America’s idea of itself as a great and envi­able nation was encap­su­lat­ed by the now defunct print edi­tion of the Reader’s Digest and its sig­na­ture fea­ture, “Laugh­ter, the Best Med­i­cine”. For those in trep­i­da­tion of what MAGA por­tends, the best anti­dote is a sense of irony and the absurd.

With­out reg­u­lar dos­es of one or both, the sound­track of the next four years may end up for many being the cho­rus line of a Rolling Stones hit: “Here comes your nine­teenth ner­vous breakdown.”
What bet­ter, indeed what oth­er cop­ing mech­a­nism is there for an Amer­i­can pres­i­dent whose idea of a joke is a nasty remark, and assign­ing a school­yard nick­name to a rival pass­es for wit.
It may not be nice, but it is for­giv­able not to take some­one who con­sis­tent­ly uses the roy­al “we”, as in “We won by mil­lions of peo­ple”, seri­ous­ly when the claim is irrefutably false.
Or per­haps Pres­i­dent Trump is just con­flict­ed about his pronouns.
One also won­ders why — unless a sneer or a gri­mace count as one – there weren’t any pho­tos of Trump gen­uine­ly smil­ing dur­ing, or after his inau­gu­ra­tion ceremonies.

                     THE GOD FACTOR

That’s espe­cial­ly odd con­sid­er­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s asser­tion that he was “saved by God to make Amer­i­ca great again.”
It seems unlike­ly God would take the offi­cial por­trait scowl as a sign of grat­i­tude for his choice.
Trump ben­e­fit­ting from heav­en­ly sup­port and not being hit by light­en­ing, in spite of hawk­ing bibles auto­graphed as if he was the author, is a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for athe­ism if ever there was one. Or proof that there is a god and he (or she is it makes you feel bet­ter) has a sense of humour.
Claim­ing to be God’s cho­sen imple­ment rates Trump kin­ship with a list that includes the aya­tol­lahs of Iran, jihadis, Israeli set­tler zealots, street cor­ner preach­ers, tel­e­van­ge­lists, cult lead­ers, child-molest­ing priests, hate mon­gers of all stripes, the Cru­saders and history’s whole­sale colonis­ers and sub­ju­ga­tors of any­one with oth­er than white skin.
Speak­ing of which, warn­ing of pos­si­ble use of force to take over the Pana­ma Canal is laugh­ably out of sync with the (false) boast of being the only U.S. pres­i­dent in the past 72 years not to have any wars on his watch.
But let us not be unkind, for sure­ly Trump was jok­ing when he said Cana­di­ans would wel­come the idea of becom­ing the 51^st state. Cer­tain­ly we took it as some­where between fun­ny and the delu­sions of an ignoramus.
Self-des­ig­nat­ed “lib­er­als” who con­sid­er their  ideals and ideas the only ones worth pur­su­ing need to light­en up, too.
Even in the best of times the world isn’t neat­ly ordered. Respect­ful­ly agree­ing to dis­agree sep­a­rates the decent from the dishonourable.
When Ronald Rea­gan who, for what­ev­er you think of his poli­cies, knew how to reach out to all the peo­ple he was elect­ed to gov­ern, said “Please tell me you’re all Repub­li­cans” to the med­ical staff wheel­ing him into surgery after he’d been shot, did any­one seri­ous­ly think he wasn’t joking?

                  THE JOKE’S ON US ALL

In real life, Trump­ing out of the Paris Cli­mate Accord is no laugh­ing mat­ter. That it was done (twice) with­out any appar­ent under­stand­ing of the con­nec­tion between cli­mate change and killer heat waves, uncon­trol­lable wild­fires, hur­ri­canes of unprece­dent­ed pow­er and snow­storms in the Sun Belt is so absurd, it’s down­right farcical.
The drum­beat of “Amer­i­ca First” is a joke on him­self that Pres­i­dent Trump and his faith­ful have yet to grasp.
The only lead­ers who don’t con­sid­er putting their own nation and its citizen’s first to be part of the job descrip­tion, are the ones who see lin­ing their pock­ets as their top priority.
Hmmm…
Oh, and the smartest guy in the room is invari­ably not the one who feels it nec­es­sary to keep telling you he is, because every­one who mat­ters already knows it.
In his ‘best buds’ chat with Sean Han­ni­ty on FOX, the new pres­i­dent said it’s easy to spot real­ly bad peo­ple among ille­gal migrants because many of them have facial tat­toos. As unap­peal­ing as I find gar­ish, vis­i­ble body ink­ing, that’s open for debate.
But if true, it shows how dumb they are. If hope­ful migrants paint­ed their face blue, put horns on their head and stormed the seat of gov­ern­ment, they’d be eli­gi­ble for a Day One Dic­ta­tor par­don. Tat­toos asso­ci­at­ed with white suprema­cists and neo-Nazi move­ments might hand them a shot at a nom­i­na­tion for a cab­i­net post. (In his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing Pete Hegseth defend­ed his as evi­dence of Chris­t­ian faith.)
The Reader’s Digest days may be long gone, but many of Don­ald Trump’s cru­el and less-than-well-thought-out poli­cies and decrees will no doubt come back to bite him on his ample proverbial.
Hum­ming along to the iron­ic and absurd will help tune out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Stones’ 19^th until it’s safe to wal­low in what psy­chol­o­gists call “the guilty plea­sure of schaden­freude, with­out the neg­a­tive adjec­tive.

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