Marching to Gilead

Mar 01, 2019

Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

I suppose Mr. Trump dangled visions of North Korea’s future as a Buick showroom and the mysterious Kim Jong Un detected some kind of trap there. A correspondent with military intel credentials writes: “[Eric] Hoffer’s observation that people only revolt when things are getting better seems applicable to DPRK. I can only assume that Kim and his cabal in NK know this or somehow instinctively understand it. In short, as I see it, he can’t afford to let things get really better for North Korean people. So, I believe Trump’s carrot of great economic success for DPRK’s people probably scares Kim badly.”

It was certainly hard to imagine the two leaders in conversation: The President with his larval vocabulary and Mr. Kim in his life-long solipsistic haze. Perhaps they compared hair-dos, both equally strange, would you not admit? Something tells me that Mr. Kim is not a golfer, so that was out as an icebreaker, though it’s said he does enjoy firing artillery at human targets — one thing that Mr. Trump has not been accused of by former consiglieri-turned-pagliaccio Michael Cohen. Perhaps Mr. Trump let Mr. Kim in on the glorious beauty of an American Cheeseburger, a sure-nuff wonder of the world!

In any case, the US president trundled home without nailing that ole coonskin to the wall, as one of his predecessors put it, but the game isn’t over. For now, it’s back to war on the home front against the armies of Wokesterdom. That movement appears to be floundering a bit too now as Jussie Smollett whirls down the memory hole, and #MeToo sputters, and the various congressional committees scrape the bottom of every barrel for the always-elusive triumphal “gotcha” in their crusade to correct the 2016 election. The fishy barrel that Michael Cohen came out of provided disappointingly thin sludge, so now The New York Times (official playbill of Wokesterdom) informs us that next up they’ll be hauling Mr. Trump’s financial officer, one Allen Weisselberg, into the star chamber for a ‘splainin’ session. Pretty soon, they’ll make the amazing discovery that the New York City construction scene is run by the mob. Won’t that be a revelation?

Let’s face it, March is a month that drips with fraughtness. Everybody is good and goddam sick of winter, yet it lingers sadistically, not unlike the Mueller investigation. Then, you get to the middle of the month and what’s there? The sinister Ides, an age-old ceremonial turning point of the year recognized by the ancients even before Julius Caesar got whacked in the Roman senate. I propose that mid-March this year will be the occasion of so many shoes dropping that Washington will look like a road show of Shuffle Along.

Everybody and his/her/zhe/they’s uncle expects Mr. Mueller to cast down his report from on high. In a non-Bizarro world it would be a catalog of indictments for most of the FBI executive leadership circa 2016-2018, and a few cherries-on-top from the DOJ, CIA, and the DNC. More likely, it will be a stuffed, roasted rump of innuendo drenched in Russian dressing garnished with rinky-dink “process” crime convictions. One way or another, it’s sure to disappoint the minions of Wokesterdom.

But once that’s out of the way, more interesting action may be in the offing. Mr. Trump, despite all the Twitter bluster, has at least patiently held back on declassifying reams of documents pertaining to official misconduct by many of the investigators themselves, perhaps even Mr. Mueller and some of his colleagues. I expect a steady and measured release of that classified material, and it will tell a tale that may even startle the Wokesters out of their dark raptures.

Nobody knows exactly what the new attorney general, Mr. Barr, might do. So far, he has not done anything. I will be surprised if that continues. He is probably also waiting for the Mueller report before he starts dispatching folks to grand juries, perhaps even a former president, and certainly some of his foot-servants and handmaidens. Upcoming too are actions by the DOJ inspector general, Mr. Horowitz, federal prosecutor John Huber’s forgotten commission, and the reappearance of General Flynn in Judge Sullivan’s DC courtroom.

March is also looking like the moment when the financial world starts rockin’ and rollin’ on the recognition that the global economy has stalled. The fantasy of economic triumph is the one float that the Golden Golem of Greatness has been able to parade around on. Both the real estate markets and the car business have gone south now, and the financial entanglements entailed by them, in the form of securitized mortgages and loans, are janky enough to start blowing up pension funds, insurance companies, and state treasuries just for starters. The complacency on Wall Street ought to be a prime signal for the sentient to duck-and-cover.

Just Out! Previously Unpublished!
From the Jeff Greenaway Series

At Ponsonby Hall, a new Hampshire prep school for screw-ups, things are far from all right.
“Audaciously hilarious”
$7.00 — Cheap! Buy!
(Read Excerpt)

Something Strange is going on at Camp Timahoe in Lost Indian, Vermont, summer of 1962.
“Rollicking fun”
$7.50 — Cheap! Buy!
(Read Excerpt)

Great Winter Reading… JHK’s Hippie Novel!

“Simply the best novel about the 1960s.”

Read the first chapter here (click) on Patreon
Buy the book at Amazon or click on the cover below
or get autographed copies from Battenkill Books