First, I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and Warmest Wishes for a Happy New Year!
When our 45th president tweeted at lunchtime on Christmas Eve, “I am all alone (poor me) in the White House,” while urging Democrats to leave their families on Christmas and return to Washington to negotiate with him over his utterly stupid and unnecessary wall that he promised repeatedly that Mexico would pay for, I thought of the Charles Dickens classic, A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Indeed, comparing Ebenezer Scrooge, all alone in his mansion on Christmas Eve, bereft of any true friends, to our current president stalking the empty halls of the White House, utterly isolated and alone, is more than apt.
Thus far in this blog I have referred to our current president as “the Orange Monster” (or “the OM”), as “He Who Must Not Be Named,” (or “HWMNBN”), or most appropriately as “Individual-1” as recent court filings refer to him while implicating him in the commission of two felonies. But given his recent impulsive decision to put 800,000 federal employees out of work as a special gift at Christmas, when families are most in need of funds, simply for his own narcissistic desire to please Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, and other extremists of the far-right, and to appease his ever-shrinking base—I now realize that he deserves a nickname references a Scrooge at his worst. The best I could come up with is President Grump. And what a fitting a name it is, too!
No one has ever been given more blessings and abundance than our President Grump. Recently it was reported that our "self-made" president inherited more than $450,000,000 from his father Fred. The Grump also received over two billion dollars of free publicity from the American media during the disastrous 2016 election. And just today we learn that the Grump was gifted with a bogus bone spurs diagnosis by a doctor who did it as a favor for father Fred, to keep DJT out of military service in Vietnam. No doubt, the Grump was also given millions if not billions of rubles in laundered money over the course of the last 30 years by the Russian government and its oligarchs to keep the Grump’s corrupt family business afloat. Yet, despite being given all of this and much, much more, Grump sees himself as the biggest victim in the entire world. No one complains more about being mistreated than the Grump.
To hear the Grump talk, he suffers daily from unprecedented and brutal unfairness, even as he sits upon his gilded throne surrounded by his ill-gotten gains. Indeed, he possesses all of the qualities of a spoiled brat who has been coddled every day of his overly privileged existence, and perpetually given his way on everything, large and small. And the more power and privilege he has come to possess, the more the Grump has played the victim. My God! How our President Grump suffers and he never does so in silence. Instead, he proclaims his victimization to the world by tweet on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Never was a Grump so mistreated. “NO COLLUSION!” he tweets. “WITCH HUNT!” he tweets again and again. Indeed, President Grump’s holiday message to the country this year was something akin to, “What’s happening in our country is a disgrace, but have yourself a Merry Christmas anyway!” Before his reformation, Ebenezer Scrooge could not have said it better.
Like Scrooge on Christmas Eve, Grump sat in his mansion, very much alone, blaming the entire world for his troubles and misery—all troubles that he created for himself and all by himself alone. While the most powerful man in the entire world, President Grump sat in the White House on Christmas Eve and complained about being alone, actually saying “poor me,” while feeling not the slightest gratitude for all that the universe has seen fit to afford him with—perhaps because the presidency, like most of the other things he’s been given throughout his life, was not earned legitimately.
In truth, the presidency was handed to our Grump on a golden platter, first by the Kremlin, then by James Comey’s unfortunate announcement about an unnecessary reopening the investigation into Hillary’s emails only a few days before the election, and finally by the Electoral College. He didn’t win the popular vote. Nor did he win the presidency fairly; he had the help of a foreign adversary. He has always had help, first from his wealthy father, who bailed him out after failure after failure, and then from the Russian government, propping his failed business up with injection and injection of dirty money. It’s only a matter of time before the true scope and magnitude of the criminal enterprise of President Grump’s so-called business acumen will be fully exposed to the world by Mueller’s investigation.
Yes, President Grump—our modern day Scrooge—sat in his mansion on Christmas Eve, alone, complaining “poor me,” even as hundreds of thousands of federal workers were put out of a job and a paycheck for the holiday at his doing. Like Ebenezer, President Grump never thinks of anyone but himself. He could have given a toss about those he had just put out of work, any more than he cared about the refugee children who died at our southern border because of his cruel policies. And why would we expect him to? He has already proven to be far more cruel and vindictive and merciless than Ebenezer Scrooge ever was. Remember, it was our President Grump who tore children from their parents, and put children in cages while celebrating the separation of families seeking legal asylum, and ordering their incarceration. It was Grump who went to Pittsburgh after the slaughter of innocents in a synagogue, brought about because of his intolerant and racist views on immigration, and his support of white supremacists in America, and could talk only about how he was being mistreated by the press.
To paraphrase the song about the Grinch, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grump! You really are a heel!” But this is where all comparisons between our President Grump and Ebenezer Scrooge or the Grinch, must end.
Unlike the Grinch or Scrooge, the Grump isn’t and will never be capable of redemption as they were. The Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge found a way back from their terrible mistakes by first being able to acknowledge their wrongheadedness. To make amends, they first had to be capable of accepting responsibility and learning from their past misdeeds. But the Grump has proven during his first two years in office that he is utterly incapable of such things. The Grump never admits he was wrong. He never accepts any blame for anything even when he is clearly the only one at fault. With Grump, the buck always stops at someone else’s desk, never his. He has shown us day by day throughout his presidency who and what he truly is: He never apologizes; he never makes amends; he never changes; he never learns from mistakes. To learn from one’s mistakes, one first needs to acknowledge them. Our President Grump sees himself as the world’s most glorious victim. It’s simply an ego boost for Grump, one he needs ever more frequently. He—and the Republican base that see their own victimization in him—will never give up his victimhood. It makes him feel special, powerful and self-important.
Imagine our President Grump settling in his bed in the lonely and quiet White House on Christmas Eve. If visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, would he learn a thing from being shown the sorrows of his childhood? Like the morning briefings that he refuses to read and chooses instead to ignore, he would learn nothing. If the Ghost of Christmas Present paid a visit and Grump were shown all of the present-day misery, distress, and unhappiness that he alone has caused throughout the world, would he gain anything from it? I doubt it. A man who cannot acknowledge his own human frailty or his mistakes, he would probably sit on his golden toilet and blame the visitation on a bad meal eaten alone the night before. And should the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come show him a vision of his future with Impeachment, Indictment, Arrest and Imprisonment, would the Grump learn anything? Of course not!
There will be no redemption or happy ending for our President Grump, for he truly has no soul—having sold it decades ago to the Kremlin, who clearly owns him lock, stock and barrel. As it becomes increasingly clear over time that our President Grump long ago sold out our country as well, perhaps even his base will come to see that this is simply another example of the Grump’s true art of the deal.
To end this in the true spirit of Christmas, I quote from Charles Dickens, who describes Ebenezer Scrooge after finding a redemption that the Grump will never find:
“And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”
When our 45th president tweeted at lunchtime on Christmas Eve, “I am all alone (poor me) in the White House,” while urging Democrats to leave their families on Christmas and return to Washington to negotiate with him over his utterly stupid and unnecessary wall that he promised repeatedly that Mexico would pay for, I thought of the Charles Dickens classic, A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Indeed, comparing Ebenezer Scrooge, all alone in his mansion on Christmas Eve, bereft of any true friends, to our current president stalking the empty halls of the White House, utterly isolated and alone, is more than apt.
Thus far in this blog I have referred to our current president as “the Orange Monster” (or “the OM”), as “He Who Must Not Be Named,” (or “HWMNBN”), or most appropriately as “Individual-1” as recent court filings refer to him while implicating him in the commission of two felonies. But given his recent impulsive decision to put 800,000 federal employees out of work as a special gift at Christmas, when families are most in need of funds, simply for his own narcissistic desire to please Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, and other extremists of the far-right, and to appease his ever-shrinking base—I now realize that he deserves a nickname references a Scrooge at his worst. The best I could come up with is President Grump. And what a fitting a name it is, too!
No one has ever been given more blessings and abundance than our President Grump. Recently it was reported that our "self-made" president inherited more than $450,000,000 from his father Fred. The Grump also received over two billion dollars of free publicity from the American media during the disastrous 2016 election. And just today we learn that the Grump was gifted with a bogus bone spurs diagnosis by a doctor who did it as a favor for father Fred, to keep DJT out of military service in Vietnam. No doubt, the Grump was also given millions if not billions of rubles in laundered money over the course of the last 30 years by the Russian government and its oligarchs to keep the Grump’s corrupt family business afloat. Yet, despite being given all of this and much, much more, Grump sees himself as the biggest victim in the entire world. No one complains more about being mistreated than the Grump.
To hear the Grump talk, he suffers daily from unprecedented and brutal unfairness, even as he sits upon his gilded throne surrounded by his ill-gotten gains. Indeed, he possesses all of the qualities of a spoiled brat who has been coddled every day of his overly privileged existence, and perpetually given his way on everything, large and small. And the more power and privilege he has come to possess, the more the Grump has played the victim. My God! How our President Grump suffers and he never does so in silence. Instead, he proclaims his victimization to the world by tweet on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Never was a Grump so mistreated. “NO COLLUSION!” he tweets. “WITCH HUNT!” he tweets again and again. Indeed, President Grump’s holiday message to the country this year was something akin to, “What’s happening in our country is a disgrace, but have yourself a Merry Christmas anyway!” Before his reformation, Ebenezer Scrooge could not have said it better.
Like Scrooge on Christmas Eve, Grump sat in his mansion, very much alone, blaming the entire world for his troubles and misery—all troubles that he created for himself and all by himself alone. While the most powerful man in the entire world, President Grump sat in the White House on Christmas Eve and complained about being alone, actually saying “poor me,” while feeling not the slightest gratitude for all that the universe has seen fit to afford him with—perhaps because the presidency, like most of the other things he’s been given throughout his life, was not earned legitimately.
In truth, the presidency was handed to our Grump on a golden platter, first by the Kremlin, then by James Comey’s unfortunate announcement about an unnecessary reopening the investigation into Hillary’s emails only a few days before the election, and finally by the Electoral College. He didn’t win the popular vote. Nor did he win the presidency fairly; he had the help of a foreign adversary. He has always had help, first from his wealthy father, who bailed him out after failure after failure, and then from the Russian government, propping his failed business up with injection and injection of dirty money. It’s only a matter of time before the true scope and magnitude of the criminal enterprise of President Grump’s so-called business acumen will be fully exposed to the world by Mueller’s investigation.
Yes, President Grump—our modern day Scrooge—sat in his mansion on Christmas Eve, alone, complaining “poor me,” even as hundreds of thousands of federal workers were put out of a job and a paycheck for the holiday at his doing. Like Ebenezer, President Grump never thinks of anyone but himself. He could have given a toss about those he had just put out of work, any more than he cared about the refugee children who died at our southern border because of his cruel policies. And why would we expect him to? He has already proven to be far more cruel and vindictive and merciless than Ebenezer Scrooge ever was. Remember, it was our President Grump who tore children from their parents, and put children in cages while celebrating the separation of families seeking legal asylum, and ordering their incarceration. It was Grump who went to Pittsburgh after the slaughter of innocents in a synagogue, brought about because of his intolerant and racist views on immigration, and his support of white supremacists in America, and could talk only about how he was being mistreated by the press.
To paraphrase the song about the Grinch, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grump! You really are a heel!” But this is where all comparisons between our President Grump and Ebenezer Scrooge or the Grinch, must end.
Unlike the Grinch or Scrooge, the Grump isn’t and will never be capable of redemption as they were. The Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge found a way back from their terrible mistakes by first being able to acknowledge their wrongheadedness. To make amends, they first had to be capable of accepting responsibility and learning from their past misdeeds. But the Grump has proven during his first two years in office that he is utterly incapable of such things. The Grump never admits he was wrong. He never accepts any blame for anything even when he is clearly the only one at fault. With Grump, the buck always stops at someone else’s desk, never his. He has shown us day by day throughout his presidency who and what he truly is: He never apologizes; he never makes amends; he never changes; he never learns from mistakes. To learn from one’s mistakes, one first needs to acknowledge them. Our President Grump sees himself as the world’s most glorious victim. It’s simply an ego boost for Grump, one he needs ever more frequently. He—and the Republican base that see their own victimization in him—will never give up his victimhood. It makes him feel special, powerful and self-important.
Imagine our President Grump settling in his bed in the lonely and quiet White House on Christmas Eve. If visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, would he learn a thing from being shown the sorrows of his childhood? Like the morning briefings that he refuses to read and chooses instead to ignore, he would learn nothing. If the Ghost of Christmas Present paid a visit and Grump were shown all of the present-day misery, distress, and unhappiness that he alone has caused throughout the world, would he gain anything from it? I doubt it. A man who cannot acknowledge his own human frailty or his mistakes, he would probably sit on his golden toilet and blame the visitation on a bad meal eaten alone the night before. And should the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come show him a vision of his future with Impeachment, Indictment, Arrest and Imprisonment, would the Grump learn anything? Of course not!
There will be no redemption or happy ending for our President Grump, for he truly has no soul—having sold it decades ago to the Kremlin, who clearly owns him lock, stock and barrel. As it becomes increasingly clear over time that our President Grump long ago sold out our country as well, perhaps even his base will come to see that this is simply another example of the Grump’s true art of the deal.
To end this in the true spirit of Christmas, I quote from Charles Dickens, who describes Ebenezer Scrooge after finding a redemption that the Grump will never find:
“And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”
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