Well, it’s almost eight hours into the Trump presidency and we’re not dead yet. Encouraging sign. Perhaps less encouraging was some of the rhetoric now President Donald Trump started his tenure with, which was basically a remix of his Republican National Convention speech about how everything is terrible and America is going to hell in a nuclear powered hand cart. Still, it seemed as if there was something familiar about some of the things Trump was saying…
So things started off well with, “Every four years we gather on these step to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid through this transition. They have been magnificent. Thank you.” But then, things got disturbing.
“Today…we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you the people,” Trump said. “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capitol has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed.”
And then they got more disturbing. “We’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military,” Trump continued. “We’ve defended other nations’ border while refusing to defend our own, and spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.”
And then he got downright apocalyptic. “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, and an education system flush with cash but which leaves…students deprived of all knowledge,” he said adding, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
That’s dark. Presumably, New York will be turned into a penal colony soon, and the structures of America will collapse as the dead rise and eat the living. But before that happens, let’s revisit one of the earlier lines from Trump’s speech, the one that goes, “Today…we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you the people.” Did that, perhaps, remind you of a certain super-villain from The Dark Knight Rises?
Happily it seems as if I wasn’t the only one that made the connection.
The good news is, there’s only 1,460 more days to go. We hope…
Open Sources Guelph 