Airplane Mode

It probably would't surprise anyone to learn that upon hearing about the proposed personal gift of a $400 million dollar jet to Donald Trump from Qatar, I had some concerns. Do I know what "emoluments" means? Reader, I do not. But the news had "Trump" in the headline, so as a proud sufferer of Trump Derangement Syndrome, of course I FREAKED OUT TO 11 with all kinds of unreasonable responses like "there's no way Biden would have been able to do the exact same thing" and "isn't this exactly the sort of thing in keeping with the now-decades-old strategy of Middle Eastern petro-states converting their mineral wealth into soft power through sports-washing and outright bribery" or "this is specifically forbidden by Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution of the United States." It's embarrassing, but yeah, that's the kind of out-there, knee-jerk, unreasonable stuff this ole Trump so-and-so draws out of me.

But hey, maybe it isn't as obviously awful as it seems on the surface. He can't be all bad, right, I mean, he's already planning a super-fun parade for next month, coincidentally right around his birthday. Yes, I can see the demerits in the idea driving dozens of tanks along public streets not designed to support them or spending tens of millions of dollars to divert resources to support the disruption of basically all civic and municipal functions in the city that day. And yes, it can be argued that parades are objectively the worst form of "entertainment" that belong in the same archaic pre-industrial category as public executions and bear baiting, long since superseded by such riveting fare as a guy doing a ventriloquist act on the radio and 50-second moving pictures of a train passing a static camera. But still, you know, if you squint a bit and tilt your head sideways and say "THE TROOPS" loud enough, it can almost seem like a passable idea for a government that has been loudly squawking about "waste and fraud" for like four months, sure.

And as much as I'd like to learn to be more conciliatory, to be less burdened by the daily stress of the intentional chaos of an executive branch held hostage by pure brigandage, more open to the idea that maybe my fellow citizens who didn't think it was an act of self-immolation to vote so readily for the Box of Matches and A Drum of Gasoline candidate were only acting out of either delusion or idealogical spite, I turn around and learn that maybe Ted Cruz has some doubts about this Qatar plane thing too. Brakes squeal! Record scratch! Wilhelm scream!

Hold the underwear! Look, there's always going to be a ton of competition for the title of America's Worst Senator. That body is famously a repository for the self-identified presidential papabile to go sequester themselves off from any form of human outside of the "staffer" and "fundraiser" and "mistress" subspecies, where any useful or original thought they might have brought in with them is drowned out and inaccessible to them after six-months in that echo chamber of farts and shouted ambition enunciated in that smarm-laced dialect of prep-school-ese for the benefit of not one single person, including themselves. Senators, famously, don't get to be president directly. Only two have done it in the last 100 years, even though I think (and I've checked my notes on this, so I know it's correct, please don't follow up) 100% of them actively run.

But Ted Cruz is a special case, even among this bucket of fermenting eels. When your personality is so flatly and universally toxic, people are willing to cite a feral raccoon like Lindsey Graham as a reliable observer of his character, it's time to give pause and rethink, well, literally anything that might accidentally align. It's not an exaggeration to say Ted Cruz's only real function is as a bellwether of what not to do. Based on that evidence alone, I'm going to have to be a "wait and see" on the Trump Qatar jet very public bribery thing. If anyone would like to sway me to a final conclusion on the subject, I am open to offers, up to and including aircraft.