The Masque Of The White Death: Happy Anniversary!

“The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” — H.L. Mencken

(LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.) - Swell idiot in the white mask, huh? From purported MAGA Savior to our home-grown virus-spreading Satan. Well, c’mon, his hydrocephalic pumpkin head, like his rotund waistline, DOES appear to be abnormally swollen, inflated, distended and distorted, miming his remarks about his I.Q. And perhaps his actual wealth.

What a card, huh? And his legacy? Proliferating variants galore, the Bataan Death March of viruses. Donnie has given us his most excellent adventure, our inherited nightmare: Covid-19. Cue up Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen,” let’s party on, Garth!

Hey Covid-19?
Happy 1st Anniversary!

Meanwhile, as for his merry band of felchers? Napoleon advised that one should never interrupt one’s enemy when they’re making a major, strategic mistake in battle. I’m not a Democrat, but if I were, I’d just sit back and enjoy the “party” (little pun there).

Republicans have turned into rabid cannibals, destroying one another, eating the wings, plus the detrital connective tissue and cartilage of their own extremist species.

Hail Chosen One! Behold Trump’s delamination, deconstruction and demolition of the Grand Old Party! He couldn’t be doing a better job of triggering a “Humpty-Dumpty” dissolution, a long-term (perhaps irreparable) fracturing of the GOP if he was purposefully insinuated as a Democratic saboteur, a malware espionage mole. The Dems sly, sinister version of a “Manchurian Candidate.”

“Insanity in individuals is something rare — but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

There’s an amusing plot that any average, every day, run-of-the-mill sadist (or die hard with a vengeance, schadenfreude-laden Trump supporter) should in retrospect enjoy.

You know, those ironic, knuckle-dragging and no doubt intentionally misleading lies that came out of Bozo-The- President’s gob a year ago.

We were unaware (buttface wasn’t) that it was only the beginning of an interminable slog. Then too, why did his sycophantic slag of supporters, the dross (mostly waste material) of delusional deplorables, believe that Trump would be the 2-term reincarnation of Ronald Reagan’s monarchy, er, presidency?

And he’d replace Reagan’s go-to catchphrase “Shining city on the hill” with “Sterilized, body-filled ICUs and morgues in every city.”

They are similar in two ways: Reagan was never known for being deeply introspective or cerebral, and near the end of his 2nd term obviously showed symptoms of derangement, senility, to many outright 5th Stage Dementia.

Reagan was on the verge of being 78 when he left office, the same age as Trump will be in 2024. Is 78 the new 74?

Reagan’s Acting Career Apotheosis: Two’s Company, Three’s A Crowd?

Reagan after all did set the “I’m with stupid” bar pretty low so that his “money is everything set” could slither over it. Leading to sluggish fat men that can barely waddle like Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee to and from their golf cart.

In 1971, then California Governor Reagan was recorded chatting with then President “Tricky Dicky From Yorba Linda” Nixon on the White House phone: “To see those monkeys from African countries---damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”

That incredibly self-centered and blithely egotistical, ecologically ignorant Reagan who when asked about forest conservation efforts in California while Governor uttered, “If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all” repeatedly forced guests and staff at Camp David to watch the box office (and acting) flop, and per usual, sequels that only got worse.

When the chimp IS the smartest character, then you definitely have a dud. All due props and R.I.P. respect to Lassie and Mister Ed. Kinda like what the White House must have been like for 4 years watching re-runs of Trump’s fantasy island, “The Apprentice?”

Remember, he told Carl Bernstein that he knew something horribly wicked and decimating was coming, what Bernstein subsequently portrays with good reason as “homicidal negligence.”

In the February 7, 2020 knowingly tape-recorded interview, “Dare-To-Be-Stupid” Trump admitted that Covid would be deadlier than even the most severe of flus. Read on:

Memorializing My 1st of 2 Pfizer Vaccinations at The Tragic Kingdom

It was only a 2-hour 15-minute trip door-to-door from my place in South Laguna. I was ½ hour early, so it could have been less than 2 hours but this is So Cal----one never knows about traffic when travelling merely 30 miles, early Sunday am, lockdown or not.

Ditto for my personal “Double Whammy,” my 2nd round of Pfizer 3 weeks later just down the road, indoors at Anaheim Convention Center. Identical timeline, no fuss, no muss, no problems. Same efficient, considerate, sincere, patiently committed staff, characteristically professional nurse and doctor behavior.

I did however, like many before me, experience mild, flu-like symptoms after the 2nd one: Monday morning early a mild headache, gastrointestinal (you do NOT want any details dear reader) plus low energy bordering on exhaustion, definite “brain fog,” vaguely resembling too much hashish-toking and shots of cheap tequila hangover back in 1969.

I’m a pretty energetic guy, hadn’t had anything remotely resembling flu in years, so after taking my 2nd one hour nap (one before lunchtime, one after) I realized “Hey, this shite is for real!” Over and done with in 18 hours max, but impressive.

After a recommended 2-week, post-2nd shot period, by this column’s publication I’ll have a good chance of being out of the woods personally. “Good chance,” i.e., not guaranteed or 100% certain. There are no certainties with Covid, maybe that’s why it’s called “novel,” ya think Uncle Donald?

I’m not optimistic about herd immunity’s eventual, efficaciously prophylactic emergence. Re-opening is actually Russian Roulette. I think another quote attributed to H.L. Mencken was correct: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

I mean that after all, they were fooled by a TV entertainer whose only life goal seemed to be “Amass then hoard enormous wealth and power at all costs, crush competition under my Santoni dress shoes, marry a $10,000/night empty-headed arm candy porno meat puppet, boorishly denigrate and punish my perceived enemies, peasant discomfort and working class deaths be damned.”

Although the plague in Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Masque Of The Red Death” killed everyone outright who came in contact, there are some similarities. Putting aside a weird coincidence, Mencken and Poe both being Baltimore residents. Another conspiracy?

Melania Trump’s 2018 Red Christmas White House
Depiction by Raul Ramos Melo

Trump, like Prince Prospero, sees himself as above the peasant hoi-polloi, American aristocracy, acquired and earned royalty, deservingly born on 3rd base with no outs. Prospero hid in his castle with his family and wealthy friends, believing it would never affect them. Until it came for them of course. Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, sound familiar? Even the Prince’s name triggers a punster: Trump saw and still sees himself as very Prosper-ous, hopefully the next few years in depositions and courtrooms will hack up the hairballs of this con artist’s real wealth and assets at any given time in the last decade.

Like George Bush on that aircraft carrier deck: Thumbs up America! Mission Soooooo Accomplished! Perhaps if alive today, Mencken would amend his statement: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of the American people.”

Trump has been compared to Andy Griffith in Eli Kazan’s most excellent film “A Face In The Crowd.” Usually typecast as an affable folksy guy, against the grain Griffith played the country boy-cum-politically manipulative despot. I watched it for about the nth time this weekend on Turner Movie Classics, it not only stands the test of time but the apropos nasty ending shreds!

The Trump family are arguably New York Citybillies, obviously nouveau riche ones. Not a bright bulb in the “bred-box.”

Many upcoming state and federal courtrooms later and a lot of trial dates down the road, Trump’s “masque” (couldn’t resist the pun) might well be torn off, revealing a Wizard of Oz, an imperious emperor without garments, a house of cards built on intentionally false allegations regarding his actual wealth at transactional nodes. Yuck! Trump without clothes, now there’s a stomach-churning thought.

Don’t feel sorry, you sick, suckered puppies that not only voted for him twice but await the Second Coming of Cheeto Christ: The clan will always be millionaires, just not billionaires, look for their vampiric facilitators with law degrees to drain those totally bogus 2024 MAGA PAC campaign coffers dry. Hello? Like Biden, who IS 78, he’s already senile and slipping fast.

Choose One: Which of these bozos is a real life clown,
had millions of people’s lives and the future health of a
nation in his hands, then totally blew it?

It won’t be the end of Trump World as we know it, no one will go to jail or prison. American audiences and world media pay-to-interview hosts will abound, ghost-written books (the Trumps are quintessential “functional illiterates”) and residuals.

Vociferous, venomous and vituperative Donny John will charge $1 million for inflammatory and invective riddled speaking engagements---look for them to proliferate.

And yes, why not bring this boogeyman back in 2024, more obese, even more paranoid, more demented, vengeful and with even yet greater diminished mental capacity? Re-animated like a golem, after all he’s obviously composed of inanimate mud, originally created from primordial slime?

In spite of the national and international re-openings, do not count Covid out, it’s far from done with humans. The variants may yet be the “death” of us all.

Most of those responsible are in fact ageing white people who sense their tyrannical, oligarchic glory days are behind them.

These plutocrats found fertile soil in the anger and resentment of both rural and suburban cracker rednecks, the imminent “browning” of America. Which is pretty funny: Physical anthropologists would have us believe that only a few hundred thousand years ago our ancestors were ALL dark-skinned, and hirsuit.

As for my title, “The Masque Of The White Death?” This virus may have originated in China, but here in the USA it’s taken frothing hordes of white bread, brain dead, ass-kissing, bumhole-slurping, boot-licking career politicians and an incompetent vagina-grabbing chauvinist pig, the most foul-mouthed and privileged President to unforgivably set it, like the Red Death, loose upon this hallowed now haunted land: Hail MADA! Make America Dumb (Again)!