So, it appears that the carnival barker known as the orange rump has managed, in just a few short hours, to
- recklessly hurl aside nearly 40 years of careful engagement with China,
- recklessly endanger our relationship with India by by bizarrely inviting himself to Pakistan, and
- recklessly invite one of this year’s entries to the Rogue Dictators Club (duterte from the Phillipines) to the White House for some quailty time with the incoming squatter-in-chief.
That’s quite an accomplishment for just a few hours work. It takes enormous — some might even say yuuuge — skill to potentially blow up so many important alliances of our country in such a very, very short time.
It looks like hair furor’s modus operandi for being “leader of the free world” will be for him to run his many sordid businesses out of the Oval Office, while Lil Mikey handles all that “guvmint” stuff (ie, all foreign and domestic policies).
And therein lies the conflict. Because while Cantaloupe Clusterf**k-in-Chief says he’s going to hand off all that haaard governing stuff to his 2nd in command, said Clusterf**ker will still be the actual president. Which means there’s always the chance that he, as the actual president, may someday want to do some actual presidenting and override whatever his #2 does.
So you might think you’ve got a deal with the pence-meister, but then Clusterf***ker can always suddenly decide to completely blow up everything you’ve worked so hard to negotiate. You thought you had a deal, but then it all slipped out of your fingers.
In a normal administration, this type of division of labor might actually work. The top exec decides that his/her portfolio of responsiblities will be X, while #2 will handle everything else. After carefully cataloging their strengths, weaknesses, experience and preferences, #1 and #2 could come to an entirely equitable arrangement, complete with clear lines of authority and responsibility. Yes, that would be a normal administration.
But we don’t live in normal times. We've got Chief Bedwetter / Pants-on-Fire Guy as #1, and he’s got the thinnest skin in the universe. He only needs the very slightest, completely bats**t crazy, paranoid, conspiracy-laden vomit out of planet Xyloonia 23 to have the most epic of epic meltdowns evah!!!
The question then becomes — who actually speaks for America? Whose word do you — or can you even — trust? Lil Mikey’s word is supposed to be good, but his leash can always be pulled tight at a moment’s notice. Clusterf***ker clearly can’t be trusted: he lies out of habit and can change his mind ... because the sun shone down on him wrong that day. Or something.
And if you’re a world leader looking at this colossal clusterf**k erupting from the most heavily armed, most militarized and biggest economic powerhouse on the planet, how would you respond?
When the farm next door has the biggest, meanest, baddest bull in town and is owned by the craziest, meanest, most maniacal idiot in town — who won’t lift a finger to help you but absolutely will send his bull to terrorize you and your neighbors, just because — you band together with your neighbors against him.
Which is what the rest of the world is likely to do with us. With rump in charge, the US can’t be trusted, not to protect its own interests nor anyone else’s. The only interests that rump will protect are his interests and his alone. And these can change at any moment, depending on who’s greased his palm recently or who's whispered sweet atrocities into his twisted, demented ear lately.
Our military? It’s likely that countries that we now think of as allies are about to start furiously working to blunt every military advantage we have, by whatever advantage they can find. Superpower weapons require superpower components — we’ve steadily outsourced much of our military technology overseas, to countries all around the world that may or may not be our allies soon. Raw materials for those weapons? If they’re not here, we’ve been buying them from somewhere else. Expect those markets to suddenly … have restrictions ... to a rogue state like ours.
Sanctions? Remember how we’ve used those so successfully against other countries? We may very well see some of those directed against us now.
Alliances? Other countries have been our allies in the past. But when you’re faced with a madman who has all the biggest toys, those countries are likely to start re-evaluating their alliances with us … and fast.
Financial weapons: Not too long ago, our banksters managed to bankrupt nearly everyone on the planet. Meanwhile, we’re one of the biggest debtor nations on the planet. And, of course, the Big Kahuna in the room — why should the dollar be supreme if our country is ruled by a madman?
If any or all of these should come to pass, we haven’t even begun to understand just how much of a world of hurt we’re in for
And … that might be the point. To keep us and every other country so off-balance that they don’t know what to expect. The only ones who would know are razputin bannon and his 4th reich cabal:
“Darkness is good,” says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student.
“Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they—“ I believe by “they” he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster “—get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”