Age of the Geek

31 Days Later
     So are we tired of winning yet?
     Hard to believe it's been only a month since Donald Trump became the President of the United States. Can it have really only been thirty days since the newly elected President stood up in front of a memorial for killed CIA agents and lied about the size of his inauguration crowd while paid aides cheered? Has it only been four weeks since Kellyanne Conway introduced "alternative facts" into the lexicon of this administration?
     In the few short weeks of the Trump administration, he's declared war on the "fake news," the intelligence community, the state of California, and most recently the Judicial branch. In Trump's America, anything that dares challenge his beliefs or question his power is an enemy of the nation.
     I don't want to say he acting like a dictator. Neither does Senator John McCain, though both of us apparently recognize that if you were describing the things a dictator would do, they'd be awfully similar to this administration's actions.
     Keeping track of who's been hired, who's been fired, who is lying and who is leaking has been a non-stop endeavor. To say nothing of the horrific tragedies that didn't happen. Terrible non-events like the Bowling Green Massacre, the imaginary terrorist attack on Atlanta, and now, most recently, a non-incident in Sweden. All of which have been used to promote Trump's agenda in spite of not actually existing.
     So much has happened, or not happened, in such little time. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted. I don't know if I can take another four weeks of this, much less four years.
     Not that there hasn't been a bright side to Trump's antics. After eight years of hearing about unconstitutional executive orders, the American people finally got to see what one actually looked like.
     Well, we'll never truly know if Trump's not-quite-a-Muslim Ban would have been ruled unconstitutional or not. The Trump administration was confident enough in its legality to fire then acting Attorney General Sally Yates over it, and confident enough for the President to make an all-caps "SEE YOU IN COURT" tweet (where else was he expecting to meet the judges that ruled against him?) but not confident enough to actually run it through the court system.
     That's okay though. I'm sure the President has more important things on his mind right now anyway. Like finding a new National Security Adviser after having to fire Michal Flynn for inappropriate communications with Russia.
     For those keeping score at home, this is the third Trump advisor that has had to distance themselves from Trump due to Russian entanglements.
     Flynn was fired after the "fake news" revealed that, back in December, Flynn had spoken with the Russian ambassador about the sanctions that the Obama administration put on Russia for interfering in the Presidential election. You know, the election that Trump won, even though he continues to dispute its results to this day.
     That's a pretty big no-no, at which point the question becomes, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"
     Turns out, we have an answer for that too. It seems Sally Yates, before she was fired, informed the White House that Flynn had been compromised back in January. Odd then that Flynn wasn't dismissed until two weeks into February, and only after his indiscretion had been made public.
     Oh well, it's not like national security was at stake.
     Speaking of national security, Flynn's seat isn't the only empty one on the National Security Council these days. In between Trump's economically catastrophic federal hiring freeze and shilling for his daughter's clothing line, you might remember that White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon inserted himself on the council while removing the permanent status of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence.
     Is this what "draining the swamp" is supposed to look like? The head of Breitbart has a permanent spot in the group that decides national security policy, but the nation's top military and intelligence advisers will only be brought in as needed?
     And again, here I am nearing the end of the column without enough room to give Trump's cabinet appointments proper justice. Which is something I guess I have in common with new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a man more interested in busting potheads than defending civil rights.
     Meanwhile, I guess I was wrong about one thing. I had always thought you couldn't put a price on education but Betsy DeVos demonstrated that $200 million was a good start. That's the going rate to buy out the Department of Education because she sure didn't get the job due to her qualifying experience or expertise in the field. DeVos, born into money and married into more money, has no education credentials to her name. What she does have is a bottomless pocketbook and a desire to shift taxpayer dollars towards for-profit charter schools.
     Meanwhile, our Secretary of the Treasury is a Goldman Sachs hedge fund manager. Our Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is a retired brain surgeon who openly admits he has no business running a government department. Our Secretary of Energy is going to be run by a former presidential candidate who literally forgot he wanted to shut the Department of Energy down. (In fairness, that was before he knew what the Department of Energy did).
     And, of course, there's Rex Tillerson, our Secretary of State. The former ExxonMobile CEO who has, surprise surprise, close business ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
     As for the rest, well it seems that in between listening in on strategy for dealing with North Korea and taking photos with the guy that carries our actual nuclear codes, the guests of Trump's "Winter White House" at Mar-a-Lago are invited to sit in on cabinet interviews.
     Because President Trump is a man of the people, so long as the people can afford a $200,000 entry fee to get into his club house.
     Alas, even though Trump crushed the record for hitting above 50% disapproval ratings, it seems that he won't be beating President William Harrison's record for shortest time in office. Though, given the rate he's going, I wouldn't be surprised to see a close second. Between his conflicts of interest with his business dealings, his ties with Russia, and his contempt for the system of checks and balances, Ladbrokes, a British gambling service, has 10/11 odds that Trump doesn't make it through his first term.
     What a month it's been. One down, 47, or fewer, to go.
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and encourages you to donate to victims of the Bowling Green Massacre so something so tragic can never not-happen again.