All of us can fall for it, I suppose due to this innate need to connect the dots, package everything up with a nice little bow, make the chaos of the real world seem to have some higher meaning, give it all some sort of gloss of reason. Thing is, life is messy and nothing is as straightforward as most would prefer.

In real life, the magician comes on to the stage, and you know he will trick you, that’s what you paid him to do, to trick you, to distract, to entertain, to gasp in awe or horror, it’s all the same. You know very well you’re being fooled, that it’s all a guise, but you want him to make you believe it is magic, wants to be had with the art of distraction.

Yeah, not big on magician’s though personally, unless they’re characters in a Robertson Davies novel, which is the only magician I’ve ever really liked, the whole thing otherwise gives me anxiety, to be honest. Not sure why, watching them, in their tacky costumes and sleight of hand, maybe I just don’t like the whole being lied to part, the being tricked, can’t really see myself actually PAYING for that, but anywho.

So, the bumbling doofus down yonders got a bit of that magician about him. I was thinking lately that I don’t think it’s his base he actually plays to, that’s not his real audience. No, no, his audience is the media, the ones who will tweeter out his name, post it on Facebook, with that ugly meme of his orange mug and Richy Rich hairdo combover. He’s always been a media groupie, with the help of that Pecker guy from the National Inquirer, planting stories, fake news about his great and lofty business acumen.

Which is why I’m always rather amused when he throws that accusation out, like, he’d be the one to know, eh?

But underneath that ego-driven madman and that self-involved greed lies a guy who I think is really easy to manipulate. Flattery gets you anywhere with him.

Well, and also that being some kind of shady character seems to be a prerequisite, I mean, he’s like a magnet for crooks.

But one thing I know about the best crooks, they are expert salespeople, they chat him up, they compliment his biz savvy, they charm him, whisper sweet nothings in his ear, suggestions, things they want him to say, do, well you get the idea.

Now, each of his crisis is not just distraction, they are performance, and in many ways that is Trump’s expertise – performance. More to keep him in the spotlight, on every news cycle, discussed, argued about, whatever, it’s all the same, each of his crisis is manufactured.

Take that stupid wall, a symbol, a monument to that racist vein that has wormed its way through the decades, never gone away, with dog whistle policies over the decades, silent understanding of what the policies would do, who they would affect, the black, the different, the neighbourhoods were nary a white face can be seen. All across the U.S., in every city, like reservations of poverty and the dispossessed, making voting more and more difficult for these depressed neighbourhoods, districts manipulated by those old white men who run the show, that racist patriarchy, those they’ve deemed undesirables are given less, and less, and less. And over the years they have done their best to keep them all at bay, to keep them busy surviving to another day, too desperate to get angry and march through the streets.

Well, until somehow one managed to go and get himself voted president. And didn’t that set off a hell storm of right-wing wingnuts organizing their little tea parties, storming their representatives with their ire at one thing after another, breaking down the system, manipulating the minds and hearts of a whole swath of America, right at the heart, that was once and for all getting it THEIR way. No compromise, no more dirty socialist crap, kick em’ out, kick em to the curb, who gives a fairy fart, Christian values my arse.

Evangelicals seem to have forgotten a few verses of that book of theirs, maybe the elevators not going to that higher floor anymore, but…

Malachi 3:5 – The messenger will bear witness against those who thrust aside the alien.

Seems to me that ever since 9/11, with a whole decade almost of one terrorist alert after another, with a resulting war(s) that has stirred up a hornet’s nest of jihadists and those who would profit from long, drawn-out conflicts. Washington in full justification mode sunk farther and farther into the grip of lobbyists mulla, an easy mark that would do it their way, say what their corporate masters wanted them to say, and as the dirty bankers gave out dirty loans to pad their thrones of deceit, and reaping the harvest off the backs of the score that led to a financial crisis that circled the globe, and everything went more to shite as all the things they used to make themselves are done now in foreign lands, and technology has brought lies right into the palm of your hand and who to blame? Yup, those ‘Mexicans’ are mighty useful. Build a wall, that solves it all.

Talking points, symbols, icons, that’s all.