David Holahan

We live in a time of nursery rhymes. These catchy ditties are no longer just for children, for better and for worse. Let’s begin with for worse.

On what planet, in which galaxy, in whose cosmos does the leader of a nation pat himself on the back with both hands for his handling of a pandemic virus that has caused more than 140,500 deaths in the United States (as of July 20), that is spiking across large swaths of our country, and that shows no signs of letting up anytime soon, much less fading away as he once claimed it would by now?

It’s a rare news story nowadays that spawns mirth. But I had to laugh when I read that North Korea, in a fit of pique worthy of a terrible toddler, had blown up one of its buildings where failed peace talks with South Korea recently had taken place. Ka-Boom! Take that—and watch out or we’ll blow up another one of our buildings! Monty Python couldn’t improve on that.

He’s a cartoonish character who isn’t funny and won’t leave us be. My fellow Americans, we are all Mr. Wilson, and Donald the Menace, the bratty kid who lives next door in the White House, is destroying the neighborhood.

If you’re looking for empathy from your president and your name isn’t Paul Manafort (a convicted felon), Michael Flynn (who plead guilty to a felony), “Scooter” Libby (also a convicted felon), or Roger Stone (yet another convicted felon), forget about it. He’s all tapped out. The president’s publicaly expressed concern for the 75,000-plus Americans who have died as of May 8 from COVID-19 (according to the Centers for Disease Control) is underwhelming at best. The CDC also reports that eight of 10 of the victims are 65 or older.

The president of the land of the free and the home of the brave has taken his “bully pulpit” and stormed home. He stashed it right next to his ball and glove and his oft-used golf clubs.

As if there were any doubt, it has now been confirmed: we elected a snake oil salesman to the highest office in the land.

The prophet Jeremiah had us pegged millennia ago as being “foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear.”
We are dealing with the consequences of that myopia today.

When you turn on your local Connecticut news stations lately, at 6 p.m., what you get is an infomercial from unscientific Don and un-pensive Mike. Last Sunday they preempted both the local and national newscasts.

It is vanishingly rare that I plod up our steep curvaceous driveway, past our thickly treed woodlot, collect the mail from our rusty misshapen mailbox — and burst out laughing.

In addition to playing politics, American Presidents play golf, hole after hole after hole. It is one of the few bipartisan activities left standing. Dwight D. Eisenhower hit them straight down the middle often, as did his successor, John F. Kennedy, who is purported to have been the best golfer to inhabit the White House. The nation’s biggest golfer, however, was William Howard Taft, who weighed in at more than 300 pounds.

It took me a long time to kick my addiction to plastic grocery bags. Years. Even after I dutifully acquired cloth carriers, I often would be halfway to the store before I realized I had left them in the car. I’d keep walking. Addiction to convenience and bad habits are hard things to break. I finally did the right thing not long before Connecticut put a price on using unsustainable plastic grocery bags in August: ten whole cents per offending sack.

Don’t get me wrong — some of my best friends are rich.  I’m not doing too badly myself. But the time has come, my friends, to pony up.

How fake is our president? Let’s count the ways. Remember his campaign pledge to “Drain the swamp?” Fortune Magazine recently reported that in less than three years our president “has named more former lobbyists to cabinet-level posts than his most recent predecessors did in eight, putting a substantial amount of oversight in the hands of people with ties to the industries they are regulating.”

From 1950 to 1954, an ill-informed, loudmouthed, bully politician — who lied, trafficked in conspiracy theories, and shamelessly defamed fellow Americans — set the tone in Washington, D.C. He destroyed careers and lives by going after alleged communists and homosexuals in high and low places. He denigrated national institutions, such as the U.S. Army and State Department. Now there’s another.