Don't listen to what Trump says. Ignore the media focus on his blathering. No, he's not restarting a nuclear arms race. By saying he wants to expand our nuclear force, he's just doing a male cockadoodle strut for the benefit of the other boys on the planet and those in his base. Putin, who is not a boy, has said in reply, "No arms race."
Trump's modus operandi—whether deliberate and crafty or the product of neural deficiencies—is to say lots of outrageous things. Lots of it is just blowing smoke. Lots of it is just bald-faced lying. Most of it is to be forgotten when he wakes up the next day. But it works! It keeps you and the media and everybody off stride.
It's an old trick, usually used by battlers who haven't got much else to fight with. My mother taught me (a little girl of seven) how to "box" by just putting up my fists with elbows bent and then flailing away like crazy in a circular motion. The opponent can't get close enough to hit. Well, it worked. At least in the second grade.
Confuse the enemy. Send a lot of balls zinging all over the place. Run and dodge and slither. "Serpentine, Shell! Serpentine!" as Peter Falk so memorably yelled in "The In-Laws". That's Donald Trump. An Artful Dodger. A blatherer of inexhaustable nonsense.
You'll wear yourself out chasing his spoutings. You'll ruin your holidays. You'll ruin your life.
Instead just watch what he actually does. We'll get him dead to rights on the mistakes he will make in what he does.
Like commiting the impeachable offense of taking" emoluments", i.e. payment from favor-seeking
representatives of foreign states who stay at his hotels and from his foreign quasi-governmental business associates wanting to cut bisiness deals. That emolument stuff is a naughty no-no prohibited by the Constitution. Keep it up, Donald, after January 19 and you are toast! Indeed, some argue he has to divest himself before January 20 of his world-wide business holdings or be in de facto violation of the emolument clause and thus liable automatically for impeachment.
Will this Republican Congress impeach him? It will be fun to watch them squirm around on that one!
Trump's so-called presidency promises to be quite an adventure, with danger and laughs galore. Enjoy the ride. Have some confidence that the good folks and our good institutions will fight him to a standstill no matter if he flails his fists like a seven-year-old.
Now I'll go back to writing the piece I promised on how YOU can get rid of the electoral college's outragous disrailment of our democracy in the future. And after that comes the piece I've planned that's a message of hope for the future, a message grounded in actual numbers.
What a great way to start the New Year, with something real to do to help fix our country and something to hold onto, a promise that good things are on the way.
Now give yourself the Christmas present of ignoring what Trump says. Keep seeing him as the desperate and frightened seven-year-old that he is.
And sometime I'll pass along to you my mother's other lesson in life and politics: "How to walk fast like an FBI agent."
Gosh, I miss her.
Merry Christmas to believers! Happy holidays to those who maybe kinda wish it were all true. May Santa come for both of you!
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