Dear Mr. President

STFU (Rant of the Day)

I am handing out free advice today to our intelligence-challenged president.

Here goes:

“Mr. President:

Despite all of your shortcomings. . .

your pardoning of people who were actually guilty of the crimes they were imprisoned for,

your siding with Tiki-torch wielding Nazis who marched in a southern town shouting ‘Jews will not replace us’,

your cozying up to talk show hosts who label practically all women who strive to break the glass ceiling, ‘Feminazis’, and who ruminate on air about cannibalizing their neighbors,

your whimpering about how the media mistreats you while you try desperately to curry their favor even while you seek to undermine and shackle the role they play in a democracy,

your installation of family members into government roles they are incapable of performing capably,

your kowtowing to every murderous dictator on the planet like a fanboy desperate for an autograph,

your staggeringly incoherent and belated response to one of the gravest threats humankind has ever faced,

your infantile name-calling, your infantile rebuttals to reporters, your infantile insistence on being surrounded by sycophants,

your blatant and callous disregard for the rule of law, science, protocols and time-honored traditions,

your propensity to objectify every woman you have ever encountered,

your hiring of unqualified people for almost every position you’ve had to fill, from the arch-grifter Matt Whittaker to the white nationalist Stephen Miller,

your abuse of your role as commander-in-chief by pardoning murderers, belittling generals and relieving heroes of the their commands,

despite all of this, and then some, despite your sado-populist tendencies,

despite your mob boss mentality, all you have to do to win re-election is to “SHUT THE FUCK UP!.”

Get off Twitter. Leave that fully in the hands of your social media experts and I’d suggest they just report the who, what, where, whens and whys. They respond to no one unless it is a positive tweet which, of course, is practically an oxymoron.

Quit your daily press briefings or merely introduce your selected participants and get the hell out of the frame. Don’t take questions from reporters unless you’re willing to say “I don’t know”, “I’ll look into it”, “I’ll have someone else look into it” or give an answer that is not combative.

That’s really all you need to do.

The media will lap it up. All of them. From CNN to Salon. They will begin to worship the ground you walk on.

Because the media’s existence, at this stage of the game, depends on your existence.

They know that. There is nothing that scares them more than waking up sometime in January 2021 and not having crisis and spectacle to write about.

So, there you have it! Break a leg!

(Not in the least bit) Sincerely,

An exhausted, disgruntled, sarcastic, furious, (and, if you take me up on this advice) expatriate American.

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I might write about this podcast at a later date but I want to mention it because I think my sister, Pam, one of my most avid and alert readers, will thoroughly enjoy it, even if she only reads the synopses of shows on the website. It’s called A Way With Words.

Also, these are the Chumlilies, a local band who I am sure are on hiatus at the moment, but you can still follow them on Facebook and purchase their music on the BandCamp app. One of their members, banjo-strumming Molly Elder, raised the talent show bar considerably on my last Grand Canyon river trip. She is also a badass river guide.