Elected president has nuclear codes. Pretender president has neurotic hopes

By Jolly Somasundram

“My name is Oxymandias, King of Kings.

Look on my works ye mighty, and despair.

Nothing beside remains round the decay

Of that colossal rock, boundless and bare.

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Shelley: Oxymandias

It is unbecoming for a loser to be reviled, abused and degraded: the civilised approach would be to extend sympathy, solace and support. But the treatment for this sore loser could be different, particularly when he embarked on a malign effort to doctor the score card. In his Sisyphean effort to downplay the election result, he–a wrecking ball — smashed, broke, shattered, shredded, trampled and crossed every redline, pushed every envelope to the limit, set at nought every unwritten law and moral code, in an unreality show. With a last desperate effort, he made a heap of all his assets and risked them on a one turn of pitch and toss.

He crossed the Rubicon. He declared war on the Constitution-supported by a band of internal terrorists- a Constitution which he had taken an oath to defend. It was a worse attack than by Osama bin Laden’s of 9/ 11 ill-fame. His specific target was the citadel of government- the Capitol.

It was the start of a comic opera insurrection played out on TV, unleashing a pyromaniac motley group -financed by deep pockets- to burn the Capitol, the sacred symbol of American democracy. He imitated Hitler, who lit the Reichstag fire- the German legislature- reducing it to cinders. In a curious reversal, he could also have been Louis XVI, attacking the Bastille. Nietzsche in his work “Socrates”, treated that savant as a buffoon: a similar appellation may not be out of place. The consequence? He underwent a second impeachment, the only president to suffer this indignity, and also became a one term president, joining four forlorn others. Haughty-Trumpty had a great fall! The most powerful man in the world had been reduced to a manager of a golf club, sic transit gloria mundi (thus passeth worldly glory)

It is the normal practice for the armed services to honour their departing Commander-in-Chief with a grand farewell parade, with bells and whistles. On this occasion they demurred, compelling him to sneak out of the White House to Andrews air base, where a selfie farewell tea was arranged by him to himself. He then took Air Force One for the last time, going into internal exile. There wasn’t a tear in anyone’s eyes. How could there be? In words tailor- written in Macbeth,

‘’There was not a devil more cursed than he in all hell. Fickle,

Luxury loving, avaricious, false, deceitful, impulsive, malicious,

Smacking of every sin that has a name. There was no bottom

To his voluptuousness.”

Who would offer regard to such a monster? Karma grinds slowly but surely: it need not apply only to a future birth: it could also be in real time.

The end game has been called, the check mate administered and he, now, had to face the final curtain. Nothing became him so gross as his refusal to leave the president’s chair, claiming “my election has been rigged”. Rigging was a curious accusation from this six-time bankrupt, trained to disrupt, who engaged in a jilmaat, cajoling and wheedling Georgia’s election officials to “give me a break, find 11,900 votes”, to skew the presidential results. These officials, proudly withstood this stress test. He had painted himself to a corner with no key to the exit door. On 7th January, following his failed insurrection, he ate crow: he accepted the loss. Losing the election was careless, adopting a McCrow change of diet was unappetising. The selected eatery was the Canossa McDonald, where its menu was a double McCrow with cheese, classy French fries washed down with Maga whine. His demand had resonance with the three witches in Macbeth, his brain fart now being, ‘a loss is a win, a win a loss, a lie is a truth, a truth a lie, what is, is what is not, lack of evidence is the presence of evidence, if one can’t win by fair means win by foul’. He was Maya, living in a house of mirrors!

It was a bliss that damp, darkened wintry morn to be alive but to see the back of this Lord of the Universe, was heaven. At the first stroke of 12 on mid-day of 20th January 2021, the oozing of power from the 45th president began, directly transfused to the 46th. The transfusion ended exactly at the 12th stroke, when the Chief Justice administered the oath of office to the new president. It was a frictionless and seamless transition, conducted in the midst of a massive security clampdown, to counter any possible disruption from the sore departing president who was in a monumental sulk. The 45th, would become a deflated balloon, a mass of blubber. The transition was epochal as it was a bonfire of vanities. Four years ago, on this same day the 45th promised to repurpose America. He left four years later having caused an American Carnage, cratering the American mind, politics, institutions, creating multiple divisions and leaving behind mayhem and chaos.

When his ship was listing, the first rat was spied leaving. When the ship wrecked, a horde followed, not to the enticement of a Pied Piper harmonies but to safeguard their backs. He may have crooned the Jim Reeves hit in disbelief, “Am I that easy to forget”. If he had looked down, on his last Air Force One flight, he may have glimpsed few corpses of the 400,00 victims of the corona virus. “What is coronavirus?” he asked. He downplayed it, “it is a fake,” he said, “an alternative fact, a Chinese conspiracy. Take detergent, it will go away.” Vive, La indifference!

He may now remember Macbeth’s moan,

” And that which should accompany old age like honour,

Love, obedience, troops of friends, spousal cleave,

I must not look to have, but in their stead, curses,

To live sans Deutsche Bank, sans Twitter, sans Google

Sans everything.”

He came to power orating “I will make America great again.” At the end of four years he metaphorically made America the smallest of small states. The last days of Pompeo illustrates America’s diminished standing. Pompeo, the powerful Secretary of State, wished to make a swansong visit. He chose Luxembourg. His welcome was cryogenic. No one was present at the airport except the American ambassador and a lowly protocol aide. A dinner arranged by the Ambassador was cancelled: it seemed every invitee had prior engagements. Pompeo crept back to the US.

He was an original and an enigma. Shakespeare, thou should’est be living at this hour, literature is in sore need of thee. Like Hamlet, Svengali, he would cull an eponym. The future will be full of faction works, biographies, Ph D theses, psychology studies, musicals, operas. As Cassius put it,

“How many ages hence,

Shall this, our lofty scene, be acted over,

In States unborn and accents still unknown.”