American Carnage

I did not have a great Friday. I woke up with a cold. Someone clogged the toilet in the worst way and ignored it…again (when they close the lid they know what they did, right? Surprise!). Oh yeah. A fascist human Cheeto became president of the United States.

What many of us thought was impossible has happened. Donald Trump is actually the president. The reality TV show host. The man obsessed with himself and revenge. The man who assaults women and ogles teenage girls. The guy who refuses to pay people who work for him. The one who uses a charity to buy himself gifts. That guy who ran a scam university. Yes. The racist Twitter junkie is leader of the free world and he’s about to go all Leatherface and treat America like a teenage B-flick scream queen.

The presidential Twitter account now belongs to Trump. The Oval Office has been painted gold. Melania’s jewelry products are on the White House website. The Lincoln room has been covered in plastic wrap.

The inauguration was unique. For starters Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had to sit through a Donald Trump rally (the didn’t have the luxury I had when I attended one which was the freedom to walk out when the heiling started). The crowd was much smaller than Trump had promised. His supporters were tweeting out photos of crowd at sporting events in other cities and claimed they were shots from noon on Friday at the National Mall. Unfortunately for them they posted the photos before the sun came up that morning.

There were protests and over 200 people were arrested. In contrast nine people were arrested in 2001 during George W. Bush’s inaugural. There was property damage but I’m not sure it was conducted by actual Democrats. Liberals would never torch a Starbucks.

The oddest thing at Trump’s inaugural was Donald Trump. Well, he wasn’t odd for his usual self. It was odd for an inauguration. Usually inauguration speeches are uplifting, all-encompassing, and usually filled of rhetoric about America being great with better days ahead and how dedicated the new president will be, blah, blah, blah. No one can really disagree with an inauguration speech. Well not until Trump gave one. Even some Republicans were cringing and these are people who laugh when a 69-year-old woman falls down from a heat stroke.

Trump conducted his speech like one of his Nazi rallies. Someone even shouted “lock her up.” In Trump’s speech he described a nation full of crime and poverty (all of which is only in inner cities). We’re all stalked by gangs (black people). He described our schools as “an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge.” I guess only the ugly students advance. Nerds. It was the first inauguration speech to contain the words “carnage,” “depletion,” “disrepair,” “sad” and “tombstone.” He couldn’t work in “troglodytes” and “pestilence?” Trump shouted “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Much of his speech was exactly the same as Bane’s from the Batman movie. That’s the one where Bane holds Gotham City hostage, ravages it and plans to blow it up with a nuclear weapon.

Trump’s speech was not a speech for everyone in America. It wasn’t presidential or unifying. He was not interested in healing the nation’s wounds from the long and bitter presidential campaign. It was a speech for the Trump partisans. The uneducated and deplorable types. Trump never mentioned Congress or even the Republican party in the speech. He mostly focused on himself and how he’s the only one who can rebuild America from all this carnage. He also said that he would follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.” All the white men sporting made-in-China “Make America Great Again” caps roared their approval.

Trump’s speech had a very nationalistic tone as he used the phrase “America first” which was also the name of a group full of Nazi sympathizers in the late 1930s who didn’t want America to go to war against Hitler. David Duke tweeted out his approval. The speech sounded like something Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief white nationalist would write. In fact, Bannon called it “an unvarnished declaration of the basic principles of his populist and kind of nationalist movement.” Even he threw in the word “nationalist.” The only good thing about Trump’s speech is that it only lasted 20 minutes.

It was a scary speech. I’m surprised it wasn’t delivered in its original German. Did it make me optimistic for our nation’s future? Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! 

Fortunately we can probably save our national freak out until Monday. Trump is taking the weekend off. He discovered all that walking in front of empty bleachers was grueling. Donald and his entire flock of silver-spoon kids and the First Lady, who definitely never worked as a prostitute, are all off to his country club in Florida.

The carnage begins Monday. I’m afraid our nation will soon be in the same state as my toilet.

Creative notes: Sometimes when I create a cartoon I have to dig up images on Google. Today it was hockey masks and chainsaws. Someday the FBI is gonna pay me a visit. THIS was my favorite of all the chainsaw pics I viewed. Also, I know I mixed up Jason from the Friday the 13th movies and the Texas Chainsaw hillbillies. But Jason had to have used a chainsaw at least once, right? They made about 48 of those movies so a chainsaw had to be in one.

Also, I was going to rework a brand name on the chainsaw and I had it in mind until I did a little more research. That’s when I discovered Evinrude never made chainsaws. I don’t know why I thought they did. I couldn’t think of anything on “Poulan,” “Stihl,” or “Husqvarna.”

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