Lucian and Mary Brown:
Untitled [baby reaching for typewriter] (c. 1950)

"Nobody ever applauds a terrorist."

Far from appearing to be a skilled negotiator, our incumbent exasperates his counterparts by continually switching his terms. On trade, he made up a "novel" definition of tariff, one which no economist can make heads or tails of. He promises one thing before reneging, typically delivering some punishing terms to trading partners who've loyally served as our manufacturers for decades. Even where no hope of developing domestic production exists, he hits a former partner with some punishing, seemingly random blow. Nobody knows what he's trying to do. If anything shines through his increasingly thin veneer of sanity, his trade negotiation policies qualify as nearly pure insanity. Or, perhaps, they're only inanity. The two seem indistinguishable in him.

The urgent need to seem victimized might fuel much of this theater. Once blessed, the US in his eyes seems uniquely cursed, put upon from every direction at once. Nothing much has changed, except for a narrative that never held much credibility, anyway. One can tell they're dealing with fiction because Faux Snooze embeds reporters after the administration that refuses to administer anything invites them, and no one else. Fair and Balanced as a fat thumb on the scale, these performances amount to acts of terror. The result should properly leave us feeling Tariffied. We will not be riding this one out undamaged.

It seems incredible that one person, clearly suffering from delusions of authority, could so easily complicate history. None of his economic schemes appears in any way likely to work. Our docility speaks mostly to our privilege in having grown accustomed to the rule of law, which was mainly beyond reproach, grounded in reason and good intentions. The same principles surrounding irrationality, evil, and inept intentions receive the same presumption of protection, especially when the Attorney General is chosen for her corruptibility. She seems to believe that criminality is merely a matter of discretion. Whatever her incumbent declares legal, she will not investigate. This makes Watergate look like a tea party in comparison.

Insanity rules the country now. Our incumbent appears to take great joy in breaking things. He speaks almost exclusively derisively. His domestic allies are always seconds away from being chastized for some imagined infraction that will ultimately sum to nothing. The few who are forced out will feel the most fortunate, as each publishes their scathing bestseller about struggling to retain their sanity amid such craziness. As with all terrorist movements, our incumbent lives mere moments away from being toppled. The stronger he seems to feel, the more precarious his actual position becomes. The bridges he's already burned will no longer carry his traffic. His soldiers already committed virtual mutiny when they sashayed down Pennsylvania Avenue instead of marching. They demonstrated their loyalty to something more inspiring than this President, whose policies seem uniformly abhorrent.

We do not yet know who will intervene to prevent the baby from ruining the typewriter. That we have a baby in charge has not gone unnoticed by many. As the ruinous results from his continuing negotiations and TACO responses become inescapably obvious, his already far underwater polling will inevitably worsen. He will try, of course, to hold onto power he never possessed. The people will seek redress for his wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive performance. Nobody ever applauds a terrorist.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #FollowingChapters, #PureSchmaltz