~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Donald J Trump made his own video on his own media, the storyline being a how-to, like what you can dial up on YouTube, perhaps “How to fix a toilet that never quits running.”
To rid the world of an enemy who tells it like it is when it comes to himself (Trump, videographer) shows himself hitting a golf ball that strikes a performer (Bruce Springsteen, AKA “The Boss”) on the back, wherein our 75-year-old crooning song-master, falls face down on the stage.
Whoa! Is this a film on how to kill a superstar?
The Boss had described Trump with words Trump didn’t like being said about him – “corrupt, incompetent, treasonous.” And “I don’t like Donald Trump or what he is currently doing to the country.”
This personal opinion turned the President of the United States into one of his personas – demented – this time playing filmmaker of a pretend lethal “how-to” attack.
Why aren’t the faithful Democrats out here demanding an investigation of Trump videoing how to kill people?
Another form of Trump revenge was broadcast five days earlier via the same untruthfully named “Truth Social.” The set-up is a Trump harangue about a famous man he hates (not Springsteen this time) who is, according to Trump, advertising on Instagram with shell art on a beach about killing the Prez: The message is spelled out – “86 47.”
To most informed people, this means “get rid of (which is the “86” part) Trump (this means Trump, who is the 47th president of the U.S.)” It is an innocuous point of view that will soon be washed away by the tide.
Trump reaction as soon as he sees it on a social media platform is – guess what? – outrage. And cunning. Soon, Trump acolytes spring into their dirty work . . . harassment of one more Trump-defined archenemy, this time one who really was 86’ed in 2017 by the Art of the Deal guy and accomplished 86-er of all time – within the first year of his first regime, 23 people were fired; he had hired them.
At Trump’s outrage regarding “86 47,” the Secret Service and the FBI bow to Trump’s “Dirty cop” instigation, kiss feet, and the Secret Service takes over an investigation of former FBI chief James Comey for sending out a photo on his Instagram post: shells on a beach spelling out “86 47” that he and his wife saw while taking a walk.
These particular Donald tweets are extensively used subterfuges to make us upset about the wrong thing. We get riled at Trump’s bombast while the President’s loyalist MAGA army jumps on Trump’s latest target. In the meantime, the wily one is doing something in secret that’s going to harm us and enrich him (this time, it’s a matter of getting rid of Medicare via his “Big Beautfiul Bill” going through Congress late at night). The faithful MAGAs watch the un-news and get the “defend #47” message. We, in the meantime, are out here wondering how the President and his devotees can be so dim.
But he is not dim; he is wrathful, and he has a vast concern for slights. It is an even more serious character flaw than his greed. And he’s particularly good at using it as a smoke screen of outrage that seems to blind the Left every time.
The hypocrisy of the man at the helm of a once admired country is colossal. Europeans joke about him; who knows what the Persians say? No one in foreign governments trusts him, except leaders of Russia and other oligarchical despot-led nations who don’t have to trust him at all; they are tickled at how easy he is to corrupt.
According to the Times of London, Comey responded that Trump’s irate – and wrong – response to seashell art on a beach is mere endless idiocy from the Donald to derail us from what he’s really doing. “He’s bent on retribution and destroying the system. . . . He’s the monster in a horror sequel,” says Comey
Trump is a trial to former foreign allies, as they wonder – how much do we dare tell, as of old? How much will he understand? How dangerously will he deal with any secret information? Can we just quit talking to him?
Keeping up with the news is trying because it means seeing and hearing Trump. The MAGAs love seeing and hearing him, the rest of us are beyond weary. It seems so much easier to opt out, go about a serene life with no information on an old man scamming me, my family, my friends, my country. Friends tell me to quit watching; I feel compelled to continue; I need to know who to write to (Senators, Congresspeople, the President, newspapers) about illegal actions by Donald; and when and where the next protests are. I have to do as many things as I can to deter what I perceive as insidious subversion of my country.
I do not want to live in a country where the curators of the Smithsonian are threatened by a President who politicizes everything; will they have to throw out all of our past and all of our culture preserved in that institution?
How can I live in a country and write what I need to say where African-American museums are shut down, books are banned, Confederate statues are out in the open again, universities are told who to enroll, history is spurned, judges and justice are ignored, good works toward less fortunate countries are dismantled and de-subsidized, forests are mapped out to be clear-cut, more oil is pumped, climate change is a hoax, my Social Security and Medicare are on the chopping block and white people are thought to be better than all other shades.
Staying informed is onerous, but I don’t intend to be shut up or walked on. All of the list above is a collection of scary situations already in place or about to be.
If we are to save our crippled country, we have to know how it’s being hurt and how to instruct the misinformed and defy the intentional who are hurting it.
Why do they want it destroyed?
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Here’s the skinny on the term “86,” originating from Chumley’s speakeasy in the Village in New York City.
I had a beer there with Dad in 1962 when he took me to NYC for my high school graduation present. I thought it was a dirty, smelly dive, but he revered the joint because it was a hangout of famous 1920s writers, and because of that, he had gone there while waiting to deploy to the UK during WWII. Twenty years later, he wanted to show me a youthful shrine. And 18-year-olds could drink beer in New York.
Chumley’s has since been cleaned up, a sad day for the nostalgic, but it’s still at 86 Bedford St.
When the joint was invaded by the cops in the 1920s and ‘30s for selling alcohol against the Prohibition of such behavior, “86” was the bartender’s yell for all patrons to hit the back door of #86 Bedford to escape the Fuzz. Both Merriam-Webster’s and Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang take note of numbers “8” and “6” having to do with the size of a typical grave hole, “linking “86” to the act of burying someone. Uncommon usage. The vast majority of folks “86’d” live to tell the tale.
