TRUMP'S WANDERING SCANDAL

Until last week Trump was considered a racist imperialist, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, an ugly American amongst many.  In the last few days we saw someone more nefarious, a man at war against truth and dignity. The sycophants around him became more threatening:  Pence looks like Reinhard Heydrich, Stephen Miller like Joseph Goebels, Kellyanne Conway is this regime's Leni Riefenstahl. The rallies in Trump's heartland are also becoming more cultish.

The horror story of the children who were taken hostage, separated from their parents and often"parked" in cages is an indication of the depth of this Trump- made nightmare. The White House casting of the usual suspects is in the current circumstances a total disaster. Even the First Lady donned the wrong outfit for her journey into hell, which was otherwise more remarkable for what it hid than for what it showed.

The United States enters the age of ugliness. Nothing will stop Trump on his path to some form of insanity on all fronts. The mafia around him will only echo and amplify his destructive mantra. Some are tempted to comment on his "nihilism" but this choice of words is wrong because nihilism requires culture, information, history, which are all absent from this primitive cycle. American intellectuals, Republican and Democrat, have chosen for the opposition. They rightly refuse to be part of the manufactured deification of a crook but their retreat leaves a vacuum which is overtaken by the new Huns and Visigoths.

Trump is supposed to have caved in and put an end to the hostage-taking of children. There are so many loopholes and ambiguities that it is impossible to believe that he might ever listen to decency. His racist DNA is there to stay. Besides, he rules by instinct, not by any form of ethics. The America where the ecstatic and the elegiac compete is on hold, for how long?  The haters of the US have found in Trump the ultimate legitimacy for their prejudice. Early on, the cavalier and unprofessional antics of this president bewildered, now they repel.