Oh, How They Hates Him

     I'm enjoying the amount of outrage, narrow scrutiny, foaming at the mouth and sheer, often addled, boggling on the part of not only the Press but the bulk of people famous for being famous over the Trump Presidency -- and before it has even begun!

     Mr. Trump is not one of my favoritest of people, no more than his predecessor, and while many of the reasons for looking askance at the two are different, one is the same -- and it's a big one: the ever-increasing scope and depth of Presidential power.  All of them grab for more, if only because it is convenient; see the venerated George Washington on the matter of "Executive Orders," for instance. But when a Republican is in the White House (or about to be), oversight is easy: everyone from the Nightly News to washed-up Hollywood stars scry out the slightest misstep and shout the dire news from the rooftops, leaving pinpointing the tiny fire under the towering column of smoke as my only effort.

     Consider an example Tam pointed out: Mr. Trump wants his son-in-law as an advisor and there's no end of cries of nepotism, but when Ms. Clinton's husband put her in charge of an effort to nationalize healthcare, the press hailed it as the very best medicine for this county's ills.  (Congress disagreed and the push was, for a while, deader'n Elvis.  Like zombie Elvis, it lurched back to life later and made a mess.)

     All modern Presidents have been a bit like a butcher who tends to lay his thumb on the scales if you're not watching closely.  With a Republican in the office, there is no shortage of watchers, and no shortage of megaphones.  My centrist-to-liberal friends and co-workers ask, "Aren't you worried about (dunh dunh DAH!) Trump?"  I don't have to worry; the Press will do that for me and the €ntertainment media will cheer them on while booing him, with an occasional sidebar from fretting, condescending high-tech metrosexuals in Manhattan and the California megalopoli.

     There is something in humanity, or perhaps in our politics in the widest sense, that presses Caesarwards.  Opposition to it, even of the the most partisan and befuddled sort, is not at all bad -- and often entertaining.  I believe the die has already been cast, the rollercoaster released to gravity's rule decades back.

     Nothing much left for me to do except to pop popcorn -- and load magazines.  You always load magazines when Congress is in session, or about to be, and stock up on stamps and envelopes.  "Dear Senator, I am writing from my secure redoubt under the front porch...."  Ah, politics.  It was never really safe to ignore it completely, darn it.