What­ev­er you think of Don­ald Trump, he’s bold­ly gone where none of his pre­de­ces­sors went before. Bare­ly into the sec­ond  month of his term, he’s made his title and name into an oxy­moron that match­es my all-time favourite, friend­ly fire.

The mere men­tion of his name can pro­voke emo­tions rang­ing from rap­tur­ous ado­ra­tion a rock star would envy, to  vol­canic erup­tions of The­saurus-chal­leng­ing neg­a­tives. His dic­tion and cor­nu­copia of lies and ill-con­sid­ered ideas are the antithe­sis of the very idea of what a pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is sup­posed to represent.
He can be so dread­ful he’s actu­al­ly wor­thy of mirth, rang­ing from a wry head­shake to guffaws.
As appalling as the  video on “Truth Social”  of Trump’s “vision” for  Gaza as a the Riv­iera is, for exam­ple, the igno­rance of his­to­ry on dis­play is bel­ly-laugh worthy.
The bad taste, front-and-cen­ter Trump aggran­dis­e­ments brought to mind noth­ing so much as Iraq in Sad­dam Hus­sein days.
AI-gen­er­at­ed  images includ­ed a mas­sive gold stat­ue of Trump tow­er­ing over a traf­fic cir­cle, a tod­dler hold­ing a large gold bal­loon of his head and bazaar-like gift shops lined with Trump figurines.
Over the course of dozens of report­ing trips to Iraq. I count­ed more than 100 dif­fer­ent stat­ues and murals of the dic­ta­tor in Bagh­dad alone.
Every traf­fic cir­cle had a stat­ue or a mur­al of him,  gen­er­al­ly of huge to epic proportion.
Every office, store and busi­ness had at least one por­trait on display.
The dic­ta­tor whose name trans­late as “pow­er­ful con­fron­ter” end­ed up cow­er­ing in a hole in the ground. And then he was hanged.

            GENIUS IDEAS THAT AREN’T           

Treat­ing immi­gra­tion like an AMEX advert isn’t on the scale of Gaza as the Riv­iera, but it’s try­ing hard. The debut of the five mil­lion dol­lar “Gold Card” as a Green Card Plus was her­ald­ed with the huck­ster hype: “It’s going to sell like crazy. It’s a bar­gain.” Buy­ers, Pres­i­dent Trump, crowed  will be “…spend­ing a lot of mon­ey and pay­ing a lot of tax­es”.
Seri­ous­ly?
The guy who nev­er paid even close to his share of tax­es, bragged that it made him smart and lauds tax cuts for the rich, thinks rich peo­ple will  pay for the chance to pay taxes.
That’s on a par with the adver­tis­ing slo­gan for the 1958 Edsel, the worst-sell­ing car in the his­to­ry of Ford: “It acts the way it looks, but it does­n’t cost that much.”
But then again, super wealthy peo­ple can be more Edsel buy­ers than  the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to things oth­er than mak­ing money.
Elon Musk is the rich­est of them, and he thinks a chain saw is an apt sym­bol for tak­ing apart bureaucracy.
Any­one who’s ever used one knows a chain saw is a bru­tal cut­ting tool that has to be used with care and pre­ci­sion. Oth­er­wise, what gets tak­en apart is the user.
If that doesn’t make you smile a bit, fan­ta­sise about some­one show­ing Elon how to pull the starter cord on the one he was wav­ing around on a stage.

                   PERFORMANCE??                    

Being a pres­i­den­tial advis­er con­fers a cache that ought to attract and only be grant­ed to the most capa­ble peo­ple available.
Elon Musk has been grant­ed more on-dis­play and acces­si­bil­i­ty to the Oval Office than per­haps any advis­er in history.
His “What did you do last week?” e‑mail to bureau­crats,  how­ev­er, remind­ed me of my short (four months) and unla­ment­ed job as a puta­tive soap sales­man for Proc­tor and Gamble.
Being on the start­ing rung of the cor­po­rate lad­der, sales­men had to log a min­i­mum num­ber of  “per­son­al sell­ing accom­plish­ments” at every store in their ter­ri­to­ry. They includ­ed hang­ing up bal­loons shaped like “Mr Clean” bot­tles and putting plas­tic prod­uct mark­ers along shelves. Noth­ing was too small as a mea­sure of job performance.
Treat­ing career fed­er­al work­ers like neo­phyte soap ped­dlers makes Musk an oxy­less moron.
Musk made his for­tune spear­head­ing 21^st cen­tu­ry technology.
The admin­is­tra­tion he’s shap­ing  — and seems to be spear­head­ing in all but title — is best summed up by the 19^th cen­tu­ry word “kak­istora­cy”. Coined by the Eng­lish poet and writer Thomas Pea­cock, it means “gov­ern­ment by the worst ele­ment of a society.”
Appro­pri­ate­ly, its roots trace to “kak­ka”, an ancient Greek word mean­ing “to defe­cate”.
The pejo­ra­tive wouldn’t res­onate with Trump or Musk, as evi­denced by the fact that in spite of both of them think­ing they’re genius­es, on avail­able evi­dence, nei­ther has come across the wis­dom of a man whose very name is syn­ony­mous with genius, Albert Einstein:
“Who­ev­er under­takes to set him­self up as a judge of Truth and Knowl­edge is ship­wrecked by the laugh­ter of the gods.”
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