Changing the Subject

Early this morning, I decided I would write about something different – different meaning something other than Trump.

Or as my Jewish friends in New York would say: “Enough, already”.    

So anxious was I to write about something else that just about any other topic seemed preferable.  I could, for example, have explained the complexities of Chebyshev’s Polynomials, discussed the simplicity of the theory of Ockham’s Razor ….There are a hundred and one topics I could write about just now – and not all of them mathematical or philosophical. 

But here’s my problem: I can’t get that silly man out of my head.  Heaven knows I’ve tried.  But every morning, as I read the newspaper or watch the news on television, there he is, ubiquitous and rampant, uttering fatuities, forcing me to listen to what he has to say in the same way as I sometimes watch a terrible film for no better reason than that its terribleness is compelling.  That most of what I hear at breakfast is far from profound, and much of it downright foolish, matters not.  I sit there mesmerised. 

And in the afternoons, if I’m at home, I can’t wait to watch Fox News to see what the chattering pundits on that jaundiced channel are saying about the previous day’s pronouncements.  Fox is in the same category as that terrible film. 

This media domination must surely be part of some carefully conceived plan, even though I’m hard pressed to figure out what it is.  The best I can come up with is that the idea is to offend as many prominent people, domestic and foreign, as possible, and in between make the most provocative declarations on world events to wind us up in order to let us slowly unwind later.   

These are Trump’s polynomials: prod plus provoke equals outrage.  Keep those mindless tweets flowing; missing no opportunity to cock a snook (and, no, cocking snooks has nothing to do with shenanigans in a Moscow hotel room) at the anxious world.  Here’s the thing: he’s not yet president and he doesn’t have to observe any of those tiresome protocols of the worlds of diplomacy or politics.  He can make as much damn noise as he wishes, wind up as many people as he likes, and none of it bears the imprimatur of the United States government. 

And then there comes the plan’s clever denouement.  After the inauguration this coming Friday – surely a date which will live in infamy – the man will suddenly astonish us all by becoming careful, reasonable, and, heaven help us, presidential. 

Ha, ha, it was all a joke, he’ll declare.  You didn’t think for a moment that I meant all that stuff, did you?   

Either that’s the plan, or there isn’t one.  If there isn’t, then we face four years of the puerile nonsense that has had many of us grinding our molars into porcelain dust for the past two months.       

But there I go again.  Enough of Trump already.

I hereby solemnly swear that I will try to find a new subject.

I did say ‘try’.