Hotel California Redux

“…Last thing I remember, I was running for the door. I had to find the passage back to the place I was before. "Relax," said the night man, "We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…” Hotel California…The Eagles, words and music by Glenn Frey, Don Felder and Don Henley …. Recently, there have been no small number of people looking back to a place I was before. The other day, I described President Elect Donald J. Trump as having the cunning and survival skills of a garbage can raiding racoon. It was one of the kinder things I’ve said about Trump, recently. He won the election fair and square and has something of a mandate to move the country away from the woke politics of Joe Biden. I say something of a mandate because his margin of victory in the popular vote was 50% to 48% and the Senate and House, while Republican controlled, hold those advantages by only a couple of votes. Translation—Trump doesn’t have much room for error as he tries to put his cabinet picks and MAGA agenda in place. Kamala Harris was always a “fill in” candidate, ducking the border and inflation, and running on a platform of “my name isn’t Trump”. It almost worked, she got 48% of the popular vote, the problem began when Trump got 50%. The remaining 2% just left the top space on the ballot blank, or voted for Donald Duck, Jerry Lee Lewis, or their neighbor’s Golden Retriever. Like Hitler in Germany between the wars, despots get elected when people are scared, crime and civil unrest are the order of the day, inflation is crushing their quality of life, and they have a hated minority (German Jews vs millions of undocumented immigrants) available to blame their troubles on. So far, Trump has promised on his first day in office, to end the war in Ukraine, deport millions of undocumented immigrants scattered far and wide, enact tax cuts, tariffs and energy policies—they’ll need to start early and work late to get all that done. He’ll also need to harness some of America’s best minds and proven administrators to implement and guide these programs, particularly in his cabinet. At first, I figured that a lot of what Trump spouted on the campaign trail was just that, his normal silly shit meant to rev up his base MAGA voters, but after some of his first cabinet picks were announced, I think it’s possible his train has jumped the tracks. For the nation’s top law enforcement officer, the Attorney General, he’s proposed Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. Detested equally by Republican and Democratic colleges, Gaetz is widely considered a total douche bag, and even mentioning him to be attorney general would be a great joke around the table in some saloon at after work cocktail hour. Equally show stopping is Trump choice of Robert F Kennedy Jr to head HHC. A vaccine skeptic and conspiracy freak, RFK, a recognized crackpot, has no medical or public health experience, but has firm opinions on childhood vaccines, autism and COVID. If his last name wasn’t Kennedy, he’d be stocking shelves at Walmart, and writing his manifesto on the restroom wall during his coffee break. As much of a conniver as Trump is there’s two other possibilities that could be at work here, (1) Gaetz and Kennedy are the political version of crash test dummies. Trump knows he won’t get a single Democratic vote, but he may need to see how a Republican Senators will vote, (2) He’s paying back a favor, saying thanks to a couple of his loyal supporters. He knows that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that either will make it past the first vote, but he put their name up, they got their minute of fame, Trump shrugs his shoulders, and says, “sorry guys, I tried…” Either way, it’ll have some of the mystery of Hotel California.….