The First 27 Days

Aloha. The first 27 days of an administration are always the toughest.

From where I sit--beneath the swaying palm trees, the flock of Nene Hawaiian geese (the state bird) in the blue sky overhead, the trade winds twirling the little plastic parasols in the tall fruit punch drinks, safely ensconced in the birthplace of the 44th president, if you believe the fake news --this one looks really scary.

Watching the Trump administration’s first 27 days is a fascinating rubbernecking experience, like seeing a fenderbender between two cars on the highway. Only worse: like a school bus hitting a church van filled with senior parishioners on their way to the Atlantic City casinos at a railroad crossing with an on-coming speeding train, blowing its horn. Horrifying. But you watch it anyway.

The transition, according to our brand new dictator-president is working as smoothly as a Swiss watch. Others say it seems more like what happens when the lunatics take over the madhouse, a textbook definition of “dysfunctionalism” in government.

“I’m giving up Trump for Lent,” a historical scholar told me the other day (I’m protecting his identity, lest he wind up on some No-Fly list). “It only lasts for six weeks, but that’s enough time to come up with a Plan B. We survived Andrew Jackson, we can make it through the Rump.”

Well, that’s easy for him to say.

The first 27 days of Trump going where no administration has gone before may be a little mystifying. If I was a Trekkie, it would be like Spock saying to Kirk “the readings are off the chart.”

But that’s only because we here in the western-most state are at the mercy of the dishonest crooked failing fake news media.

What we, the disturbed people of America, don’t understand is what 2016 was really all about. Forget the party of Lincoln and civil rights; Teddy Roosevelt and anti-trust, Warren Harding and his tootsie in the cloak room. The Republican Party core principle, what it will be remembered for today, is that it kept Hillary out of the White House in 2016.

Corrupt lying dishonest Hillary! Horrible Hillary! Not in the Oval Office. So important.

That and cutting taxes for the rich.

In terms of the first part of its goal, the Trump administration already has been more than successful.

Credit where credit is due, I say. But the party will not be resting on its laurels. Not until an onerous tax remains on the books! More on that later.

Thanks to Trump and the minority of the American people, we don’t have lying Hillary, who should be in jail, to kick around any more. No more eight investigations of Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi and her furshluginah email server.

It doesn’t matter that that we now have the most unqualified and inexperienced president in our glorious history, a man who almost never finishes a sentence or a thought while speaking, a man whose Cliff Notes digest version of The Constitution didn’t go past the second amendment. He disagreed with the first one, which guarantees only free speech rights of those who agree with him.

So what if he is a proven pathological liar who still thinks he won the Electoral College in a landslide and also would have won the popular, if it weren’t for the three million rigged votes.

So what if he is no Henry Kissinger on foreign policy, and sees nothing wrong with having our friends, the Russians, influencing the outcome of the election. Putin made America safe from Hillary.

So what if he’s the man who has no problem running the country as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump Uber Alles, and his idea of eliminating conflict of interest is having his children running the business while he is otherwise occupied. A blind trust is for seeing-eye dogs.

So what if he may seem to be a fascist-in-training, a white nationalist, controlled by a Rasputin named Bannon. Our boy kept Hillary out of the White House, didn’t he?

So what if he‘s a man who can say one thing in the official record of his thoughts, the Twitter account, at 3 AM, and the opposite once he gets to the office.

“You wrote what?” his adviser might say about his latest policy repealing and replacing Obamacare. “Are you insane? Don’t you know how to use the delete button, you knucklehead?” Or whatever goes on in the smoothly running wheelhouse of the Trump perpetual motion machine.

The man who kept Hillary out of the White House is not one of those flexible revolving door politicians on the important issues. He is consistent on hating immigrants, facts, and the media. So much for those who say he lacks the courage of his lack of convictions.

Enough of this praising with faint praise. When the book is closed on the first Trump administration, he will be hailed as the greatest overachiever in the annals.

On this positive note, and looking back at all the other insights I have wrought in these Hawaii Letters (Pat. Pending), it’s time to say goodbye to the land where everything around you looks like a page out of the National Geographic. I will miss the coconut muffins (the state muffin) as I return to the real world of New Jersey, were it will be no more Mister Nice Guy.

To The Aloha State, I say arrivederci.

--
Marvin Kitman
Maui, Hawaii
Feb. 22, 2017