January 20, 2025, 12:01 p.m., Eastern Standard Time
“…a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; …an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." William Shakespeare
OK, before we talk about anything else, let’s deal with the elephant in the room.
Donald Trump.
Yeah, he’s back.
Then again, truth be told, he never left.
From January 6 four years ago until the moment you’re reading this, a day hasn’t passed when his name or his smirking mug hasn’t been in some headline somewhere for some thing or some reason. For half the country he was the defacto president-in-exile, impatiently awaiting his return.
Napoleon had his Elba; Trump, a gaudy ballroom in Florida.
Then again, Trump is no Bonaparte.
And Marco Rubio is no Tallyrand and Pete Hegseth is certainly no Marshal Ney.
But that doesn’t mean we have nothing to worry about.
Trump’s coat hadn’t made it to the White House closet before he was wearing out Sharpie markers putting his name to executive orders designed to drag the nation into the 19th century. He wasn’t a week into the new job and was already acting the playground bully, annoying Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Canada and most of the rest of the world – even managing to pick a fight with Denmark, something even the great William McKinley held off doing…
Oh, I don’t believe the Marines will be storming the beaches in Greenland any time soon, but if – if -- he succeeds in slapping tariffs on Mexico it’s gonna jack up the price of guacamole, and rounding up and shipping off the folks who milk the cows, butcher the hogs, and pick the lettuce is gonna do the same thing to that grocery bill he promised to bring down.
But those tariffs, the ICE ethnic cleansing, and all the other stuff he’s bragging about doing – doing ‘em is still a big collection of big, big “ifs.” He can sign all the orders he wants, but after the ink is dry, who’s going to carry them out?
It’s one thing to say you’ve renamed the Gulf of Mexico; quite another to reprint all the maps…
Let’s remember, Napoleon also had his Waterloo.
Trump got a bit over 77 million votes this go-around, just 2 million more than his opponent, just under 50 percent of the total. Enough to get him the job, but still less than a quarter of the American people. That’s a lot of folks not likely to be all that willing to go along with whatever the First Felon has in mind for us. If three-quarters of America chooses to quietly follow the lead of Bartleby the Scrivener – “I would prefer not to.” – how long until the orange dilettante loses interest and skulks back to Mar-a-Lago?
When will that happen? Well Napoleon appeared invincible until Moscow went up in flames and winter and the Tsar’s army closed in. The Donald may have seen his Borodino in November, but what will come of the MAGA Armée surrounded in a hostile capital city?
Well, consider that it didn’t take 22 hours for 22 states to file suits to block his executive order to deny citizenship to children born in this country as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and nowhere near that long for a judge to agree.
All that Vive l’empereur! may be a bit premature.
And out here in the hinterlands?
Way back in grade school we were taught that if we were caught out in the open with a tornado coming we should hug the ground and wait ‘till it passes. Well, there’s a lot of sound and fury coming out of Washington right now, best to keep our heads down until the first of the storm passes; then survey the damage and get down to doing what needs to be done to set things back aright. Our strength is in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities. So long as we join together to help each other, support each other, protect each other we will come out of this with the solid foundation to build upon.
Keep in mind, Bonaparte ended his days on St. Helena…but getting him there took some doing.
Until then, the less time and attention we give him the better.
Vive la République!