Donald Trump will take the oath of office today to become the 47th President of the United States of America, conclusively proving Mencken right. According to Fox News, he will take “more than 200 executive actions” today. Some are intended to fulfill campaign promises, such as ending undocumented immigrants from entering the country, even if they’re more rhetorical than practical. Some are the sort one would expect of a petty, little person, such as revoking the security clearances of 51 people who said Hunter Biden’s laptop had the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
And then there’s pure Trump, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America (despite Elon Musk’s request that it be changed to the Gulf of X).
Remember those masses of hard-working, ordinary Americans demanding that the Gulf of Mexico’s name be changed, so they can enjoy a better life? Surely the cost of all the new maps needed to reflect the change is worth it, because whose chest won’t swell with pride as they tell their kids, “yup, Junior, it’s the Gulf of ‘Merica now, just like God and Trump said it should be.”
As past and future prisoner Steve Bannon, argues, the scheme is to “flood the zone,” to do so many wild and crazy things that no one will have the time and attention to process it. The media won’t be able to report it. The critics won’t be able to explain why it’s dangerously batshit crazy. The public won’t have any deeper knowledge than the cool name by which Trump calls it, or the mean name if it’s about one of his enemies until they skin their knees becoming his friend again.
This isn’t to say that everything Trump plans to do is wrong or bad, even if the way in which he plans to do things is generally unlawful or unconstitutional. And the Democrats having grossly oversold, or mis-sold to be more accurate, the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision to cause people to believe that Trump can do whatever he pleases with immunity, there will be neither surprise nor serious resistance when Trump regularly ignores the law and processes that constrain lesser presidents.
There is an old saying that the devil is in the details. It is a good saying. And it applies just as well when there is a devil in the White House, or as Trump plans to rename it, the House of $Trump. May God have mercy on our souls.