My friend Swamp Rabbit read the tweet aloud and said, “You see that? What I tell ya?”
We’d been arguing about whether Trump’s tweets will become more delusional as his impeachment becomes more likely. Some people think he’ll blame his loyalists for not saving him from House Democrats and abruptly resign. Others say this is only the beginning, the would-be dictator will do anything to hang on to power so long as he thinks his base and Senate Republicans are still with him.
Swamp Rabbit thinks the Unmatchable One sees himself not as a dictator but rather as an emperor, skimming money from a worldwide network of Trump-branded properties like Trump Towers Istanbul. Are Trump’s business ties to Turkey the main reason he gave his blessing to Turkish forces that have attacked areas run by Syrian Kurds, who did most of the fighting against ISIS and assumed Trump was their ally?
“That’s too deep in the woods for me,” Swamp Rabbit said. “All’s I know is a hog monster like Trump ain’t gonna stop feeding at the trough, not without a fight.”
I grudgingly admitted that Swamp Rabbit was at least half-right. The time is out of joint, as Hamlet said, and it’s not clear who will set it right. But I told him to keep the faith, this isn’t the first time the world’s leading power was ruled by a monster. Is it likely Trump is more unhinged than Caligula, the murderous Roman emperor who, if certain historians are to be believed, tried to appoint his horse to a consulship in order to humiliate Roman senators?
“Trump wouldn’t do that,” Swamp Rabbit said. “He don’t like horses. He don’t like any animals.”
Footnote: In the novel I, Claudius, Robert Graves depicts Caligula as a madman for the ages who imagines himself having a “metamorphosis” that lifts him above all laws. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asks Claudius, his uncle, in the TV adaptation. Claudius, afraid for his life, guesses the right response: “You’ve become a god!”
Odd Man Out 
I’m sad to think that base of his contains our lowest common denominator. Can there be that many people among us who are either blinded by greed or just plain manipulated into worshiping him and his ilk? I wonder what the percentage was of people in Rome who loved Caligula…
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According to Roman historians, the peeps were pissed off when they learned Caligula had been assassinated, possibly because he had reduced their taxes early in his reign, and had staged plenty of plays and gladiatorial “games” to keep them happy. Claudius, Caligula’s successor, might have had some of his assassins killed to quell the anger of the mob. But the surviving histories were written decades after his death, so who knows?
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He’s already declared himself the Messiah, the Chosen One and the King of the Jews. Where have you been?
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Some of us are naive! We couldn’t believe so many people would accept a malicious fraud as their god. The question is whether the facts will be enough to compel the true believers to renounce him. Probably not.
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His referring to his “great and unmatched wisdom” would be the funniest thing I’ve heard all week if it wasn’t, you know, that he actually believes it and it’s leading our country, and sadly, our allies, into a black hole that it’ll take a lot of time and effort to claw our way out of. So I’ll settle on: “All’s I know is a hog monster like Trump ain’t gonna stop feeding at the trough, not without a fight” being truly the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. Thank you for the much needed laugh!
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Thanks. Glad I was able to make you laugh. The Senate Republicans are feeding at the same trough but some of them might lose their appetite if Trump’s base starts to crumble. It’s encouraging that he was too dumb to realize he incriminated himself regarding that phone call to Ukraine.
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I just watched some news about how Fox is polling viewers and around half are supporting impeachment. That gives me some hope that event this was too far for his base. On the one hand, I can’t believe it’s taken them so long, but on the other, it definitely seems like a significant crack.
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