TRUMP: WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE (The Tempest II.1.245)

Misdemeanors, offense or lies by this president and his cronies multiply. Slowly Trump & Co. are creating an alternative reality which confuses most and showers the "base" with the vitriol it craves. For now, the endangered checks and balances which are under this administration's "carpet bombing" still hold. For how long?

Trump is a master of deception.  His method of contradictory narratives blurs, confuses and equalizes truth and lies. Rudy Giuliani, court jester-in-chief, plays his Rigoletto act with shameless brio. Former confidants, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are thrown under the presidential limousine until final time for sentence, or pardon. The more Trump feels cornered, the more his deregulated aggression will rule, unchecked.

Some start to wonder how a president who is a junky for tweets and sordid trivia is still able to steer a foreign policy. Actually he doesn't, and just keeps undoing what Obama did or follows his primitive psyche with zero conceptual interest. It appears that other leaders who might have some sympathy for his bizarre antics start to show a degree of anxiety.  The Republicans will still follow him until their extinction looms too close.  His "base" who feed on coal, God and guns remains supportive as long as he entertains them with the "us versus them" Leitmotiv. In the outcry of the Roman circus atmosphere in his rallies, he switches on the culture war. In fact, he operates in a nihilistic mindset. It is possible that violence might erupt, directed against the press, Democrats or establishment Republicans.

The Democrats do not want to go on the impeachment trail for fear of making Trump look like a martyr in the eyes of cookie-baking America. The Republicans want their man in the Supreme Court and will look elsewhere as long as the Manchurian president delivers them the judge who might overturn past progress. He returns the United States to some avatar of Polish or Hungarian mettle but they look elsewhere. Some hoped that the new secretary of State might be more pro-active than Tillerson but this is just an other naive gamble. In this cabinet of crooks (De Vos, Ross, Sessions (for how long), Carson, Perry (yes, he is there), Zinke, etc.) the wise man/woman perishes, the coward survives. The cult does not allow creative thinking. The best image for what this ship of fools stands for is the image of kids in cages.  "Mission accomplished."

The justice apparatus still works but the MRI shows that nefarious "plaques" start to alter judgment. Paula Duncan, the one member of the jury who could not rally her peers in Manafort's trial, is proof that tribal commitment becomes more important than moral responsibility. This is yet another indication of the ways in which the American experience descends to the level of nightmare.

There remains one very important change in the American landscape. Trump has killed (for the time-being) the legitimacy of the saga of white America. The former leading strand is going under-cover. Other forms, norms, creative "outbreaks" are claiming their space and time. There is a kind of proud self-consciousness, especially in black culture, which obeys now to its own voices and goes for expression and style that are "home grown".  Black culture is becoming the leader in so many fields, including the expression of "self". Asians and Latinos start also to reclaim their own place in the American puzzle. This is a most positive change, even if the cause for this acceleration is not a pleasant one. It might feel paradoxical, but the Trump dark-age has acted as a multiplicative for the diversity it portrays in such negative terms. Black Lives Matter opened the path for black culture that owes nothing to anyone.

This blog said that the fall will see more than falling leaves.  Indeed, "the time is out of joint".