It's January 20, and...

 

By unfortunate coincidence, January 20 falls on a Monday this year, meaning that Inauguration Day and MLK Day happen on the same day.  It would be difficult to find two men more diametrically opposed than Dr. King and Don the Con.

True, there are some similarities—neither is a shining example of marital fidelity, for example—but the differences are extraordinary.  The snarky comparison on the McSweeney’s site serves pretty well to clarify the issue.  Gee, which one of the two said, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity”?  And which said “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated”?

Dr. King imagined—dreamed of, if you will—a nation and a world in which people will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  Mr. Trump, if he had the imagination to dream, would envision a paradise in which those with inherited wealth and an utter absence of morality would have carte blanche (to be fair, it’s doubtful he’d know that term) to exploit literally everyone else at whim.

This goes beyond mere political disagreement.  There’s a case for some of Trump’s stated policies.  Curmie doubts he has any intention of implementing any of them, but that’s a different matter.  So is the nomination of a host of particularly unqualified folks—mostly male, overwhelmingly white, all rich—for high-ranking government positions, although that heads a little closer to the point.

Curmie is not so naïve as to believe that any politician of any political stripe will always adhere to high moral and ethical standards when pushing or even exceeding the limits of appropriate behavior is more likely to get them what they want.  Trump is worse than most if not all, but that’s somewhat beside the point.  Significantly, when Biden or Obama or Bush or whoever did that kind of thing, it was to achieve a goal for like-minded individuals.  The rationale was political efficacy, for the good of a philosophy or an approach.

For Trump, it’s purely narcissistic.  He’s interest only in himself and perhaps a few family members and cronies.  The latter will, of course, be cast aside when they are no longer useful.  Curmie isn’t sure whether the best example is from history (say, Danton or Trotsky) or from Trump’s own past (e.g., Mike Pence).  Those nominees mentioned above share one one attribute, and it sure as hell isn’t competence.  Rather, it’s an apparent willingness to yield all authority to the “stable genius” who doesn’t come close to fulfilling either word in that description.

The three headline-making stories from this week—moving the inauguration ceremony indoors, the whole TikTok brouhaha, and whatever the hell was going on with that meme coin business, all underscore the same conclusion: Donald Trump is an egocentric, mendacious, grifter.  We all knew that, course… or at least the overwhelming majority of the people reading these words did.

A fair number of erstwhile Trump supporters who had spent thousands of dollars to attend the inaugural ceremony only to be left literally out in the cold are beginning to learn how expendable they are.  These are folks to whom the few thousand dollars it cost them to fly to DC, get a hotel room, etc., actually means something.  But too bad, so sad, you can’t actually see it live, because there aren’t enough of you I’m all about manliness until I have to demonstrate it it’s almost as cold as it’s been for several other inaugurations in recent memory.

The result, of course, is that Trump surrounds himelf with his cabal of billionaires and a few obeisant lawmakers and no one else.  If he were smart enough to understand symbolism or irony, there’d be a different look.  Or perhaps he just doesn’t care.  Our only hope is that he truly is as incompetent as he appears to be… or that his base realizes that they’ve been played.

The TikTok debacle may also serve to accomplish this potential outcome.  Shutting down that platform was Trump’s idea, of course; he even tried to do so by executive order.  Now he’s positioning himself as the hero of the 1^st Amendment by reversing course and proclaiming that he won’t enforce the law.  Gentle Reader, Curmie has no idea the extent to which TikTok poses a threat.  He suspects that yes, there’s a lot of data mining being provided to the Chinese government, but it’s probably no more intrusive than what Trump minions like Zuckerberg and Musk are doing for our own government’s surveillance.

Here’s the thing: if TikTok posed a threat back when Trump was in office before, it poses a greater threat now that its popularity has expanded significantly.  More users: more intrusions into citizens’ privacy.  Yet the principal argument other than the 1^st Amendment to restoring TikTok is that a lot of people use it. 

Anyone who believes that Donald Trump reversed course out of principle probably believes they’ll soon be getting a huge check from that Nigerian prince, that tariffs are paid by the exporting country, and that the price of eggs is about to plummet. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to raise up those who were treated unfairly, those who were poor, those who had little but hope.  Donald Trump seeks to raise up his fellow plutocrats.  MLK advocated non-violence; DJT told supporters he’d pay their legal bills if they roughed up anyone who didn’t drink the proverbial Kool-Aid (though why anyone would believe that when he’s notorious for not paying his own bills, let alone anyone else’s, is a bit of a mystery).  King sought a world in which no one has to struggle to survive; Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security to provide further tax cuts for the already obscenely wealthy.

Today is a day to commemorate a King, not a would-be king.