynn appears genuinely unhinged, which we can only guess is why Trump hired him in the first place. “He shits on the floor! I like that!”
A lot of people were predicted disaster—real disaster—with Trump in the White House, and I was one of them. But I didn’t imagine that it was going to happen this quickly. The trouble with disasters is, a lot of innocent people get hurt.
Afterwords
“Trompe-l’œil” is my favorite French expression, in large part because it’s the only one that I learned from the back of a cereal box. I think I was in college when I picked up a box of whatever that was offering a set of breakfast placemats you could send away for, informing the reader proudly that the mats were “trompe-l’œil”!
It took me a long time to figure out what that meant, because when I looked at the illustration I saw a strange illustration of a breakfast—a glass of orange juice, a cup of coffee, and a bowl of cereal, viewed directly from above. Eventually (after several minutes), I figured it out: That wasn’t a breakfast, that was the mat. Today, trompe-l’œil floor mats are all over the web, but trompe-l’œil breakfast mats, nuh-uh. I should have ordered them.
- I say “Trump-loather” rather than “Trump-hater” because “hater” sounds so visceral. My dislike for Trump is pretty damn visceral—the thought that he could win made me sick to my stomach, and I actively avoid looking at his picture—but I like to think that I wouldn’t be happy if he had cancer. If he had a big fat boil on his ass, well, I probably would laugh at that one. ↩︎
