President Trump's greatest "achievements" so far

Fellow blogger Felipe Zapata, headquartered at a remote mountaintop near Pátzcuaro, published a post yesterday celebrating the top ten achievements of the Trump administration. This morning when I reread the jeremiad I had written in response, I enjoyed my own words so much I decided to republish them here, with minor changes: 

Ah, Felipe, you’re much too modest in listing the achievements of our Dear Leader Donald Trump. If you don’t mind, I’d like to add a few more items:

1. Trump has lowered the bar in the area of old-fashioned family values, fidelity and marital vows, and public morality in general, to about a millimeter off the ground. One particularly inspiring revelation was his affair with a pornographic film star with volleyball-size breasts, just months after his son Barron was born. 

Trumpistas called this "fake news," but photos and cancelled checks for hush-money tell the story.

2. During the first three years of the Trump administration, the federal deficit rose by nearly 50 percent. The president had promised to eliminate the federal debt within eight years, so he has five more years to pull off this miracle. By that time, pigs in South Dakota also will have learned how to fly.

3. Despite promises to deliver affordable healthcare insurance to all Americans, the number of uninsured has risen during the past two years to 27.5 million or 8.5 percent of the population, reversing gains thanks to Obamacare. And overall expenditures on medical care in the U.S. continues to rise and now approaches a record $4 trillion. 

Our Dear Leader says he has a genius reform plan that he carries in his breast pocket to address these problems, and that he will soon reveal to the rest of us mopes. When that happens, pigs in North Dakota, taking a cue from their counterparts to the south, will start flapping their wings in preparation for flight. 

Thar' she blows

4. Thanks to his breakthroughs in male grooming, American men have been introduced to a year-round shade of microwave tan previously unknown in humans. The barbering industry was thrown for a loop, though, by the president’s revolutionary coiffure and dye job, a tornado-like creation a shade between Dijon mustard and iridescent baby poop. Researchers at L'Oreal laboratories are amazed. Meanwhile, sales of Gorilla Glue Spray Adhesive, which he uses to hold that confection in place—most of the time—have soared. 

5. Thanks to American world leadership under Trump, representative government has taken a dive throughout the globe, particularly in places run by paladins of democratic government—and Trump bros—Duterte (Philippines); Putin (Russia); Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud (Saudi Arabia); Erdogan (Turkey); al-Sisi (Egypt) and North Korea's ruling meatball, who has his own bizarre haircut, and with whom Trump has developed a bromance of sorts.  

Hello bro'

6. Transparency and honesty in government entered a new phase, one that observers have tentatively called the Post-Truth Era, during which Americans are discovering that up is down, down is up and two and two equals nine. President Trump, by his incessant, indiscriminate—and often pointless—lies, becomes the undisputed practitioner of a new and intriguing branch of science known as Alternative Facts.

7. Internally, the Dear Leader has done an amazing job of undermining the traditional American concepts of “e pluribus unum,” tolerance for people different from ourselves, and respect for immigrants from all over the world. So Mexican immigrants have become rapists and criminals; many Third World countries now appear on White House maps as “shitholes”; Muslims are an undifferentiated, unwashed mob of closet terrorists, while some Neo-Nazis have been born again as “very fine people.” As of 2018, the number of hate-crime violence had risen to a 16-year high.

Fine people with tiki-torches.

8. The Dear Leader has used the phrase “fake news” to dismiss any news reporting that conflicts with his personal cosmology. That tactic, in turn, has been adopted by repressive governments throughout the world, such as Egypt, and the freedom-loving hacienda of Cuba, to use the rubric “fake news” to justify the stifling press freedoms and harassment of journalists. 

Trump’s bro’ in Saudi Arabia took this tactic a big step further by slicing and dicing—quite literally —Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The normally loquacious Trump came down with a case of lockjaw, and remained largely mum.  

Hmm. 

9. Under the “grab-'em-by-the-pussy” Trump reign, misogyny and other verbal attacks against women have become a new normal. Women voters, outside the hard-core evangelical circles, understandably have reacted negatively to this gusher of abuse, polls show, eroding Trump's base of support. That’s a silver lining.

10. The most auspicious development, though, despite the bright economic news, is that Trump’s approval ratings seem stuck around 43 percent, and a majority of Americans support his impeachment and removal from office. Even Fox News aired that alarming bit of news. 

Apparently, Trump’s breathtaking achievements aren’t quite enough to seal a victory in 2020.

And that, dear readers, may be the best news yet as we enter the new year. Have a good one.