100 Day Watch

That had to be the weirdest 100 days in American history.  A political party entirely based on self-serving falsehoods is in control of every aspect of the American federal government.  For the previous eight years there had been an executive who could keep the Truthless inanity in check.  Now - all bets are off. 


The only thing keeping hope alive for the millions of Americans who are appalled and angry by the worst of us being in charge (not to mention the billions of human beings around the globe who are equally apoplectic) is that they're so bad at it.


The American Leader has Tweeted resentfully about being measured on the '100 Day' standard.  I won't quote the Tweets - the fact that Twitter is his main venue of communication is embarrassing enough.  Marshall Mcuhan, the great media theoretician, famously taught us:  "the medium is the message."  And the American Leader's medium is something called a "Tweet." 


Message received.


The W. Bush Junta seemed like a governmental nadir at the time.  We're learning that they can go lower.  The history of that benighted regime - from the stolen 2000 election to the war of choice to the attempted murder of Social Security - seems to have been tossed into the Memory Hole.  Those were dark days.  The Bush Junta used the 9-11-2001 terror attack to bludgeon its enemies.  Anyone who didn't fall into line with their installation of the Surveillance State was the enemy.  Democrats in Congress fell obediently in line with whatever the hateful cowardly Cheney-Bush scum wanted to do, including a bloody needless war. 


But the thing about the Junta was that they were seasoned veterans of government - though not the armed forces (the Bush 'war hawks' had the wealth and connections to get Vietnam War deferments.  Poor kids died in the jungle in their places). 


The Cheney-Rumsfeld types played by the rules because they knew the rules.  They dominated Congress because they knew how Congress worked.  They got their tax cuts and war and private data collection and invasions of privacy and drone bombing and environmental destruction done through the real levers of power.


This new bunch can't do any of that.  They're true outsiders in the sense that they are such extreme ignoramuses and rapacious know-nothings that nobody would ever have thought to bring them anywhere close to the federal government.  Even the Leader himself - what federal job would he ever have been appointed to?  Nixon wouldn't have hired him to plant microphones at his crappy hotels.  He couldn't be trusted. 


The Bush Junta represented the Banality of Evil with its administrative mastery of domestic cruelty, meaningless use of military force, and radical ideological incompetence in the occupation of Iraq.  They could make their friends rich but couldn't get anyone else a job. 


They knew how to make a mess but could not figure out how to clean one up.


The new Leader's bunch doesn't even know that much.  As hard as they try to do things like withdraw lifesaving health care from millions of Americans, they just can't get it right.  And that's not just the multiple bumbling billionaires in the administration itself.  That's "Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver" Paul Ryan and the Kongressional Keystone Kops that he leads.


Ryan has accomplished nothing in Congress other than to catch enough media coverage to become a VP candidate and, unbelievably, Speaker of the House.  Previous Speakers have been people who could build coalitions well enough to move legislation to passage.  They made sure there was enough material in each bill to satisfy just as many Representatives as were needed to ensure passage. 


Ryan has none of that.  Everything he's done over the course of his career has been a pantomime.  He wasn't in charge of anything so he could write 'budgets' with no real numbers and bloodless damning cuts to needed social programs.  They were not meant to be passed, they were meant as red meat to the Neanderthals back home.  Their voters were cultivated with the Truthless policies he published. 


The Rubes and the Caucasian Poors  got the lessons they were meant to learn.  "Government always bad."  "Health care makes non-whites healthy too, so nobody should have it!"  On and on.


But now because all of the responsible people have been run out of the Party, he's the only one left who even looks sober enough to drive home.  He spent years pretending he was sensible.  Now everybody is looking at him to actually pass all the cartoons he's been drawing. 


But it's all wax fruit.  It was never meant to be consumed.  Today it's the main course. 


So an administration that cannot cease stomping on its own foot is relying on Congressional leadership that can't stop knocking over the supper table.  Their only real "success" was in confirming robot judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.  But they couldn't get enough votes to actually do that.  An extremely limp Senate Majority Leader had to change a  200-year-old Senate rule that was considered sacred in order to do it. 


That's not a "victory," guys. 


The American Leader will continue to scribble his name on Executive Orders he likely hasn't read, but unless he can move things in Congress, sign them, and be backed by the Supreme Court, it's meaningless.  Real presidents have laws passed.  Without that, why bother? 


The 100 Day standard has shown this circus for what it is.  No jugglers, no high-wire act, no Ringleader.


Just clowns.