MORE REFLECTIONS

Recently I wrote an essay reflecting on passive aggressive behavior. Old age being a time for reflection, I'm going to reflect on more things. Those of you who know me have probably asked yourself, "when is he going to bring up the Reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial?" You know me too well; I'm a walking cliche'. Unless you have been in a coma you probably know that the Goomba who Trump hired on a no-bid contract pooched the project,  not just fixing the leak in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool but making it worse. Floating islands of algae covered the reflecting pond between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, once the reflecting pond recieved its water. Two former presidents joining with the other 44 to do a collective metaphorical forehead slap on the 47th president. To be fair, this was an ongoing issue but has been controlled better by other presidents even during the Great Depression. To compound the problem, National Parks workers were shown pouring Hydrogen Peroxide into the pool, by the gallon jugs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of gallon jugs, which a more normally competent president, even a Republican, would probably have sourced by the tanker load. This had an unfortunate side-effect, aside from the plastic gallon jugs which probably did not get recycled or re-purposed, it lifted the rubbery sealant  on the American flag blue paint, of the Reflecting Pond that was to be a spectacle to behold. The reflecting Pond that actually was a spectacle to behold only weeks before. The Taj Mahal of Trump's regime of unitary executive. The rubble of his casinos has long been hauled away; the rubble of the Reflecting Pond is still being produced, though people risk arrest for hauling a chunk home. None of this reflects well on the Trump regime, and by association, us. A thing of beauty that has been central to many public protests is being fenced off because "Antifa dumped fertilizer in the pool". Fertilizer made more rare by the the blockade (still) of the straits of Hormuz, which isn't straight, but straight out of cliche'd political humor. 

But you know that this is only the beginning. Photos exist and memories were stirred recently when a film clip was posted of the Beast, the Presidential limousine topping the scales at about 10 tons, leading a -I'm going to call it a flotilla since it has been a body of water since 1923-flotilla of about a dozen lesser limousines, not necessarily in dressed ranks, over the freshly painted and sealed Reflecting Pond. Driving on the freshly applied American flag Blue paint and sealer. Surely that had no effect on bubbles developing under the sealer by the combined weight of trump's egotistical display. But nobody reflected on that. I do not need to mention that concurrently with this embarrassment, #47 is committing other embarrassments which float around government circles like pools of algae. When a chum says, "Hey, didja hear what just happened?"  You reply, how many minutes ago?" What is irritatingly worse, there is no sense of embarrassment on display by all but a couple Republicans who will not be returning to Congress next year.

There are a bakers dozen of insulting authoritarian displays, too many to list short of risking carpal-tunnel syndrome. Never-the-less I am going to name a couple more because they reflect back on us. We are one of the hosts of the FIFA World Championships. So the guy who only a few months back recieved a FIFA Peace Prize, in a blatant display of butt-kissing, prevented one of the referees from entering the country for the sin of being Somali, which is a nicer way of saying this ref was the wrong color. Jesus would be so proud. Finally, Canada, our neighbor to the north has completed the Gordy Howe Bridge, between Detroit and Windsor Ontario. Thanks to our petulant president, no cars are officially crossing the bridge. More importantly, no car parts, part of the trade we do with Canada is crossing the bridge to Detroit. Why, you might ask, did the stupid guy who leads us nowhere good, forbid cars to cross a bridge built by our emotional support neighbor? It turns out that there's another bridge, insufficient to carry all the traffic, owned by a private firm (you know where this is going). The family that owns the firm that built the original bridge foresaw a drop in revenues so they greased the palm of our president to keep the traffic, and dollars flowing. I am so proud of my country on the eve of our 250th birthday that I could cry.