Saying Goodbye to the Con-Man-in-Chief
Demining America After The Donald
2021 has indeed begun and god knows what it has in store for us. But unless, somehow, we're surprised beyond imagining, The Donald is indeed going to leave the White House soon and, much as I hate to admit it, in some strange fashion we're going to miss him. Of course, it will be beyond a great relief to see his" well, let's just say him in the rearview mirror. While occupying the White House, he was, in a rather literal sense, hell on earth. Nonetheless, he was also a figure of remarkable fascination for anyone thinking about this country or that strangest of all species, humanity, and what we're capable of doing to ourselves.
So, here's my look back at our final Trumpian months (at least for a while). As I review the weeks just past, however, you may be surprised to learn that I'm not planning to start with the president's former national security adviser (of 23 days "you're fired!") cum-convictee-cum-pardonee urging The Donald to declare martial law; nor will I review the president's endless tweets and fulminations about the "fraudulent" 2020 election or his increasing lame (duck!) assaults on all those he saw as deserting his visibly sinking Titanic, including Mitch McConnell ("the first one off the ship"); nor do I have the urge to focus on the conspiracy-mongress who captured the president's heart (or whatever's in that chest of his) with her claims about how "Venezuelan" votes did him in; nor even his doom-and-gloom "holiday" trip to Mar-a-Lago, including on Christmas Day his 309th presidential visit to a golf course; nor will I waste time on how the still-president of these increasingly dis-United States, while pardoning war criminals and pals (as well as random well-connected criminals), managed to ignore the rest of a country slipping into pandemic hell cases rising, deaths spiraling, hospitals filling to the brim in a fashion unequaled on the planet about which he visibly couldn't have cared less; nor will I focus on how, as Christmas arrived, he landed squarely on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's position of giving $2,000 checks to the American people and so for a few days became an honorary "socialist"; nor will I even spend time on his unique phone call for 11,780 votes in Georgia.
Instead, in this most downbeat of seasons, I'd like to begin with something more future-oriented, a little bit of December news you might have missed amid all the gloom and doom. So, just in case you didn't notice as 2020 ended in chaos and cacophony, as the president who couldn't take his eyes off a lost election sunk us ever deeper in his own version of the Washington swamp, there were two significantly more forward-looking figures in his circle. I'm thinking of his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner who plunked down $30 million on the most exclusive bit of real estate they could find in Florida, a small island with only 41 residences known among locals as the "billionaire's bunker."
They purchased a plot of land there on which they can assumedly build the most modest of multimillion-dollar mansions" but let the Hill describe it:
"The secluded spot sits on 1.8 acres and comes with 200 feet of waterfront and 'breathtaking sunset views.' A real estate listing dubs it an 'amazing parcel of land,' saying, 'This sprawling lot provides a rare opportunity to build your waterfront dream estate.' The listing boasts that the Miami island is 'one of the most exclusive and private neighborhoods in the world with its private country club and golf course, police force, and 24/7 armed boat patrol.'"
And better yet, though just off the coast of Miami, it's only 60 miles from what they may hope will be the alternate White House for the next four years, Mar-a-Lago.
The Future, Trump-Style
As far as I'm concerned, amid the year-ending chaos of the Trump presidency, nothing could have caught the essential spirit of the last four years better than that largely overlooked news story. Let's start at its end, so to speak. Instead of brooding nonstop about a lost election like you-know-who, Ivanka and Jared, both key presidential advisers, are instead going to pour millions of dollars into what might be thought of as a personal investment in the future on that island off the southern coast of Florida.
When it comes to the planet, this catches in a nutshell the essence of what's passed for long-term thinking in the Trump White House since January 2017. After all, the most notable thing about the southern coast of Florida, if you're in an investing (and lifestyle) mood, is this: as the world's sea levels rise (ever more precipitously, in fact) thanks to climate change, one of the most endangered places in the United States is that very coast. Flooding in the region has already been on the rise and significant parts of it could be underwater by 2050 with its inhabitants washed out of their homes well before that and no personal police force or patrol boats will be able to protect Ivanka and Jared from that kind of global assault. Even Donald Trump, should he run and win again in 2024, won't be able to pardon them for that decision.
Put another way, the future of those two key Trump family members is a living example of what, in this world of ours, is usually called climate denialism; the "children," that is, have offered their own $30-million-plus encapsulation of the four-year environmental record of a 74-year-old president who couldn't imagine anyone's future except his own.
Though climate denialism is indeed the term normally used for this phenomenon, as a descriptor in the Trump years it fell desperately short of the mark. It's a far too-limited way of describing what the U.S. government has actually been doing. Withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, promoting oil exploration and drilling galore, and deep-sixing energy-related environmental regulations, Trump and his crew have not just been denying the obvious reality of climate change (as the West Coast burned in a historic fashion and the hurricane season ramped up dramatically in 2020), but criminally aiding and abetting the phenomenon in every way imaginable. They have, in fact, done their best to torch humanity's future. As I've written in these years, they rather literally transformed themselves into pyromaniacs even as they imagined unleashing, as the president proudly put it, "American energy dominance." The promotional phrase they used for their fossil-fuelized policies was "the golden era of American energy is now underway" that golden glow assumedly being the flames licking at this overheating planet of ours.
So, a climate-change endangered island? Why even bother to imagine such a future? In fact, the president made this point all too vividly when it came to Tangier Island, a 1.3-square-mile dot in the middle of Chesapeake Bay that global warming and erosion are imperiling and that is, indeed, expected to be gone by 2050. In 2017, the president called the mayor of its town (after CNN put out a story about the increasing problems of that Trump-loving isle). He assured him, as the mayor reported, that "we shouldn't worry about rising sea levels. He said that 'your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.'"
IED-ing the American System
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