How the Trump White House is Like a Children's Song

This was an interesting week for anyone tracking developments out of the White House. 

Ten in the Bed copyright, Teece Aronin

In one of the wildest upsets since Dorothy's house flattened the Wicked Witch of the East, the White House flattened Anthony Scaramucci, its communications director. And he was still as shiny and new as his aviator sunglasses. 

His hiring, just 10 days prior, sparked then Press Secretary Sean Spicer to resign, mumbling something about too many cooks in the kitchen. Spicer didn't get that quite right: It was too many kooks in the White House - or as Trump calls it, the "dump." Spicer is either kicking himself now or rolling over in bed at the luxury resort he has probably dreamed about since last January.  

Scaramucci, aka the Mooch, aka the Scar, aka Scary Mucci - but that's just in my house - proceeded to threaten people's jobs, tweet and swoon over the view from Air Force One and grant an interview to The New Yorker so vulgar that making sense of the edited quotes was nearly impossible without male, anatomically correct poseable figures. 

When Scaramucci's fed-up wife, who had just filed for divorce, gave birth to their baby, Scaramucci wasn't there. He had scuttled her and his child to the back burner so he could be with his other soon to-be-estranged love, Donald Trump. The two were in Glen Jean, West Virginia for Trump's disastrous speech before the Boy Scouts. Hindsight is 20-20. 

Reince Preibus, busy hanging on to his job by his fingernails, was sacked by Trump as White House chief-of-staff thanks to Scaramucci. Priebus was replaced by General John Kelly. Kelly, no idiot, advised Trump to fire Scaramucci, which Trump did. Sadly, for Scaramucci, Trump actually listened to someone for once. 

As an example of art imitating life, my puppeteer friend, Rob pointed out that a character named Scaramouche sometimes appears in Punch and Judy shows. Usually a thief, Scaramouche is often beheaded by Punch by means of a slapstick. That observation sparked my prediction that we will soon see a Netflix 10-part docudrama starring Rob Lowe. 

I can also picture Scaramucci turning up as a talking head on MSNBC, Fox, or CNN. He wouldn't care which way the network leans since he disliked Trump before he liked him before he presumably started disliking him again. Or maybe he'll pitch a show of his own to Sirius.

Remember Mark Fuhrman, the detective suspected of planting evidence that implicated O.J. Simpson? Fuhrman, the known racist who perjured himself on the stand? He ended up with his own talk show and has been a frequent contributor to shows on Fox News. Fuhrman gets paid for this while people with journalism degrees can't find jobs.

Of course, social media had a field day over Scaramucci. Someone on Facebook wrote a meme comparing him to a fruit fly for getting hired, becoming a father, getting divorced, then getting fired within ten days. 

All this hiring, firing and resigning reminds me of a children's song I loved when I was little:

There were 10 in the bed and the little one said, "Roll over, roll over!" So, they all rolled over, and one fell out. After nine verses, the little one sighs, "Alone at last."

This time life imitated art when John Kelly told everybody to roll over, and Scaramucci fell out. 

Maybe Baby - Hope in the Current Political Climate

This past week, I felt sadder than I have in a long time. 

Image by Teece Aronin

I felt sad because so many of the people who share the U.S. with me are coming undone. Too many hate each other. Too many are afraid. Too many had great expectations and now are caught like cattle in the crossfire. 

And when it comes to politics, everyone is cattle, either all the time or part of the time; we just don't all know it. 

Cattle, for our purposes, are the innocents, the voiceless, the held back, the poor, the easy to manipulate, the under-educated, and the powerful. The word is not necessarily a slam. 

This kind of cattle has little to do with gender. A steer or a bull could be a woman, and a cow could be a man. The key difference between a bull and a steer is that the steer has been castrated. Hang in there; it'll make sense in a minute.  
Some cattle are calves: At the start of the Obama administration, calves stepped into the light, cautious and blinking, hopeful that their world was now safer. They are the undocumented, fleeing treacherous homelands. They are the LGBTQIA-plus community, victimized in disproportionate levels of gender-based or homophobic violence. They are the working poor, scrambling to live on less than livable wages. They are a lot of other people. Calves are anyone who is unfairly vulnerable. 

But back to the steers: Steers can be naive or easily led, and while most don't fully understand their part in the current political climate, many are convinced they know it all. Steers can hail from any party. When they are castrated, they lose their voices and the critical thinking skills they might otherwise have developed. They can bellow but not articulate. Steers have only wet coal in their bellies where there could have been fire. 

Next come the bulls. Bulls are anyone with power - educational, financial, political - anything that can get or keep them ahead. 

Cows are underrepresented, underestimated, marginalized, and economically disadvantaged people, many of them women, and sometimes they overlap with the calves. The over-simplified reason most cows are held back is because that's what happens when unscrupulous bulls are in charge. People of color, indigenous people, people who lack access to the internet, college educations, and quality healthcare free of bias, are pushed down, trampled, and left behind. 

Since the election, Donald Trump has expressed a willingness to use Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a framework for a restructured healthcare system, but many of the cows and calves haven't heard this news that might have given them a sliver of hope. 

That slow news drip down to the cows and calves is what makes developments such as Trump's seemingly softer stance on the ACA something like trickle-down economics. It doesn't matter if the news is good or bad or vitally important - because the cows and calves scrambling for survival can't hear it. They don't sit down to read The Wall Street Journal on smart phones over a sushi lunch because they can't afford a smart phone, can't afford sushi, or can't afford lunch.  

Singer, songwriter, and poet Leonard Cohen died Thursday at age 82, right smack in the midst of all this hoohah. His song, Everybody Knows summed up the bitterness many people feel about sinking systems such as ours. It would fit no matter which candidate won last week. 

Everybody knows the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

How dare Cohen die, leaving us in this mess when he was clearly so savvy about what caused it? The answer, I think, was to pursue his muse, Marianne, who died just three months prior. But that's a sad story for a sad essay and a sad day. 

Today, I am focused on hope.

To those of you who say of Trump, "My God, why all the stress? He hasn't even done anything yet," please understand that you probably support Trump and wait with anticipation to see what he does next. You can't imagine the fears of every cow and calf. 

Speaking as a cow, even I can't.  

If you are LGBTQIA-plus, undocumented, have a green card but don't know in which country you'll feel safe in a couple of years, are a working poor person, or one of any number of upended calves, your tender legs quivering in the air, take heart: 

We really don't know exactly what a Trump presidency will look like. Try not to worry. Instead, think constructively. Learn which rights you do have. Look for legal loopholes. Take strength from the like-minded, and respect those who oppose you with respect. Be a helper. Do everything you can to help yourself and others.  

No president delivers on every promise or threat made during a campaign. Trump might prove himself more even keeled than the persona he invoked to win the White House.

Maybe his beltway outsider status and business experience will give him an edge in fixing what politicians haven't. 

If you give him a chance and he still performs poorly, hope for minimal collateral damage and help to repair it.

If like Bill, you're still married to Hillary, maybe she'll get another shot. 

Maybe Michelle Obama will run for President. Thanks to the ground Clinton paved, she wouldn't be the first former First Lady to seek the Oval Office. 

Trump is rolling back much of the angry rhetoric. Besides claiming he will use the ACA as a framework for remodeling our healthcare system, Trump met with President Obama for what was expected to be 10 minutes but lasted for about 90. Unless one of them tied the other to a chair, it's likely there was a meaningful dialog. And when Trump promised to call on President Obama for future counsel, my heart soared. Will it happen? I don't know, but the fact that Trump said it at all gives me hope. 

The fact that we're all cattle isn't as bad as it sounds since cattle are among the finest of creatures. We should combine the bovine qualities we seek to keep with the higher intelligence, gumption, and purposeful kindness that come with our humanity. 

In the meantime, let's try to not kill each other.