Trump's First One Hundred Days as Witnessed by an Ersatz Supporter

I gave my money to Bernie, I condemned HRC for being a hawk, and I voted for DJT even though I knew my State would not go along.

DJT appealed to me mostly because he seemed to be less militaristic than HRC. The fact that he held numerous properties all over the world was a kind of collateral against collateral damage. To date, I remain optimistic--Syria, Afghanistan, and N. Korea notwithstanding.

First though, the negative. I should have realized that he would put himself first before the country. In fact, I was hoping for this vis-a-vis his properties. But it was not apparent to me that he would go hog wild with his "Ferengi" crew. In this, my prognostications failed miserably but even if I had been more attuned to things, I still would have felt that the emoluments clause would be sacrosanct and would have prevented any graft on the part of the President.

To me, everything in those first few weeks of his presidency, spoke of fascism and corporate greed. I wasn't the only one painting a Hitler moustache on the Grabmeister and it continues to this day and unless half the country is terribly wrong about him, his legacy was sealed when he brought in businessman after businessman to his cabinet. I'm hoping against hope that Donald Trump hired these people because they are the only ones he can relate to--the only ones he can "read" and who would obey his dictates as any good vice president or other head honcho of this or that corporate department would do.

Already though, his tax plan favors the rich, and his healthcare favors the rich. I was so blinded by my disdain of militarism that I failed to see the Republican in all his business attire. Where was the media or Twitter in the campaign? Had someone informed us of the obvious, perhaps things would have gone differently. After all, protesting against HRC's militarism, in retrospect, sounds so much more doable than what faces us today. I followed the election closely and all I ever heard was racist, misogynist, nationalist, liar, and other terms of endearment. The wall was mentioned but I never thought that would fly being as we need cheap labor within the country. The repeal of Obamacare was mentioned but I always felt that BO let us down by not going with the public option that would have eliminated the expensive middleman. Maybe this time, I said to myself, we'll get it.

Can you imagine the insider trading that will take place as the ex-CEO of Exxon becomes privy to and enabler of oil deals around the world? To ensure success, Mr. Trump puts a climate-denier in charge of the EPA as the NYT sucks ass and puts one on its payroll. To appease his base, he puts the racist Sessions in charge of justice. My guess is that Mr. Sessions will also come in handy when it comes to suppressing protests against the regime. Finally, to appease his base while simultaneously benefiting corporations, he puts the sociopath, Neil Gorsuch, on the bench. This is a man who puts companies and government ahead of the common man nearly every time because he is incapable of putting himself in our shoes and showing the slightest modicum of empathy towards our plight.

So, is there any good to this presidency? Well, I seriously doubt that he will start any major wars. He already may have hurt some of his businesses through diminished tourism; I don't think he will wage war and risk terroristic strikes against his international or domestic properties. If I were his insurance companies, I'd up his premiums big time; that is, unless I got his personal assurances that he'll not incur anyone's wrath outside of domestic liberals who are keenly aware of what the police force is capable of--especially now under Sessions.

What was Syria? Well, that was daddy's little girl's doing, supposedly; I'll leave it at that. What was Afghanistan? That was just a heads up to the MIC that they'll get to use their toys on the battleground of our fellow man. What was N. Korea? I read an interesting piece this week in Tom Dispatch that pointed out that the way to nuclear deterrence in our modern age was to show that we have a few screws loose. Of course, it's only OK when we demonstrate this and not when Kim Jong-un acts "crazy."

To Americans and much of the rest of the world, Kim Jong-un seems irrational, even seriously deranged. (Just pair his name with “insane” or “crazy” in a Google search.) Yet in rattling his miniscule nuclear quiver, he is really joining the long-established game of “nuclear deterrence,” and practicing what is known among American strategists as the “madman theory.” The latter term is most famously associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War, but in fact it is more or less imbedded in U.S. nuclear game plans. As rearticulated in “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,” a secret policy document drafted by a subcommittee in the U.S. Strategic Command in 1995 (four years after the demise of the Soviet Union), the madman theory posits that the essence of effective nuclear deterrence is to induce “fear” and “terror” in the mind of an adversary, to which end “it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed.”

When Kim Jong-un plays this game, he is simultaneously ridiculed and feared to be truly demented. When practiced by their own leaders and nuclear priesthood, Americans have been conditioned to see rational actors at their cunning best.

How cunning is our President? Well, I worked for a well-known commercial real estate co in my time  (as a programmer) and I can tell you I never met a more cunning group; but you have to be or else you risk getting swallowed up whole by the other guy. It's interesting that another real estate mogul, Leona Helmsley, once said that only little people pay taxes. Hey Donald, where's your 1040?