Poodle Coughs a Furball Over State of Not-Union Address
Can Trump Invade Santa Barbara’s Danish City, Solvang?
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RETURN TO SENDER My doctor warned me. I didn’t listen. And so, this Tuesday evening, I listened. Those are 99 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
I am, of course, talking about the non–State of the Union speech delivered by the resident Willy Wonka now occupying the White House. Our hand-waver in chief, you might say.
As expected, it was a veritable word salad of superlatives. Everything he’s done is bigger, better, the best, the best ever, so great we’ve never seen anything like it before, and so amazing we will never see its like again.
I get it. Small hands.
But did I hear right? That he’s Number One and George Washington is Number Two?
Really, George Washington?
George Washington, we are told, never told a lie and said so after admitting to chopping down his father’s cherry tree. Donald Trump, one might reasonably conclude, has never not lied. Or ever admitted anything.
“It has been stated by many that the first month of our presidency … is the most successful in the history of our nation,” he said just minutes after taking to the podium. “And what makes this even more impressive is that — do you know who Number Two is? George Washington.
“How about that?” he asked. “I don’t know about that list, but we’ll take it.”
Given many of the whoppers that were to follow — like how he’s not gunning for your Social Security payments after listing all the scheming Rip Van Winkles and Methuselahs that Elon Musk allegedly found fraudulently and feloniously getting their monthly payments — this was a sweet prevarication.
But it also provided a template for how Trump appears to say something bombastic while giving himself the back door of plausible deniability.
“It has been stated by many …”
Like whom?
“I don’t know about that list…”
What list?
It’s a small detail.
I admit all Trump’s saber-rattling has me rattled. In that vein, I was listening intently for any possible mention of Solvang in his speech. “Hoping” might be a more accurate verb, however perverse.
After declaring an all-out trade war against two friends and one enemy — much to the chagrin of Wall Street, where stocks are said to be plummeting — Trump reasserted his intentions to re-take the Panama Canal, and then threw Greenland onto his shopping list of imperial-expansion home improvement projects.
To be fair — but why pretend — his tone was somewhat softer than prior declarations of war against that giant, ice-bound island. Kinda. “I think we’re going to get it,” Trump declared to the cheering throng of open-mouthed sycophants sitting on the Republican side of the aisle. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”
On planets where truth is still spoken, that might be construed as some kind of threat. Not even kinda.
For those who never studied geography in elementary school, Greenland is technically owned by Denmark, although the 56,000 people who live in Greenland enjoy a great degree of home rule. They — all 56,000 of them — and Denmark have made it emphatically clear they have no intention of becoming part of any U.S. vassal state.
Of course, that’s what they say now.
But all saw how dramatically Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy changed his tune after getting bitch-slapped around on live TV by Trump and his over-eager sidekick JD Vance. As spectacles of public humiliation go, it was truly sickening. I wasn’t drunk at the time, but it sobered me up fast and has left me hung over still.
In that vein, I was thinking perhaps Trump über alles could achieve this imperial aim by taking Solvang hostage.
For those not reading Solvang’s tourist brochures, the Santa Ynez Valley city is the “Danish Capital of America.” But it kinda has been “stated by many” that this Danish outpost was settled by Danish Vikings in 1066. Obviously, such an invasion would dovetail nicely into Trump’s whole anti-woke jihad.
A few years ago, a Trump faction of retrograde Solvang City Councilmembers voted to stop LGBTQ rainbows going up along the main drag during Gay Pride Month. This led the Mayor of Copenhagen to intrude upon Solvang’s sovereign sanctity by sending a letter to the Solvang mayor and all Solvanginians that opposition to gay pride “does not reflect the genuine warmth and acceptance of Pride that can be seen across Denmark and especially Copenhagen.”
How woke is that?
On another front, a lot of people are banking on Elon Musk — and the ever-escalating number of SpaceX rocket ships he’s blasting off from Vandenberg — to save our collective bacon. But ever since a big rocket chunk plummeted in an uncontrolled free-fall, landing in front of a house in a residential neighborhood in Poland, I’m having my doubts about Musk.
In Santa Barbara, we worry about sonic booms rattling our windows, traumatizing our dogs, and inciting herds of otherwise somnolent pinnipeds to stampede. But imagine waking up to find a chunk of metal, five feet by three feet in your front yard.
Fortunately, as the authorities like to say, no injuries were sustained. Another chunk of SpaceX rocket was found 19 miles away. As the authorities also like to say, the matter is still being investigated.
Just remember this: George Washington was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. Trump, despite everything he says to the contrary, is none of these. Yes, he won the popular vote. Finally. But by just 1.5 percent. And with less than 50 percent — 49.8 percent — of the ballots cast. That’s not hardly a mandate, no matter how many superlatives are used.
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