No denouement
by Tom Sullivan
After a Sunday filled with remembrances for John McCain, the flawed, principled, predictable/unpredictable, etc. late senator from Arizona, the airing of Monday’s Fox & Friends will return us to our regularly scheduled shitshow. The White House has returned its American flag to full staff less than 48 hours after McCain’s death.
The sitting president, isolated underneath that flag and beset on all sides as he is, could not bear losing the country’s attention for even a day. He has yet to issue any statement acknowledging his political foe’s over half-century’s contributions to the country. Even in McCain’s death, Trump is graceless.
Flag back at full staff atop WH. Pres Trump did not issue proclamation on the death of @SenJohnMcCain, which usually calls for flags to remain at half-staff through the day of interment, which is Sunday at the @NavalAcademy. pic.twitter.com/NGasNPT0VB— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 27, 2018
White house flag is currently at full staff for those of you who really care about kneeling and respect and all that.— CJ (@CJintheKeys) August 27, 2018
This morning I woke up to find out the White House flag is at full staff. Not half in honor of Senator John McCain. My stomach churned with a deep sickening for Trump. Deeper than ever before. I pledge to do my very best to vote and get everyone I can…— Tracy Pardue (@PardueTracy) August 27, 2018
Charles Blow sees narrative twists in this “dramatic opera of demons” in which Stormy Daniels becomes Joan of Arc and “foul-mouthed, bullying Michael Cohen, Trump’s “fixer,” becomes an antihero. Robert Mueller’s defenders may yet shield Jeff Sessions, the “monster” enforcing the family separations policy on the southern border. Session is high on Trump’s naughty list for not protecting Him by falling on his sword. Now justice makes hangs like one over Trump as by a thread.
Blow writes:
Trump is a man who has lived a life evading justice, using the legal system and the threat of legal action against people. For him, the justice system is a tool at the disposal of the wealthy and the ruthless, one to be used against anyone of lesser means and lesser fortitude.
In his mind, the fact that he may be implicated by the justice system is a blasphemy, a distortion of the American power structure, in which the wealthy almost always win.
Someone, somewhere, some time will turn Trump’s tale into theater if not opera. A sleazy Trump in Korea, the president’s courtiers will be “rats and weasels,” flippers and faithful, his family as base as Himself, third-rate mobsters. Farce, for sure. It cannot be a tragedy (for him). Maybe for the country, though. And the denouement will be what?
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