Tawdry Mr Trump

[User.168]

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[Scepticalscribe]

Whilst it was surreal, it was also the perfect ending for a self-grandiose wanna-be populist leader for life, fake crowd cheering and all.

It couldn't be scripted, if fiction.

But, it was tawdry and tacky fact, unfortunately.

 

[SuperMatt]

Trump's decision to order a 21-gun salute for himself as he departed office will seem ever more tacky as time goes on.

They missed him all 21 times too... oh well.

 

[lizkat]

They missed him all 21 times too... oh well.

I wonder if any of the guys assigned to the detail made any sotto voce jokes about it. Anyway they can dine out on it for decades.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I wonder if any of the guys assigned to the detail made any sotto voce jokes about it. Anyway they can dine out on it for decades.

Others will be dining out on such tales, too.

We have already heard - a teaser, a taster, just a soupcon - from Dr Fauci, - but I expect the trickle of strange tales and surreal stories of just what it was like, the menace (James Comey's description, in a recent interview with the Guardian), and mendacity, and how particular people within that peculiar court (it barely merits the word administration, let alone government), behaved (or misbehaved), used (or abused) power, to become a torrent before too long.

 

[SuperMatt]

I wonder if any of the guys assigned to the detail made any sotto voce jokes about it. Anyway they can dine out on it for decades.

The presidential salute battery fires blanks. Every year they show their musical side in the annual 1812 overture concert. This link should start at the 1812 overture and you can see their involvement:

 

[Huntn]

It will be interesting to see what Florida makes of Trump going forward, that's for sure. And of its senior Senator Marco Rubio, who must stand for re-election in 2022. Supposedly Ivanka Trump thinks to run against him, and the Kushners aside from having bought land on Indian Creek have also taken a one-year lease on a condo not far from there in Arte. Maybe Marco should quit quoting the Bible online all the while, and start getting out there amongst his bricks-and-mortar supporters to make sure they're still on board his re-election train. Biden did hit the ground running in DC but Trump&Co will surely start their rebuild effort in Florida.

Speaking of Ivanka: she contributed a little real drama for the occasion of her dad's departure by being photographed at least trying to weep. But there were some observations that she was careful to face her father so that he would be able to see her loyalty (or at least her $3k designer coat) on display. Hah, Trump himself is probably trying to figure out who the disloyal photog was who managed to swing camera away from an outgoing President to take a picture of anyone else in those moments, whether weeping or not.

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That whole scene was surreal, no? Trump's decision to order a 21-gun salute for himself as he departed office will seem ever more tacky as time goes on. Oh well, it did suit the image of him as a wannabe tin pot dictator. The recorded crowd noise is his addition to a shopworn international playbook.

Ivanka never looked so appealing until now, trying to spot a tear. Did she get a nose job?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Ivanka never looked so appealing until now, trying to spot a tear. Did she get a nose job?

You know, even if you are an accomplished actor (or actress), it is never easy to cry tears to order, (even with the aid of onions), especially in the absence of motivating emotion.

 

[lizkat]

You know, even if you are an accomplished actor (or actress), it is never easy to cry tears to order, (even with the aid of onions), especially in the absence of motivating emotion.

I had a friend who said when he needed to cry as a character and wasn't feeling the character's motivation for that behavior, he resorted to a revisitation of how he had felt when his parents informed him they had given his dog away to friends of theirs who had a place in the country further upstate, with "more room to run and bark".

He was pretty sure they were lying because he'd overheard them talking about talking the dog to a shelter in the next county where his dad had relatives... and all he could think of for days on end, weeping in his room, on the walk to the school bus, out doing his chores, was that he would never again feel the warmth of that dog next to his legs on the bed or leaping into his arms when he came home from school and got off the bus.

"Yeah that would do it for me" was all I could manage. Just hearing that story made me cry!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I had a friend who said when he needed to cry as a character and wasn't feeling the character's motivation for that behavior, he resorted to a revisitation of how he had felt when his parents informed him they had given his dog away to friends of theirs who had a place in the country further upstate, with "more room to run and bark".

He was pretty sure they were lying because he'd overheard them talking about talking the dog to a shelter in the next county where his dad had relatives... and all he could think of for days on end, weeping in his room, on the walk to the school bus, out doing his chores, was that he would never again feel the warmth of that dog next to his legs on the bed or leaping into his arms when he came home from school and got off the bus.

"Yeah that would do it for me" was all I could manage. Just hearing that story made me cry!

Good grief.

That would most certainly do it, a haunting memory with the power to hurt, decades later.

Was his relationship with his parents irrevocably and irretrievably damaged as result of that?

 

[lizkat]

Good grief.

That would most certainly do it, a haunting memory with the power to hurt, decades later.

Was his relationship with his parents irrevocably and irretrievably damaged as result of that?

I don't know: we were friends a long time and I did get to know his parents a little, but of course that event did not come up in our chit-chat at occasional get-togethers.

Some events that seem catastrophic in childhood can take a different cast later on, we still remember what happened but of course we see it from perspective of an adult. I'm not sure taking a dog or cat away from a kid falls in that category though. Especially if there is not a discussion beforehand or empathy later in how the kid feels about the loss.

My own parents did get rid of one dog we had when one of my brothers was around 6 or 7. I think that dog, a standard collie and an anxious creature if one ever existed, did end up on a farm a few counties east of where we lived at the time, but I can't swear that it didn't land in a shelter. That dog wore a path running around the garage -- from the gate by the kitchen door around back through the yard and up into the trash alley gate by the other side of the driveway, and barking like a broken record all the while whenever it noticed anything different about the venue, i.e. a visitor pulling up in a car to the place next door...

The bro never forgot the no-discussion ahead of time betrayal though, and still mentions it 50-odd years later when idle talk at casual gatherings turns to parental behavior we found inexplicable at the time.