Tuesday, January 09, 2018

Self Aware

"....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.....to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!" - "President" Donald J. Trump on Twitter
This is the kind of comic gift that the jesters that be were hoping for when the news came down that this VERY successful businessman and top T.V. star would be our forty-fifth president. On his very first try. Except for that time back in 2000 when he received more than fifteen thousand votes in California's presidential primary. And the VERY part of successful businessman is tempered by several bankruptcies.
Then there's that top T.V. star thing. There is no doubt that he provided us with a catch phrase every bit as lasting as "You are the weakest link," but "You're fired" may not have been the one he hoped to have emblazoned on all the coffee mugs in the Oval Office break room. He is certainly one of the most elevated stars of his stripe, surpassing pods like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly by turning that video awareness into POTUS. As I have mentioned here any number of times, we get the government we deserve. Which means we wanted that guy from TV who shouts "You're Fired!" to run our country. Because we are a nation that loves its TV. And we love to see other people get fired. And that hair.
Which brings us to that genius thing. The dictionary does not assign a number or score, it tells us that a genius is "exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability." A score of one hundred forty would put him right there on the cutting edge of geniusness, but then he had to go and drop "stable" in on top. Yes, this was in response to some around him suggesting that he was all oatmeal north of the eyebrows, but does it really make one a genius to follow the path of Donald Trump? I don't tend to think of Einstein or Machiavelli. I think of Chance the gardener in Being There. If you're not familiar, this is the story of a simple minded gardener who gets swept up in Washington politics, and his words are taken for wisdom by those who yearn for it. And in the end, it turns out he knows a lot about gardening. That's all. 
Genius. 

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