'Surrender'

Trump could no less embarrass the American people this past week than were he to do a bellyflop in the algae green Reflecting Pool in an ‘Old Glory’ Speedo on the Fourth of July.

Another beautiful national cultural resource that has been ruined by his reckless taste and groaning incompetence.

I have no doubt it will one day be repaired and restored, but it now appears as a liquid love letter to the swampy grift and fetid ignorance of this bellicose and brutal administration.

Trump’s false claims of vandalism, and now outrageous arrests to cover for the incompetence of his overpaid contractors, will only add to the legend of this monumental (pun intended) screw up. The administration’s many mistakes are well documented by both press and citizenry alike; we’ve all witnessed their incompetent attempts at ‘fixing’ the Reflecting Pool.

Trump foundered on the world stage this week at the G7 summit in France. Insulting our allies by showing up to a working meeting an hour late, then announcing ‘I’m the boss,’ as he lumbered past the serious leaders who were already seated and working without him.

Looking as disheveled and disinterested as one would expect from an octogenarian drug addict who had his UFC birthday party cut short to take a work trip, POTUS clearly still wanted to be back in Washington, DC on the sweaty South Lawn as addled and idiotic gladiators sung his praises and insulted his perceived enemies.

‘Enemies’ including former First Lady Michelle Obama, who possesses more intelligence, grace and sensitivity than Trump will ever know (and also happens to be married to a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as she incisively pointed out in her brilliant speech this week).

Upon returning from the G7 Summit, Donald Trump promptly insulted the Prime Minister of Italy, Georgia Meloni, by insisting she was begging to take a selfie with him, the most sophomoric and unbelievable of boasts, and in keeping with his pattern of attacking strong women who don’t stroke his broken ego.

A beautiful woman who doesn’t immediately make herself subservient to Donald always becomes a target of his anger and his predatory demented nature; which is why Vanky would change her speaking voice in his presence to a sotto voce whisper, POTUS needs to feel that he dominates the women in his orbit.

Some play along and some stand up - and the latter always drives him crazy. Kaitlin Collins, and his unending attacks on her while imploring her to smile, is a good example of this dynamic.

DJT is one of those deeply insecure men who needs the women around him to bolster his fragile ego and stunted adolescent mindset. His daughters and wives happily accepted this role but they did so at a disservice to the world at large. Most especially Vanky, who bore witness to his abuse of her fellow teenagers in his beauty pageant days and chose to keep her duplicitous mouth shut to live a life of luxury and lies.

In many ways this entire week is a metaphor for our global standing, having slipped from our perch as the world’s democratic superpower to our current status as an untrustworthy economic empire being led by a demented, misogynistic oaf. One who bizarrely complains at the G7 that his chair is lower than the rest (a dirty trick he himself used for years in his Trump Tower office) when he finally shows up in his Benzoed stupor.

Trump then retreats to Camp David for the weekend to hide from his shame, while the world wonders why the United States essentially surrendered to Iran and left the region and the global economy in a more perilous place than before his unwarranted attack.

That is not to say the regime in Tehran is not worthy of being overthrown and replaced, but Trump has only strengthened them, fueled their hatred of the U.S.A., and sent any internal rebellion back decades; a shameful and tragic turn of events.

POTUS promised ‘help on the way’ on nine separate occasions when the brave people of Iran took to the streets in protest earlier this year, only to allow them to be slaughtered by the tens of thousands on the orders of their brutal theocratic leaders.

Now Trump is audaciously putting $300 billion into the bloody hands of those who fired bullets on their own people - affording them more economic firepower and literal bombs to use against the innocent, and buttress their deadly reign of terror.

As of Saturday morning, the Strait of Hormuz was once again closed by Iran due to ongoing conflict in Lebanon, resulting from Trump’s inability to curtail Netanyahu and force the Israeli government into accepting a cease fire.

Not to mention Iran’s mercenary proxy, Hezbollah, and their continued deadly attacks against Israeli forces; any sort of peace agreement that doesn’t take into account the vast complexity, competing forces and ideologies of the region, is obviously doomed to failure. Which makes the mainstream media’s embrace of the ‘peace deal’ narrative this week all the more inscrutable.

We all have seen this dog and pony show before - it seems mostly to exist to allow Trump insiders to manipulate markets before falling apart once again over bellicose posts and actual bloodshed. Wars do not end easily, all the more reason they should not be started on a whim.

Anyone who thinks peace is on the horizon is a fool. This deal will allow Iran to replenish its stockpile of ballistic missiles and keep their uranium stockpiles, while putting our allies in the region in greater danger for decades to come.

A complex and fraught situation was made exponentially worse than it was after the signing of the JCPOA, which was the result of years of diplomatic effort and careful negotiation, during President Obama’s presidency. Abandoning it to assuage the racist inclinations (Trump hated that Obama made it happen) and fragile ego of the current POTUS was diplomatic vandalism - and the entire world has paid a price.

Trump’s actions are criminal and immoral - and it feels as if other G7 leaders just shrug their shoulders at his malicious incompetence and do their best to just get along.

This is not the correct approach and will not be looked back on favorably in the decades to come. It will be seen for the foolhardy appeasement that it is, a dangerous capitulation to a deranged and drug-addled leader.

POTUS’s withdrawal from climate change accords and complete and utter fealty to the oil and gas industry alone should cause our European allies to mistrust the ‘Drill Baby, Drill’ guy and view him as the villain he is, most especially as they bake in unbearable temperatures while American leadership promotes fossil fuel consumption and and outlaws any alternative energy projects.

Many of which were partnerships with major Scandinavian companies who will now suffer both economically and environmentally, as will the American citizens who will lose their jobs as we retreat from green energy projects and regress as a nation.

The man who unseated Biden for being too old literally could not clasp a Medal of Honor on a war hero the other day, and instead turned one of our military’s highest honors into a clumsily tied choker - when after minutes of embarrassing fumbling, Donald just gave up and tied the ribbon into a knot.

These events get pushed aside and laughed away but they should not; they are in fact evidence of a very serious mental and physical decline in a man who has never been honest or forthcoming about his health and addictions.

I am sure that is why they are keeping him out of the public eye this weekend - he is always a mess after a big trip, even more so than his normal state of unmanageability.

Trump fumbled through his speech accepting a gifted Qatari jet as the new Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews on Friday before departing to Camp David; a plane that he brags about being a ‘palace in the sky’, and which he will keep for his personal use when he leaves office. If ever there was a symbol of how brazen he has been in his corruption and how this nation has come to normalize it, the new Air Force One may be it.

Or perhaps the best symbol was a few days earlier when he signed his surrender Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) document at Versailles in his signature EKG Sharpie scrawl, looking up from the table like some elderly python with hooded eyes who had just slipped out of a moonshine still in the backwoods of Florida before slithering back to his swamp, drunk on being where it never belonged.

Trump surrendered to Iran out of self-interest. In a way, that broadcast to the world at large how in over his head he was from the beginning.

Future generations will look back and shudder at the incompetence and venality of American leadership in this murky moment. Where human life takes a back seat to business interests and foreign policy is negotiated by scoundrels and fools. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have no business representing the United States in matters of war.

Kushkoff are both vacuous sleaze bags. The generational mediocrity they represent will haunt this hour of ignominy and hang over the negotiations with Iran like a mushroom cloud of malicious greed and baleful, Botoxed belligerence.

While Trump was waving a white flag in the Iran war and slurring his way through the G7 Summit, JD Vance was on a book tour in New York City. Spending the week promoting a product that will put money into his personal bank account while incurring all the expense and security of traveling as a Vice President.

American taxpayers footed the bill for Vance’s P.R. sojourn.

It used to be that the Executive Branch waited until they left office to cash in - not so anymore, and I find it absolutely appalling. Not to mention the way much of the mainstream media embraced his promotional blitz, which would put even more money into Murdoch’s pockets as Vance’s publisher, Harper Collins, is owned by News Corp.

All of the media ecosystem grift is interrelated and much of our political apparatus now seems designed to reward corporate greed.

It was interesting to me that in JD’s podcast sit down with The New York Times he revealed the sort of anti-intellectualism on offer to the MAGA base and the naked contempt they have for working class Americans.

When pressed on the Trump administration’s clearly unchristian attitudes towards economic and humanitarian aid for developing nations (while ironically, Vance promotes a book on faith titled ‘Communion’), and their uncharitable (to put it mildly) attitudes towards immigrants, and the hostile, often violent rhetoric of Donald Trump and his ‘America First’ henchmen, JD’s response was to basically say civility was an attribute of the elite establishment that the working class had no appetite for in the body politic.

In essence, that the blunt and juvenile tone they adopt when speaking to their base is necessary pandering to the rural white folks who make up their base. Essentially the hoi polloi have no time for anything but the derogatory monosyllabic hate speech of Donald Trump and his goofy compatriots.

Of course, JD Vance is a Yale grad who passed himself off as some sort rube whisperer from Appalachia when he released the fictitious memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ and got his first taste of the big money afforded BS artists; the con man Vice POTUS has since morphed into the ultimate cosplay Christian and bearded ‘Bro Country’ Eddie Haskell. Never mind that he is the very definition of an elitist.

A man so obviously insincere that the only consolation in watching his money grab is that he will most likely never be his party’s nominee for POTUS, let alone ever hold that office. Now JD is being dispatched to Switzerland to participate in the negotiations after being asked twice this week why he wasn’t already involved - and responding that he didn’t really understand diplomatic protocols.

Vance was unqualified to be a Senator - and was only elected to office thanks to Peter Thiel funding his Ohio campaign and essentially purchasing his seat on behalf of venture capitalists - he has no business being involved in geopolitical affairs. Our Veep’s involvement in the negotiations sadly makes the outcome a forgone conclusion.

We have seen the future of the Democratic Party - and the solution to the darkness purveyed by these merchants of militarized incompetence and racist rhetoric. We have within our grasp the antidote to the division and rancor that has pulverized our standing in the world and our relations to one another, in this fiery chapter of fealty to a fraudulent king.

A culture that spoon fed ignorance to the hordes of people weaned on lies and caustic patriotism is scraping the bottom of the jar and almost out of apple sauce.

The baby is colicky and weary of the counterfeit twang sung in broken lullabies. The emperor is indeed naked in their eyes now, or at least stripped down to his girdle and adult undergarment. His verbal incontinence has lost both its bark and its bite - it may still be acrid, but is no longer nearly as effective.

Contrast this with the eloquence on display at the opening of President Obama’s Library and the warm reminders of what grace and inclusion felt like - and the comfort of having leaders that were actually fit for office, that one could take pride in supporting.

Or the youthful enthusiasm of Mayor Mamdani’s speech at the Knicks parade, where he embraced not just the vibrant and joyful celebration but seemed to intuitively grasp what it meant in a city that perhaps more than any other has come to exemplify the melting pot of American culture.

A culture that is at its best when it embraces the contributions of all who care to participate. Who see being in service to a nation and its people as not the only the birthright of the few, but the sacred promise of the many.

The Statue of Liberty smiled down on my city, on our city, this week - as in every way New York has always belonged to the world more than any one nation.

It represents a spirit of inclusion - and possibility of accomplishment reached through gritty determination, a bit of luck and an unwavering commitment to the promise of dreams coming true if you are willing to work hard enough for them.

Obviously, it doesn’t happen all of the time but it has happened enough of the time to make it something worth believing in. Humanity needs hope. It is as essential as sunlight.

We need to start believing again. To hitch our wagons to possibility and promise and to learn anew to see our fellow passengers as co-creators of a dream instead of apparitions in a nightmare. To view our fellow travelers as teammates.

There are no dreams in MAGA, just the empty intonement of one man’s bitter grievance and entitled mediocrity.

His moment is already fading and he damn well knows it, sooner than most. I can see it in his beady bloodshot eyes and you can bet he sees it too. The foul may soon be forgotten but its lessons will linger.

Let us not forget who we are again or let anyone pull us off course so widely.

His blunders will take time to heal and correct, there is much hard work ahead. But the future is now - and is right in front of us.

As we look back and celebrate this nation’s birth, let us remember where we are heading and where we never want to go again.

And be certain and steadfast in our collective destiny.

We owe that to the past as much as we do the future.

There is only one way to walk this road - together.

Happy Solstice.

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