The Secret Service and a Presbyterian Walk Into a Hotel...

     The many times repeated images of Donald Trump escorted into a hotel in California to give his latest boring speech reminded me again of how ridiculous American news coverage can be.
     Protestors had arrived at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, California, one of them carrying a briefly glimpsed (on MSNBC) sign saying, "Get out of my state, you fucking Nazi!"  When Trump, the Secret Service, and his others surrounding the great man arrived, they had to go around to a rear entrance, using the reliable ancient hominid method of shanks' mare to get into the hotel, walking across a grass median, down a narrow concrete path, requiring the candidate to jump a foot or two to the ground, all the while guided by handlers.  One of these shaven-headed men moved Trump's red tie around to the front of his body after it had gone back over his shoulder.  Helicopters flew overhead, wasting fuel as they showed us the action.  Meanwhile, protestors knocked down barricades, trying to enter the building and "stop Trump from speaking," as sort of happened in Chicago on March 11.
     Trump remarked on his unusual entrance into the building during his speech, saying that he had to "cross a border."  Ha ha.
     "I got in," he reassured his automaton audience, "I got in."
     The long helicopter shot of Trump's walk from armored black fear limo to the inelegant rear end of the Hyatt Regency showed a yellow-haired man surrounded by bald stocky men treating him delicately, taking his arm now and then like he was a prom date.  Reporters on the ground, by the protestors, were asked by the New York-based anchor to ask them why they had showed up, even though the reason is simply this: they all hate Donald Trump's guts, and a completely inappropriate and unqualified piece of shit like him should not be president.
     Think about his value as entertainment, a real commodity for image-based, low thought content television news programming.  This entertainer has entered, successfully, a corrupt bed where politics, the news industry, and Hollywood intersect with big corporate money interests.  A reality TV country has demanded a reality TV presidential candidate.
     Trump's qualifications in politics all exist in the realm of image control.  In this, he's a good propagandist, but a lousy bet to make if you care at all about good governance, sensible domestic and foreign policies, and reality-based strategies for actually making America great in a way that doesn't involve Napoleon Bonaparte's idea of greatness.
     The Republican Party, reportedly, is coming around to accepting Trump as their nominee.  They tried to fight him with a failed Stop Trump campaign, but they have no serious adversaries to fight the billionaire.  Ted Cruz is looking more and more like a dazed boxer in the fourteenth round; still hopeful now that he has failed candidate Carly Fiorina on his side (indicating Cruz's delusions about his chances).  Cruz, however, just doesn't cut it with the Republicans, who mostly hate him.  John Boehner, former Speaker of the House, called Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh," and "a miserable son of a bitch."  The first comment seems florid to me and ridiculous, but the second, "miserable son of a bitch," has a good ring to it.  It's the kind of thing you hear a grandparent say when you're young and decades later you still haven't forgotten it.  That Boehner has said this about the number two GOP candidate shows yet again that the Republicans have developed a chronic problem when it comes to trying to regain the Executive Branch.  McCain-Palin, Romney-Ryan, and now Cruz-Fiorina?
     Trump hasn't yet made a VP selection, but Chris Christie is often by his side, Hermann Göring to Trump's Hitler.  Marco Rubio has been suggested as a likely VP pick for Trump, but the very idea of Rubio, or "Little Marco" as Trump called him, submitting to partnership with the creep who so relentlessly insulted him a short time ago, is astonishing, unless one considers the degree of
debasement politicians are willing to put themselves through.  Lyndon Johnson hated the Kennedy brothers, but he debased himself for the sake of the position.  The move paid off on November 22, 1963.  (Yes, I am suggesting Johnson may have had something to do with the Kennedy assassination).
     The political games of the world are peopled with ruthless pieces of shit.  Focusing on how Donald Trump had to walk an eighth of a mile to get to the site of his speech ignores a wealth of circumstances affecting the lives of billions, in sad tragedies, in triggers squeezed, in deaths ignored.  Trump or Hillary Clinton will win a job that neither of them deserve.  Either of them will order massacres.  We'll hear news stories about their favorite snacks and what they do to wind down.

                                                                              Vic Neptune