America’s Rubicon crossing – and all that goes with it
On Jan. 10 of 49 B.C., then-Roman general Julius Caesar crossed an insignificant stream gurgling through the northern part of present-day Italy. It separated Roman territory from the province of Gaul (France).
Caesar knew perfectly well that he was taking an irrevocable step, committing himself to a specific course. Yet Caesar was not traveling alone, for he flaunted armies — in direct defiance of an ultimatum from Rome’s Senate that should he lead his troops across the Rubicon, it would be a point of no return.
It would mean civil war.
“Yeah, so what?” thought Julius, undeterred. After all, if victorious, it would also mean the end of the Roman Republic, and he alone, Julius Caesar, would then have supreme command to reorder the Roman state on his own terms — the ultimate repercussions of which we’re all quite familiar with.
Leap ahead a couple millennia: On Jan. 20 of 2025 A.D., our former and future president — a twice-impeached convicted felon and adjudicated rapist — will not even experience his toes getting wet as the Constitution’s drownings begin. Trump declares emphatically there’s “no price tag” for his mass deportation plan. That means, of course — after being fed through our Oracle L’Orange’s alternative-reality translation shredder — that the forceable removal of every non-white American to just somewhere, anywhere, far outside the borders of our freedom’s land purple mountains’ majesty, well, it comes cheap at any price.
The internment camps — his vermin’s temporary housing, replete with razor wire for those pet-eating thieves — is already under construction.
Maya Angelou was right: First, it’s the illegal aliens, then once they’ve all disappeared, next to board the buses of vanishment will be our African-American citizenry, followed by the Jews, the gays and independent journalists.
All funding will dry up for the EPA. Obamacare will go mothballed, to be replaced by nothing.
Then, of course, there’s our inevitable NATO withdrawal.
Ordinarily, I am not a man who dabbles in whacko conspiracy theories, but I’ll sure be happy to make an exception just this once and start one. It goes like this:
There was once a man who grew up a hillbilly in Appalachia, enduring all the usual parenting cliches associated with hardscrabble, Tobacco Road lives. The only thing missing from his tome were the inbred banjo players of Deliverance.
Well, flashforward a couple decades, and Gomer, having perfected the art of brown-nosing all asses stupider than his, seizes a fast path to world domination by burying his entire cranial cavity up the orange anus of a narcissistic orangutan.
Gomer is no backwoods baboon. He’s our worst nightmare: Trump with a brain. White trash with money.
He knows the United States Constitution. He knows who holds the levers of power. And, in modern-day equivalencies of the smoky backrooms of yesteryear, he and his minions will hatch a masterstroke move of such moxie that only in the mind of someone who is an outlier to his class could it have fomented.
And all it required to put in motion was but to simply humble himself and his soul prostrate to an orange blob residing in a looted palace resting atop a drained swamp built of fortunes from Fruity Pebbles and Honey Bunches of Oats.
Never underestimate America’s passion for devouring garbage.
So, with Gomer’s coattails now firmly stitched into either the rise or further freefall of a toxic star’s fate, he rolls with the odds of assuming enough Americans can be snookered twice by an egoist dunce whom Gomer formerly called “political street heroin.” After all, to quote LBJ, the former vice president of JFK, “One in four presidents dies in office; it was my only shot.”
And, my what a fortuitous shot Gomer has, too. First, L’Orange shall reenter office Jan. 20 as the oldest living president in American history ever elected to lead us.
(Personally, I always presumed they’d choose a “natural” heart attack from too many Big Macs.)
And third, if all else fails, Gomer will simply evoke the 25th Amendment about six months in, and grinningly sigh, “OK, Bozo, it’s your choice: You may vacate the Oval Office either by straightjacket or limousine. Which would you prefer? Make your decision quickly, or we’ll be quite happy to make it for you.”
Oracle L’Orange is every bit as polarizing to the rest of the globe as he is here at home. He’s total anathema toward this planet’s even embryonic attempt to rein in catastrophic levels of overheating. As during his previous climate-cauterizing reign, our Oracle shall pull us out of the Paris Climate Accord. In an age when renewable energy is now cheaper than ever, we’ll be drilling, baby, drilling.
L’Orange’s promise isn’t hollow, either, to eviscerate the federal work force, which he thinks is just a “deep state” government cabal of nobodies that’s out to get him. And now he boasts a congressional majority, bicameral in both houses of equally apathetic acolytes.
Science is done with. Funding for the arts, kaput. Our future LGBTQ community’s hard-won battles will go ignored, if not outright erased. All the way around, America has made a perilous choice via electing a grave threat to our nation and its laws.
And for the cherry on top this Dante’s Inferno cake-of-cruelties? An Aldous Huxley world comes of age addicted to a shiny, mesmerizing object inseparable from the palm of their hands. Idiot influencers are everywhere, wreaking their havoc.
Myself, I loathe writing about politics. which unfortunately is rendered impossible during these sporadic Trump administrations where mayhem reigns, and the world could be a better place.
Call it what you will, blame what you want — misinformation, identity politics, war in Gaza, or simply a Black woman leading our country being a bridge just a bit too far for most Americans to cross over.
Historically and hysterically, we, for the second fooled time as a divided nation have voted into office a man (by popular majority, too, remarkably) who is, in equal parts, both a political rube and an amoral con. Thus, to this pretty pass of regret, America, we get to now cross our whitewater Rubicon.
I hope we’ve got a raft. —Howard Lewis Russell
Dancer, Prancer, Donner and Vixen, y’all know what holiday’s looming just around the corner: Toss some tinsel at the tree, on me; meanwhile, all you bad bois & gurlz, I’ll be awaiting your wish list here at AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.