The Enemy Within
“We have met the enemy,”
Pogo says, “and he is us,”
but Trump insists it’s them,
anyone who is alien, other, elite.
How did this sandbox bully
win so many to his side?
Trump is a mass media man,
a carnival barker who entertains folks
with his step-right-up freak show.
We are now an endangered species,
driven from our brave new echo
chamber by duped fools who lack
certain essential traits like casting
a responsible ballot, doubling down
instead on reactionary clowns.
A three-ring circus diverts attention.
Our national soap opera feeds on audience
share, politics as performance rules.
Marvel Comics dominate Hollywood,
TV entertains at any cost, Social Media
provides platforms for outlandish lies.
Too many people without standards of
rejection are streamed down river over
the falls, swept away by false narratives.
Most Trump supporters never learn
civics in high school, don’t see why
he is utterly unfit to be president.
The world is shocked by our abdication
of leadership, not to worry the Donald
will always tell us how great we are.
Life in the Trumpobscene Age
The Donald is a developer,
when he sees a chance to own
some prime beachfront property
he simply can’t resist. Removing
two million people to other countries
presents a small problem, nothing
a little arm-twisting can’t solve,
cleaning away all that rubble
from the Gaze Strip is just another
construction job only on a larger
scale, getting rid of any lingering
odors of those dead bodies will
take a little time. Palestinians
as well as the entire Arab world
might be a tad perturbed,
but what the Donald wants
the Donald gets, soon that vacant
real estate will be transformed into
the Trump Riviera, his towering
hotel enjoying pride of place,
serving amnesia on the house
so everyone is so happy.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
When a crazy guy with a gun attacked
a pizza parlor in DC, convinced Hillary
held kidnapped children in the cellar for
nefarious purposes, I thought this is
the looniest of looney tunes, now I see
a direct line to those thousands of Trump-
cult crazies storming the Capitol to rescue
the Republic from satanic Democrats.
As he told us in his perverse topsy-
turvy way, since his first day in office
Trump has set about to dismantle
our democracy, install a Deep State
that does his bidding. All those
Trumpster voters who believe Biden
won a rigged election that was stolen
from the Donald now can look
forward to a future of rigged elections
and candidates stealing victories in
the name of replacing our government
with people power. The Washington Post
has a byline—“democracy dies in darkness”
—and Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner, was
one of the billionaires who switched off
the lights and dropped the curtain.
The ICE man cometh
for illegal immigrants
(every one a criminal by
the Donald’s definition),
that’s why he’s set up
a camp in Guantánamo
to hold 30,000 prisoners.
Hitler waited a few years
before opening his camps
for Jews and undesirables
promising work is freedom
and gas from the shower
will keep them clean.
To combat the weaponization
of the FBI and the Department
of Justice, the best people are fired
in order to weaponize the Justice
Department and the FBI.
Trump always keeps his promise
to do unto others what in his
projective paranoia he fears
they plot to do to him.
Civilization and its Discontents
The most obvious fact about the Donald
is his huge ego. Is that why voters like him?
Everybody has an ego, we all care about
ourselves first, judge from the perspective
of me, myself, and I. In Freudian psychology
the superego represents the core values
of a society, keeping a check on the urges
of the id, but Trump, in effect, ignores
social values and instead becomes a kind
of Super Id that allows people to ignore
what Lincoln called our better angels
and indulge their worst instincts—Trump
lets everybody feel free to be me without
the restraints of a civilized society.