Putin, Trump, Russia, hacking, Absurdity

THE ABSURD TIMES

Our New President – Congratulations, American Political System.

In October of 2016, the impossible happened.  The Cubs (founded in 1896 as the White Stockings) won a world series.  Chicago  had enjoyed gloating at the effete fans in Boston complaining about the curse of Babe Ruth who was traded to the Yankees to fund a musical.  Really, how could that possible compare to a curse on behalf of a goat?[1]  Clearly, we had things more substantial.  Well, the last time the Cubs even got into a series, we dropped the Atom on Japan (all of this in previous editions).  So what horrible catastrophe could the United States come up with to counter that?  Easy, Donald Trump is now President.   He is the latest in a series of people, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Donald Trump.  Fits right in.

We have not bothered with an edition for 2017 for several reasons.  During past administrations, many absurdities occurred that were not obvious to everyone.  For example, we had a President, a Noble Peace Prize Laureate, who had a hit list including American Citizens, that he pondered each Tuesday.  There are others, such as Bush the Younger with an Oedipus complex that resulted in a catastrophic war in the Mid-East that leaves it unstable for the foreseeable future.  Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin were delightful absurdities in their own right.

Recently, however, there have been so many obvious absurdities that it seemed redundant and overwhelming to us to point them out.  However, the time has come and so we must proceed.  Before going any further, we feel obligated to point out that we are very old fashioned here.  Even though FACT has been assailed ruthlessly for about two years now, it is only with the election that it has died as relevant in any contemporary discussion.  We still find them (facts) useful, however, so we will use facts anyway in this post-fact era.

Our first prediction is that the entire United States, in the middle of the daylight hours, and the United States only, the sun will go out.  That's right, no sun during one day in the month of August when the Baseball season is in full gear.

There is perhaps one valid reason to suspect that Vladimir Putin wanted to see Donald Trump elected President of the United States.  Suppose you were Vlad.  In 2011-12, he was running again for President of Russia.  Hillary orchestrated a massive campaign to stir up opposition against him, including "fake news".  Now, after the ridiculous and petty sanctions levied against Russia and numerous moves involving NATO and Syria, Russia cannot think kindly of the United States.

Most other countries, at least in the "Northern" area, are quite relieved NOT to have Hillary Clinton to deal with.  Iraq, Libya, the refugee crisis, ISIS, collapse of European Union, etc., are all somehow linked to her.  There is even a tape of her saying to another NATO leader "I think Yaz would be good for us" in reference to Ukraine.

Now, what better way to make the United States the laughing stock of the entire world than to have Donald Trump as its President?  Anything that the U.S. did could easily be explained as ridiculous, meaning deserving of utter ridicule, than to say

"Well, after all, its people elected Donald Trump as their President, the guy who is going to build a wall against Mexico and thinks Mexico will pay for it, says Mexicans are rapists, that Muslims should not be allowed to enter the country (which should give you an indea of how meaningful to so-called bill of Rights is), wants to give nuclear weapons to South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and any other country that might need them, and who thinks they should have a nuclear war because they actually have nuclear weapons,"

On the other hand, there are many reasons to doubt much of this.

Let us start with the hacking of John Podesta's e-mail account.  Julian Assange has pointed out that Podesta's password was PASSWORD.  You may sputter in astonishment, but I can believe it.  John is not the sharpest techno nerd around Washington.  In addition, the security flaws that allowed the hacks of the DNC that revealed the orchestration to exclude any challengers to Hillary Clinton were actually told to the DNC by the FBI BEFORE the serious stuff came out.  They ignored the warnings.

One final word about Wikileaks: it has NEVER told us of anything we did not already know or at the very least suspect and mention here at the Absurd Times.  It only provided graphic and unassailable documentation thereof. In addition, in a very unscientific poll, people voted over 70% to less than 30% that they place more credibility in Wilileaks than in the American Intelligence Agencies.  This seems to have started with the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" that never happened (again, you can look it up) to Saddam's collaboration with Bin Laden (they hated one another).

Now: on the Trump Administration in the "making": 

Donald Trump has made so many ridiculous appointments so far that commentary on them is a formidable task.  Therefore, we will not attempt it.  We are not mental masochists.

However, we can point out that with so many absurd appointments, there is little opportunity to examine them in any detail.  We have Jeff Sessions to become Attorney General, charged with enforcing civil rights violations, a man who is at best an unrepentant version of the George Wallace of the pre-voting rights days.  We hesitate to call him a white supremacist except in the sense that Dylan Roof is one.  There is nothing at all supreme about him.  One need only see videos of him wearing a Gold's Gym t-shirt.  Gold's gym used to be associated with top bodybuilders during the 70s and 80s.  It then became a chain and bears as much similarity to that association as Starbucks is to the quiet coffeehouses of the Bohemian and Beat life style of the artistic life of the 40s through the early 60s.

One of the more amusing appointees is Rick Perry, appointed to head up the EPA, the Nixon-created Environmental Protection Agency (appointed to deflect attention from some other problems that nobody paid attention to).  Perry announced that he wanted to abolish the agency, but famously could not remember its name during a debate.  This appointment is notable as it may be benign as Mr. Governor Perry (Texas) may be expected to forget what agency it is he is supposed to run and simply wander around the streets of D.C. looking for gum or praying for rain as was his wont in Texas.

Inside of all this mess, there is actually one sane choice, but he was chosen for the wrong reason.  The Ambassador to Russia, Mr. Exxon himself, Billionaire, has been appointed.  The reason he is a fitting choice is the same as was given for the ancient Averill Harriman – a rich capitalist can be trusted to be speaking for the United States in Moscow and the Russians will certainly believe that he speaks with some authority as that is the sort of person who has any influence in this country.

Otherwise, there is not much to say.  We leave you to ponder your post-fact life.  We will return when something amuses, but rest assured that Godot is not coming.

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[1] Some may have trouble with some of the names listed here.  We refer those people to Wikipedia that will at least identify them quickly and give background.  "Wiki" means "internet" in Latin, after all. [Editor's note: we are constantly amazed at the reaction to this bit of information.  Some will smile, many will simply pass over it as irrelevant, and once is a great while, someone will point out that there was no internet during Roman times.  This is the state of awareness of the public these days.