There are many terrific film versions of Charles Dickens’
1843 classic, A Christmas Carol. Traditionalists will annually search
obscure cable channel listings for the 1951 Alistair Sim version. Others contend that Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is simply a modern
retelling. But serve me some gruel on Christmas Eve with only one Netflix
rental in my stocking, and I will choose Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol every
time.
Magoo is like fingernails on a blackboard to your Dickens
classicist, but there are reasons to recommend it this year as we thank
the good Lord for allowing us to survive, thus far, the presidency of Donald
Trump. The first is that the Magoo
version does a good job of filling in the background on Scrooge’s childhood,
provided much-needed context for understanding how the richest guy in town became
such a cold-hearted, unfeeling, desperate, and isolated adult. Hmmmm. Imagine five-year-old Donny Trump skipping
through a commercial real estate development site mournfully singing “I’m All Alone in the
World”. Maybe he was just another kid treated like crap by an angry, bitter
parent. “A
hand for each hand was planned for the world -- why don't my fingers reach?
Millions of grains of sand in the world -- why such a lonely beach?”
The second reason is that
the defining trait of the Magoo character is that he is so painfully nearsighted
as to be virtually blind. Crucial, though, to the Magoo persona is that he
never is deterred by his failing eyesight. Rather, he simply imagines that which he cannot see,
convinced that his hallucination is real, even in the face of immediate
evidence that he is wildly incorrect. Meanwhile, we, the audience, watch in
horror as he careens carelessly, oblivious to the dangers we all see so clearly. Sound like anyone we know?
Finally, Magoo's voice is actually Jim Backus, better known as the bloviating out-of-touch millionaire Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island. Who better to deliver a Republican tax
plan customized to the needs of the donor class? “Ringle, tingle – coins as they jingle make such a lovely sound!”
Yes, it’s Christmas time, and today we celebrate
the season by tuning into A Christmas
Carol: The Ghost of Donald Trump of
the Future. We will follow the
Magoo-in-Chief as he stumbles through 2018,
continuing to prove that no matter what hideous deed he has committed, what
awful words he has uttered, and what preposterous lies he has told, he can
always find a way to do something even worse.
This has indeed been the signature identity of the man’s
first year in office. Every time that you thought this guy had done the worst
thing that an American President had ever done, he found a way to do something even
more horrendous. Firing the director of the FBI for his investigation of Trump?
Bad. But then Trump pulled our country
out of the Paris Climate Accord. Nauseating? Yes, but not as awful as rallying
to the defense of neo-Nazis. Retweeting anti-Muslim videos from a right-wing
hate group? Sickening, but still not as horrific as actively and
enthusiastically campaigning to elect a pedophile to the U.S. Senate. And these
represent just a small sampling of Trump’s capacity to disgrace.
Is there always a
way for this guy to sink lower? Let’s find out!
You
settle in under your down quilt, warm and cozy on Christmas Eve. The crisp winter air seeps through a cracked
window and you click the remote to see the 11pm round up on CNN. Your eyes grow heavy and you curl up and
begin the steady rhythmic breathing of deep sleep. Suddenly, your sleep is
interrupted by the enormous gong of the church bell down the block, signally
1:00 a.m. You bolt upright in bed, staring at the CNN screen still on in front
of you.
It is February 17, 2018.
Robert Mueller has filed indictments against Jared
Kushner and Ivanka Trump, leading to press speculation that in addition to the
expected indictments on grounds of perjury and illegal negotiations with a
foreign government, Mueller has clear-cut evidence of tax fraud on the couple’s
jointly-filed return. Insane with rage
that his daughter faces jail time, Trump thunders that Mueller’s investigation
has been proven by Fox News to be biased, and has crossed his “red line.” He
orders Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller. Rosenstein refuses, and resigns. In
sequence, the six attorneys who are set to succeed Rosenstein as Deputy
Attorney General all resign rather than fire Mueller. Trump then orders Jeff
Sessions to appoint Donald Trump, Jr. as Deputy Attorney, who promptly fires
Robert Mueller.
Democrats howl for impeachment, but Speaker of the House
Paul Ryan notes that “the President has every right to feel that this inquiry
has been biased from the get-go,” and concludes that “the President is acting
totally within his authority” in having Mueller fired.
Mueller’s staff, stunned that Trump has shut down the
investigation, race to NBC News and present a comprehensive summary of the
Mueller investigation to date, including the bombshell “smoking gun” that candidate
Donald Trump was directly involved in the Wikileaks email release, including a
screen-grab of an email in which Jared Kushner conveys a specific instruction:
“DT demands this gets done before D’s convention – no problem, right?”
After watching the reports break on the news, Trump calls
the head of the Federal Communications Commission and orders him to revoke NBC’s broadcasting license for possession and dissemination of stolen
government documents. When NBC attempts to conduct business as usual, Trump
orders the National Guard to seize NBC’s assets and arrest their senior
personnel. NBC ceases broadcasting and is hemorrhaging cash every day that it cannot sell ad time. Asked
to comment, Mitch McConnell notes that “Well, that’s probably not how I would
have handled it, but the President and the FCC are simply acting under the
authority that they've been granted.”
Watching NBC bleed to death, the management of CBS and
ABC quietly put the screws on their news organizations to avoid incurring
Trump’s wrath. CBS signals its eagerness to placate Trump by firing Stephen Colbert of The Late
Show to silence his unrelenting scathing criticism of the
administration.
The following week, Donald Trump announces that Michael
Flynn, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr. have
all been granted complete pardons for any crimes. “I’ve finally decided that I must right the grievous
wrong that Robert Mueller has committed against loyal patriots. It is now time
to move on and make America great again!”
You suddenly
wake up in a hot sweat, gripping your dampened sheets and feeling a raging ache in your chest. But soon you catch your breath, and
gradually realize that it was all just a horrible dream. You shake it off,
and lie back down. Exhausted, you soon drift back to sleep. Suddenly, you hear
the powerful gong from the Church steeple, ringing twice. You are instantly
fully awake.
It is August 11, 2018.
The early morning tweet characterized Theresa May as a
“shriveled-up prune who was begging for me to save her just six months
ago. She was BEGGING for it… if you know
what I mean.” In subsequent tweets, he announced that the United States was
going to “terminate diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom,” and even
challenged May to “name one thing that England did before the United States,”
indeed an odd charge to a country that pre-existed the U.S. by roughly a
millennium. The U.K.’s decision to
withdraw an invitation for a formal state visit wounded Trump’s ego terribly,
but after the third time he had retweeted anti-Muslim videos from the
right-wing extremist group Britain First, even the Queen had had enough.
Back on the home front, Trump has ordered that the Secret
Service be expanded from its current staff of 3,200 into an investigative force
of 12,000 field agents with the power to investigate all matters deemed by the
President to be “crucial to the preservation of the United States of America.”
Trump believes that it is vital that the White House have its own investigative
body serve as a “check and balance” against the “politically biased FBI and
CIA."
Trump announces that recently-launched Secret Service investigations
into Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker are “turning up
unbelievable things about these creeps. We will soon have proof that each of
these individuals has committed treason against the United States of America. Believe me, it’s unbelievable. And we are also finding some really bad things about a few dozen
Congressional candidates. We will have our investigations wrapped up by
October. All I can say is thank God I made sure that the Secret Service has the
power to investigate wrong-doing in all branches of government.”
Secret Service charges against Supreme Court Justice
Sonya Sotomayor lead to the passing of articles of impeachment in the House,
which identified her impeachable offense as “willfully refusing to base her
Supreme Court opinions on textual grounding in the United States Constitution.”
Congressional Republicans are aggressively pushing this case, smelling another
possible Supreme Court opening.
Yet even Trump was knocked off his stride when North
Korea stunned the world by brazenly announcing that it would test an ICBM with
a telemetry system so advanced that it could be guided to detonate within a
single square mile as far away as Washington, D.C. It then announced that it had intentionally
abandoned a tanker and left it floating 100 miles east of New Zealand, roughly
the identical distance from Pyongyang as is Washington. It launched the ICBM
with a dummy warhead, which landed in the Pacific two miles from the abandoned
tanker, proving unequivocally that North Korea could destroy the United States
capital with less than 25 minutes notice. Upon hearing of the successful test,
President Trump tweets “Lil’ Rocket Man and his missiles – SAD! Probably has a tiny penis….. He knows that I can destroy him whenever I want!”
CNN flashes an image of an intensely angry Kim Jong-un
pointing to a map of the East Coast of the United States, with dotted lines
indicating missile trajectories aimed at New York, Boston, Washington, and Palm
Beach, Florida, home of Mar-a-Lago.
You bolt
upright in your bed. You search frantically for the "time" icon on your iPhone, and you breathe a huge sigh of relief to see
that it is 2:32 a.m. on December 24, 2017. The image on the tv screen is not of
Kim Jong-un, but of pasty Republican gas bags supplicating themselves in veneration of the President as he affixes his signature on the
new tax law. Your breathing is still
rapid and your heart is still pounding, but you realize that this, too, was
just a dream. You lie back on your pillow in a vague daze until you hear the
unmerciful clang of three bells. Terrified, you peek out from under the covers.
It is Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Election Day.
The nuclear arsenal of the United States of America stands
at Def Con 1. Kim Jong-un stood before the North Korean Supreme People’s
Assembly and announced that the “days of testing are now complete,” and that
“it is now time to rid the world of war-mongering despots and their evil
empires.” You have to give the guy credit for throwing shade on Trump by
referencing Dubya.
Donald Trump is beside himself with rage. His idea had
been to blow North Korea off the face of the earth two days before the
election, and then announce that the United States had intercepted North Korean
launch instructions and had no choice but to launch a pre-emptive strike. His
top General refused to carry out the order. Smoldering with bitterness, Trump had to
endure the humiliation of watching his core team of military commanders announce
that if Trump tried to fire the general, they would all quit and take the account
of the fabricated story to the Washington Post. Trump had been certain the seemingly justified
use of thermonuclear power to destroy an obviously deranged threat to the United
States would be just the trick to ensure that Republicans retain both chambers
of Congress. Without his October
surprise, the election was a toss-up.
Even after nearly crippling centrist and liberal-leaning television
news channels with threats, lawsuits, and carefully orchestrated ad boycotts,
Trump’s approval ratings remained lodged in the high thirties. His tax bill had
backfired, as the reduction of the corporate tax rate was proven to have been
used to placate investors and buy back stock rather than invest in either
capital improvement or higher wages. When monthly economic reports showed none
of the GDP increases that Republicans forecasted, Wall Street ran for the bears,
shaving the DJIA back to October, 2016. His one “go-to message” – that business
was thriving under his leadership – had been ripped out from under him, with
nothing to show for his promises but slowed job creation, no real income
growth, and a sagging Dow.
Worst of all, Trump was realizing that what had been his
most potent weapon in 2016 – his charismatic personal presence in stadium shows
– was nowhere near as effective in 2018. Even Jared and Ivanka told him that he
was hurting himself every time he went out.
He was slurring his words. He occasionally repeated the same story
within ten minutes. He forgot where he was. He couldn’t even read well from the
teleprompter. Seeing Trump in person made his own supporters nervous.
It was all coming apart, and his agitation about the
mid-term election was growing hourly. While the Secret Service allegations had
clearly damaged a handful of Democrats competing in purple districts, there was
enough anger and discontent to risk losing control of Congress. Trump knows
that his fate – one way or another – will be sealed tonight.
In a matter of hours, Trump would either keep both the
Senate and the House and cruise through toward a second term, at which point he could relax and focus on the 2024 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, Jr.
Or, he could lose both, and watch the odds of a
successful impeachment trial and conviction go from zero to essential certainty.
Trump drummed his fingers with anxiety. He was right. He is always right. Go with your gut, baby. You are THE Donald!
Trump picks up his Galaxy s8 and slowly tapped out the
words, “Just learned that Lil’ Rocket Man plans imminent launch… must act NOW!”
He raised his pointing finger to the “send” button, and then …
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO, DON’T!!!! DON’T SEND THAT TWEET!!!!” You scream into the pitch black
night, shattering the silent night of
Christmas Eve. Panting uncontrollably,
you lunge for your iPhone. It is 3:47 a.m. on December 24, 2017. A dream -- it was just another dream! The Ghost of
Future Trump did it all in one night! There is still time. There is still time
to stop the lunacy before he kills us all. You jump out of bed and dance with
joy. There is still time to save us all!
There is no Tiny Tim in this story. No Lord’s bright
blessing, no razzleberry dressing. No Christmas far more glorious than grand.
Our goal in our little fanciful post today is no different than the motive that drove Dickens, Capra, and
Magoo: scare the crap out of us so that when we all wake up tomorrow, we
immediately and urgently change.
The conceit of A Christmas Carol is that if we could only
clearly see – however fleetingly – the precise trajectory of our future and the
impact of our actions on the world around us, we would immediately change the
way we live today. We would appreciate
those we love so much more deeply, we would understand how desperately we would miss them if they were gone. We would focus on what is important and
ignore the trivial, and we would understand the radical inter-dependency of
human life. God bless us, everyone.
Happy holidays from BTRTN. Here’s to a 2018 where we all
go out and act, do, and fight to return this nation to the principles, ideals,
and values that actually did once make us great.
That means making sure that we
win the Senate and the House in 2018.
That means going to work.
This is the year we must earn our wings.
God bless us, everyone.
And, yes, thanks to you, too, Magoo --you’ve
done it again.
“This
boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of
their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that
written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.” --
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
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