Tag: Trump

The Night Before Christmas 2024

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments

The Dispatches have been on hiatus from late summer into winter as I downsized to senior living and hurtled down a rabbit-hole into the topsy-turvy world of Unreal Estate. More on that before long. But I was dragged out of my hibernation by a need to sublimate the horror of November and dread for 2025 . The result is another in my rewrites of The Night Before Christmas.

’Tis the night before Christmas
When all through D.C.
The Deep State is worrying
How to save democracy.

While down in Mar-a-Lago
Trump’s transition team
Plots Revenge and Retribution
On all who’ve been mean.

Continue reading “The Night Before Christmas 2024” →

Silence is Golden

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments

A blessed silence falls upon the land. All is calm, all is quiet. Actual birdsong can be heard again, and the murmurings of our own thoughts. Twitter has silenced our Dear Leader. Now he is the Former Dear Leader, banished to St. Helena (oh I mean Mar-a-Largo). His tweets were mercifully swallowed by the great maw of the past and a healing silence reigns.

Continue reading “Silence is Golden” →

Twas A White House Christmas

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 6 Comments

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the White House
Not an aide was stirring, not even Jared.
Don Jr. and Eric hung their stockings with care
In hopes that they’d soon find a pardon in there.

Ivanka tossed sleepless and scared in her bed
While visions of prison flashed through her head.
Melania in her kerchief and Trump in his Crown Continue reading “Twas A White House Christmas” →

The Great Again Colossus

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 5 Comments

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The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus is a poem written in 1883 to help raise money for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. In 1903 it was mounted on the pedestal on a bronze plaque. Though beloved by Americans for over a century, the poem no longer reflects the America in which we live today.

I propose this new version as more in the spirit of the times:

The Great Again Colossus by Emma Mortifer

Not like the woman of New York harbor fame,
Who welcomed desperate migrants to our land;
Here at our brutal border wall shall stand
A bloated, boastful bigot, one whose flame
Is destroyer of truth and justice, and his name
Con-Man in Chief. From his puny hand
Tweet hate and lies; his heartless eyes command
This Land of Immigrants that twin oceans frame.
But “Keep, ancient lands, your worthless horde,” cries he
With pouting lips. “I banish your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
Your wretched refuse shall not infest our shore.
Send them, the suffering children, unto me,
And they shall rot in cages outside our golden door!”

That Was The Year That Was

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments

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Long ago and far away in the England of the 1960’s television political satire was born. I was fourteen years old, precociously interested in current events, and allowed to stay up late to watch That Was The Week That Was. TW3 as it was known first aired on Saturday November 24th 1962. The star was a young David Frost and I was soon helplessly in love, my first big crush. The show was revolutionary. The hitherto staid and cautious BBC Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was” →

We’ll See What Happens

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments

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“We’ll see what happens” is one of President Trump’s favorite phrases. His trademark talk and tweets contain a limited vocabulary of words and phrases, which he slots together in seemingly random combinations. How many times have we heard “believe me,” “that I can tell you,” “amazing,” “sad,” and of course “no collusion”?

But “we’ll see what happens” is in a class by itself when it comes to strange Continue reading “We’ll See What Happens” →

Fall on your Knees

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment

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When you google the words “Christian iconography kneeling” the first image that comes up is Fra Angelico’s Annunciation painted on a wall of the Friary of San Marcos in Florence. The Angel Gabriel appears before Mary in a loggia. He kneels, bent forward on one knee as a sign of respect and reverence towards the woman chosen by God to bear his Son. I googled these terms out of confusion that the current national debate concerns the act of kneeling viewed as a sign of disrespect. For most of recorded history the exact opposite has been the case. Continue reading “Fall on your Knees” →

We’ll Always Have Pittsburgh

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments

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Americans used to love Paris. There’s even a song about it, something about springtime and fall and drizzles and sizzles. George Gershwin wrote a whole musical on the theme. He thought Paris ‘S wonderful! American literary types used to hang out in Paris and get inspired to write Great American Novels. Paris was on every American’s bucket list. It was the epitome of Romance. But no more. President Trump broke up with Paris bigly. Continue reading “We’ll Always Have Pittsburgh” →

The Impeachment of Hillary Clinton

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 3 Comments

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Perhaps the most shocking thing, out of all the shocks that have battered us since the inauguration of President Trump, is the complete lack of responsible reaction from Congressional Republicans. Beyond a few bleats of “troubling” and “concerning” there is only evasion, excuses, or silence from those charged by the Constitution with checking and balancing the Executive Branch. Many commentators have drawn comparisons to Watergate when Republican leaders acted as patriotic statesmen, putting country before party. Today’s Republicans make us wonder, how would they have reacted if Hillary Clinton had been elected and behaved in precisely the same way as President Trump?

To find the answer I enter the British Police Box in my basement armed with a “subtle Continue reading “The Impeachment of Hillary Clinton” →