At the request of the Vice Premier of China, Liu He, and due to the fact that the People’s Republic of China will be celebrating their 70th Anniversary….on October 1st, we have agreed, as a gesture of good will, to move the increased Tariffs on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods (25% to 30%), from October 1st to October 15th. A pair of tweets from President Trump on the day he fired Bolten. (Or the day after Bolton quit if you prefer.)
When I first read the two Tweets – Tweet thread? – above, from President Trump, I was sort of dumbfounded. They? It just seems so wacky. How does the Chinese Vice Premier do that? email? Ask through the ambassador? Phone? “Good morning Mr. President. Say, since October 1st is our 70th, would you mind putting off increasing the tariffs for a couple of weeks? Thanks.” “Oh, sure. I had forgotten it was your birthday. How would two weeks work?” I can understand if the President put off the tariffs for a couple of weeks because China and the USA were working on a trade deal, but for a birthday? It seems to me that President Trump might have another strategy – besides keeping himself in the constant limelight – and that is to change the subject.
Whatever the reason, what most tickled me – in a slightly disturbing way – were some of the comments. Matthew J Show who bills himself as host of the MatthewJshow podcast, Tweets: Leadership when it counts! Well done President Trump! for example, or RD – which, apparently, stands for real defender – and is a Conservative / Sports Fan / Proudly Retweeted by POTUS says: Always a gentleman and a master negotiator our president is (RD is also a fan of Yoda’s syntax, I guess), or Adas whose tag says Adas has been professionally diagnosed with winning personality disorder™ – I love the trademark, BTW – and wears a green MAGA hat in her photo, Tweets: Shows the CCP who’s the BOSS in this relationship. President Trump is very NICE and he’ll let them take some time off! Back to losing after Oct 15th! One of the problems with Tweeting and texting for that matter is that it is hard to detect sarcasm and when I first read Adas’s Tweet, especially, I thought that this must be sarcastic, but when I went to her home page, I see that she Tweets things like how much Sweeden doesn’t like its healthcare system or The American flag has always been the international symbol of FREEDOM. Now, the US President is one too! so I don’t think she is being sarcastic.
That brings me back to my question, Can These People Be Real? Who are they? Was anybody ever that head over heels in love with Obama or is this a new phenomenon? And the answers are Yes, They are outwardly normal people, and Probably, but there does seem to be something in the Trumpian universe that promotes sycophantry. Maybe sycophantry comes naturally to the kind of people who like authoritarian leaders. Contrary to what we are taught from childhood on, everybody does not want our democracy. Some people just seem to like having a Dear Leader who holds unlimited power and is way above them. Somebody who is infallible and, if nothing else, authoritarians have to be infallible. I, personly, like my leaders to be common people who rose to power, that is why I like Ulysses S. Grant over Robert E. Lee – it does help that Grant was a much better, more innovative, tactician and strategist than Lee – and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over George Bush, but that is just my preference. So, yeah, they are real but, the good news is that there are not as many of them as they would have you think, which reminds me of one of my favorite Grant stories.
After the second night at Goliad, Benjamin and I started to make the remainder of the journey alone. We reached Corpus Christi just in time to avoid “absence without leave.” We met no one not even an Indian–during the remainder of our journey, except at San Patricio. A new settlement had been started there in our absence of three weeks, induced possibly by the fact that there were houses already built, while the proximity of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening of the first day out from Goliad, we heard the most unearthly howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my ear it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our party, horses and all, at a single meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed from was not thickly settled, but wolves had been driven out long before I left. Benjamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where the wolf yet roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the animal and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an unlimited number of them. He kept on towards the noise, unmoved. I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion. I have no doubt that if Benjamin had proposed returning to Goliad, I would not only have “seconded the motion” but have suggested that it was very hard-hearted in us to leave Augur sick there in the first place; but Benjamin did not propose turning back. When he did speak it was to ask: “Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that pack?” Knowing where he was from,and suspecting that he thought I would over-estimate the number, I determined to show my acquaintance with the animal by putting the estimate below what possibly could be correct, and answered: “Oh, about twenty,” very indifferently, and rode on.
In a minute we were close upon them, and before they saw us. There were just TWO of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing for the past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noise of a few disappointed politicians who had deserted their associates. There are always more of them before they are counted.