Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes:
Fool’s Folly, from Disparates (1816–19, published 1877)

"He was never primed to contribute what success always requires."

The unmistakable scent of Desperation accompanies every proclamation and every action initiated by this goofy administration. It's as if they know everybody's already on to them. They persist, perhaps bravely, failing to achieve even a threshold of believability. They have not managed to convince themselves. They cling together around their largely absurdist stories like proverbial rats clinging to flotsam, and hardly even deserving that hackneyed old allegory to describe their condition. They present as pitiful, yet they still seem to produce fruitful disruption. As the courts start kicking in, their explanations become even more fantastical. We knew they weren't serious from the outset, with their assault on decency and efficiency, neither of which parsed to anything other than fantasy: abuse, fraud, and waste. Their “savings” cost more than they saved. Their police for their police state seems comical, cosplay goons performing administrative errors. International incidents initiated by middle-of-the-night tirades: the usual.

The more paranoid point out that they follow a plan, published in paperback form, so the rest of us can follow along. It's clear that naive planners created the plan. It assumes many facts never once in evidence. Even the rumor of its existence was strenuously denied before the election since its contents and purpose proved wildly unpopular, even among partisans. Though our incumbent lied about his intention to implement it, his inability to implement it has been most prominent. Perhaps there was a severe shortage of idiots needed to populate the effort. Maybe it was written by people who didn't understand government. Likely, the idiot in charge of implementing it had never read it, though his native ineptness should adequately explain the disconnects. He couldn't make a ham sandwich out of a ham sandwich. He's not usually ham-handed enough to successfully fail.

The threats increase as the failures come into focus. Unreasonableness of the excuses also floats toward the excessive. Me thinks ye complaineth too much. Even the crowing about the few limited successes would seem excessive if they were really wins. Dylan's old adage about there being no success like failure, even though failure ain't no success at all, seems perfectly apropos. Early seemingly successful intimidations—nothing unexpected from them—have encouraged a growing and spirited opposition that gains energy from the ire it extracts from the incumbent. Supposedly, the most powerful man on the planet, and people still won't do his bidding. He complains with evident bitterness, with the clear sense that it wasn't supposed to be like this this time. It's almost as if he was promised adoration, that he would finally be recognized for the genius only he ever suspected he possessed. Like he was counting on adoration, and failing to receive that, especially in the popular press, he's consequently depressed. He lashes out like the spoiled eight-year-old he never wasn't.

By my count, he's used up most of his leverage in his first hundred days. He has few reserves. He could resort to the most popular defense that the more notorious chief executives employed. He could start a war. I know, he's already desperately declared several wars against minor non-state operators, declarations that no serious constitutional scholar considers legal. To engage in a real tussle involving carrier groups and massive troop deployments often encourages broad public support. Still, I doubt invading a benign country like Panama, Greenland, Mexico, or Canada would garner much more than wider spread public outrage. Such initiatives would cross that line he's been dancing along since he took that oath he had no intention of ever upholding. They would finally get impeachment moving. Once the charges are filed, his illusory presidency will be effectively over, if, indeed, it ever actually began. He gave away almost all of his authority on that first day after he pardoned those domestic terrorists, and he secretly knows it. He forfeited any right to complain about any terrorists after he'd let those clowns loose.

Our democracy will be stronger after feeling perhaps weaker than it's ever felt before. That sense of significant weakness accompanies all physical improvement. I've been working myself into exhaustion cleaning up the yard for Spring. Each morning, I enter into fresh negotiations about how much I can reasonably expect of myself. I win these tussles, though I do not always engage as though I'm succeeding. My shoulder might be aching again. I'd rather lie beneath the magenta-blooming ornamental crabapple and listen to bees buzzing through its blossoms, inhaling that sweet scent through dilated nostrils. I don my overalls and muck shoes, and set about rooting out cheatgrass instead. I feel desperate until I get over that hump again. Once I'd finished clearing the worst of it, the rest seemed less threatening. Initially, the threat seemed overwhelming. Threats take more than a lazy afternoon to neutralize. I had to work through my sense of Desperation before I could find any sense of liberation awaiting. The work was supposed to feel exhausting. What work could even be worth doing if it wasn't in some ways utterly exhausting? It's a dedication test. Do I want to succeed or just to have succeeded? Our incumbent ran because he wanted to feel as though he had succeeded. It was a vanity-based initiative. He was never primed to contribute what success always requires. This, alone, fully justifies his utter Desperation now. He bit off way more than he could chew.

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