Year of the Cock

One word for Donald Trump? Bold. Not ever as in "brave," of course, but more in the senses of "untethered by conventional human moral or social norms" or, more aptly, "a thickening overlay meant to emphasize printed or written words," like this. Wide, darker than is natural, hard to miss... argue that it doesn't fit, go ahead.

How else would you describe how a guy with an easily recoverable public record like this:



would still attempt a unilateral missile strike on Syria in the midst of historically abysmal poll numbers and a lingering, accelerating scandal about Russian involvement in his election? For a normal person, it would seem too brazenly obvious and hamfisted a thing to do. But the media drinks deeply of pictures of streaking missiles and those concussive, sparky real-life explosions you never really get in movies, where nobody has the balls anymore to actual kill people on camera since Howard Hughes died.

And then, if that weren't enough, not just during the same week, but at the exact same moment the decision was made to attack Syria, he was actively attempting to murder the president of China. Now, state assassinations using poison are not new, but you have to give Trump credit for the methodical, diabolical way he almost pulled it off. First he had to get elected president, then establish a pattern of fucking off to Florida every goddamn chance he could get, he had to direct his staff to weaponize the kitchen at his gaudy-ass poor-person's-idea-of-a-rich-person's-lifestyle retreat to crank out suitably toxic murder food and then wrangle the president of China all the way down to that shitty place in that terrible state to enjoy the worst imaginable company. Contemplate, if you can, the salesmanship involved.

Why would the president of the United States intend to poison Xi Jinping, president of China? Maybe it was pre-emptive, in order to assume an unassailable negotiating opinion with regard to North Korea or maybe he just wanted to show the world what happens when someone beats him at golf, or (and this is my vote for most obviously likely) it was in revenge for the exact same tactic Chinese gangster Lao Che used on American mercenary grave-desecrator Indiana Jones back in the 1930s. Who can say with certainty?

Nobody, that's who. And Xi Jinping is, as of press time, not in fact dead, so the plan seems to have gone amiss somewhere. But still, the chutzpah of the effort at all... His name was even stamped on that white chocolate lozenge atop that payload-activated Mar-a-Lago chocolate cake. Bold, sir. Bold.