By Beau Elliot
“Confusion is a small price to pay to make America safe.” — the Fake-News-in-Chief
Well, if confusion is what he wished for, it’s certainly what he got. Be careful what you wish for, confusion says, you just might get it.
We speak, of course, about the carefully thought-out, extremely well-vetted, extraordinarily pinpointed ban on Muslims entering the U.S. that the Trumpster rolled out right before last weekend, when, officials apparently had hoped, members of the news media would be drunk or asleep, dreaming all about the upcoming spectacularly exciting Pro Bowl.
Then (what could possibly have gone wrong?), the weekend erupted into utter chaos at various airports, with hundreds in limbo, many visas canceled, some with green cards, apparently waiting for Godot, some with green cards sent back to who knows where (one woman, who had lived part of the year in Austria, was sent to Copenhagen, which is rather like sending a woman from Los Angeles to Fargo, North Dakota, where, perhaps, she’ll be discovered by the Coen Brothers).
And the border guards? Seemingly caught off-guard (the Trumpster’s ban hadn’t been vetted by any of the appropriate agencies; talk about running a country like a business), they apparently didn’t know whom to detain and whom to not, so they just detained almost everybody.
Yeah, that’ll make America safe. But safe from what? Me and you, next time? There’s always a next time.
This is not a ban on Muslims, the Fake-News said. “There are 46 Muslims nations in the world, and this only covers seven,” special something-or-other Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway said.
Okay. Though when you single out seven mostly Muslim nations, ban the Muslims from traveling to the U.S., but allow the Christians from those nations to enter the U.S., you can see how easily we land in the Alternative Facts version of the Universe.
And by the way, the Trumpster’s ban on people from seven Muslim countries would not have made a difference in the 9/11 attacks; 19 of the 9/11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia, and Saudia Arabia is not on the List of Seven. Just saying.
Human life gets confusing after a while, when you’ve been given the opportunity to see some.
Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, the alt-right guru, has been elevated to the Trumpster’s National Security Council. I suppose that comes under the heading of making America safe for white nationalists. Maybe that’s Amerika.
And in another meanwhile, sales of George Orwell’s 1984 have surged 10,000 percent since the inauguration of the Fake-News-in-Chief, followed by Trumpster adviser Conway’s famous “alternative facts” statement.
Just saying. And, yeah, that figure is 10,000 percent. It. Is. Not. A. Typo.
Maybe that makes the Trumpster the Big Bother, which brings us by commodius vicus of bending gravity back to alternative facts. You know: The Sun rises in the West, the Solar System and the Universe revolve around Earth, poop is actually nutritious and poor people should eat more of it. “Poor,” “poop,” it’s just a matter of one letter. How confusing can that be?
“Don’t waffle when you should be forging ahead,” said the horoscopes for some sign on 27 Jan. Given the times, I so wanted to change it to “Don’t waffle when you should pancake.”
The Statue of Liberty is weeping.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …”
Ah, screw it, the Fake-News-Chief says. Screw it all.
Let’s build some damn walls.