Donald Trump has exhibited an exquisite talent
for upsetting the apple cart and casting aside norms that have existed in our
society and in our politics for generations.
He has shown a willingness to break things large and small, new and old,
giving new meaning to the old expression “a bull in a china shop” along the
way. With a strong propensity for “repeal” and little or no interest for “replace”, all of this comes naturally to him, as if he was born with his middle finger
protruding upright as he exited his mother’s womb. Perhaps it was this early start, that now enables him to execute his unique talent, so flawlessly.
So, if on any given day, you feel that you that
you were the innocent victim in a car crash, and you walked away with a severe case
of whiplash that just won’t go away, know this.
You are not alone.
So, if everything you have come to know and
believe seems to be part of a past, long ago forgotten, and the world seems to
have been turned on its’ head, know that there is a rational explanation for this. You see we have now crossed into a new
dimension of time and space and entered a new world where up is down and down
is up. We are now living In Bizarro
World,
DC Comics described such a world back in 1961 (From Wikipedia).
In the Bizarro world of "Htrae" (that’s Earth, spelled backwards),
society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states "Us do opposite of all
Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything
perfect on Bizarro World!”
And Bizarro No.
1, a.k.a. Bizarro Superman, the imperfect duplicate of Superman, was portrayed throughout the story's episodes as a character of equal parts humor and confusion.
Does this sound like anyone we know?
Barack Obama was criticized for failing to execute a consistent foreign policy strategy. His was often distilled
into that singular line “Don’t do stupid things”. In our new Bizarro World, it seems as if Donald Trump lives by the strategy that is best described as, “Do stupid things as much as possible”.
The last few weeks of on-again, off-again,
trade tariffs has revealed, to the bewilderment of Democrats and
Republicans alike, that our President is perversely obsessed with punishing our
allies, while giving the benefit of the doubt to our adversaries.
Born and raised life-time Republicans are shaking their heads,
wondering:
(i) How the hell did we get in to this mess?
(ii) What on earth is he going to go next ?
(iii) Which decisions am I supposed to be for
and which decisions am I supposed to be against ? I forget.
And please, don’t even think to ask Republicans about Trump's decision to let
the Chinese telecom company ZTE, who has been accused of severe security
violations, off the hook with a mere, peasant like $1billion fine, for they
might start twitching uncontrollably and implode. Democrats just seem to be
walking around in a perpetual fog, affected with a severe case of head trauma
caused by Trump’s eradicate actions and spoken words, wondering aloud if all of this would have happened if
Anthony Wiener just hadn’t been so obsessed with teen age girls.
In the past week, the activities within
Bizarro World were on full display. It started
as Trump was about to board his chopper to head to the G-7 summit,
when, unbeknownst to all of his own aides (this is how you
do things in Bizarro World), he started pitching for the G-7 club to let his personal
buddy, Vladimir Putin, back in. This is
the guy who invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, imprisoned his political
opponents, poisoned British citizens and
sought to influence and disrupt the US Presidential elections.
In the normal world, the mere suggestion of
this would have automatically led normal folks to conclude that the Steele dossier was 100% accurate, except for one important thing. It left out all the really good parts.
In Bizarro World, well, this was just
downright normal.
But Trump’s affinity for his buddy
Vlad is only one half of this truly bizarre story, the other half involved
attacking our oldest and longest international ally, our neighbor to the north,
for which no border walls are needed, Canada.
If seems that Justin Trudeau, the Prime
Minister of Canada issued a statement after the G7 meetings regarding the
tariff issue that Canada was not going to be pushed around. Trump threw a hissy fit and
promptly removed the United States from a joint communique the G7 was going to
issue and blasted Trudeau for dairy tariffs. Mind you, the US is currently
running a trade surplus here, but please let's not let facts get in the way of the larger
point, that the President had kicked his lap dogs into high gear, having them take to the airwaves
to attack Trudeau.
Larry Kudlow, the former Fox News business
personality, and now the President’s Economic Advisor, claimed that Trudeau had
“stabbed them in the back”, proving once again that you can take the fox out of
Fox News, but you can never take Fox
News out of the fox.
Peter Navarro, who may be the only person on
the planet who agrees with Trump’s policy on trade said of Trudeau “that there
was a special place in hell” for him.
Whoa! Navarro later apologized and walked his
statement back, but it was too late for the horse was out of the barn, and the President's real thoughts were there for all to see.
All of this was just a backdrop to Turmp’s historic summit with North Koren despotic leader Kim Jung Un who he basically described as the cuddly, affectionate leader of group of koala bears.
Barack Obama was metaphorically castrated by
conservative Republicans when he merely suggested he would meet with Kim Jung Un. When Trump does it, it’s strategic.
A few Republican leaders have attempted to
push back on what was viewed as an over reach of power by Trump who
invoked the national security exception permitting him to usurp Congress’s
responsibility to manage tariffs, essentially naming Canada a national security
threat. Let that sink in. Canada is a national security
threat.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) pressed for a vote that would allow Congress to
block Trump’s tariffs. He’s won support from free-trade Republicans and some Democrats. But GOP
leaders would not permit the vote. It seems that Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) warned last week that HIS Senate won’t pass anything that
ties Trump’s hands on trade.
The Republican leadership had concluded that
the politics of supporting their own Bizarro Superman were more important than supporting free trade, one of the decades long, core principles of their very own party. And when McConnell’s office was asked to
comment about the administration’s feud with Canada. There was no response.
It seems that some things never do change.
Even in Bizarro World.
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