CALM BEFORE THE STORM

The American president was yet again on his "matinee performer" best. In front of the journalists who covered an event in the White House honoring the military creme de la creme, he uttered the now famous, disjointed "calm before the storm" words.  Journalists and pundits are now busy trying to find a meaning in those words. Trump achieved his usual objective:  deflecting.  By doing so he covered up the war waged against the pro-choice camp, his vulgar performance in Puerto Rico, the gun overdose in the USA, the "dossier" in the Russian probe, the cold (?) war with his secretary of State, King Salman's visit to Moscow--considered as a snub-- or the upcoming, in sophism's disguise ,"major" moves regarding Iran, and maybe North Korea.

After eight months, Trump is still able to cheat, lie (a record), and get away with farcical moves that are made to unsettle and derange. This president is not about a learning curve, he is all about deceit disguised as "mad man theory". The wrong and the very wrong are being played in equal numbers but meanwhile, behind the smokescreen, the progress made in the last eight years is being starved to death. As in Rome, this circus is not an innocent passe temps. The various secretaries who are supposed to deal with justice, health, environment, education, energy, housing have only one objective: dismantling the achievements of the Obama administration. Racial tensions have returned with a vengeance and the culture war opposes red against blue, believer against secular, South against North, rural against urban, conservative against liberal. The president/arsonist-in-chief drops a torch wherever he goes.

The prejudice against culture, history, and diplomacy is casting a shadow over America's former added-value.  65% of Americans (latest poll) disagree with Trump over this well-organized, extended Kristallnacht, which goes on and on. The available time is being taken hostage by alternative facts that keep the media busy and distracted at random and ad nauseam. This strategy has found in Rupert Murdoch its Beaverbrook, and in Fox News and the usual ultra-right radio spinners, the spokespersons for an alternative world.  Sad...as Trump likes to tweet.   He could add:  Le bluff c'est moi.