My, what a difference a solstice makes: A mere 6 months ago, at summer’s zenith, L’Orange had about as much chance of winning back the presidency as did Roo, my orange Abyssinian (both being the same age and of an equally shared intelligence). Yet here we are arrived, in Groundhog Day fashion, playing presidential musical chairs to the opening salvos of autumn’s official descent (on Dec. 21) into winter’s malaise and decline.
Trump, in yet another example of his unique ability to always fail upwards, is but the second president in U.S. history to win nonconsecutive terms. Edgily, I keep harkening back to that off-the-cuff assurance he gave to a group of his evangelical, senior supporters back in July: “Don’t worry, in four years you won’t have to vote again.”
One can’t help but involuntarily sense a sort of vaguely impending premonition of catastrophe — nostalgic of those late-night revelers aboard the Titanic whom, come midnight’s cheer, couldn’t quite yet discern any underfoot lilt (albeit, such professional card sharks whom loitered about the men’s First Class smoking lounge wanly noted that their highballs’ pour levels, from atop the poker tables, suddenly appeared to be canting just ever so slightly off kilter). Into our frankincense-&-myrrh scented air already wafts a miasma of perturbation.
Just recently, my husband and I returned from a Thanksgiving holiday excursion to Europe during which we found ourselves serendipitously arriving in St. Peter’s Square just at the very moment in which a work crew placed a golden star atop its giant papal Christmas tree, still encased in its scaffolding, directly adjacent to the largest of Cleopatra’s 13 Roman needles (a baker’s dozen of colossal, 300-plus ton granite obelisks pilfered from Egypt during the heretical reign of Caligula).
Exactly why such a Christian totem was being erected side-by-side a pagan monolith we’ll leave to future archeological theologians.
Meanwhile, my husband — absorbed in the surrounding square’s spectacular sparkle — chitter-chattered to our driver, “What do the Italians generally think of us electing Trump into office again?” A baleful, baffled look crinkled Antonio’s face as, slowly and in a dissolute undertone, he grimly ran a hand through his hair: “America, whatever happened to you?”
Our finest gifts we bring/To lay
before the king
Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum
Welcome to D-Day, kidz, circa 2025. For, come high noon of Jan. 20 — upon the very nanosecond L’Orange lifts his baby orangutan hand off of Lincoln’s bible — our entire global population, holding its breath in shivering unanimity, will all be pondering the exact same question: Is this the last day of Liz Cheney’s life? Has her firing squad already been assembled?
Or, might public stoning perhaps garner better ratings? Will Mein Fuehrer Oracle broadcast her vengeful execution orders across all the networks, or just FOX? Which red-state stadium will it be held in? Will children be allowed to bring their own rocks?
Sounds funny, now, doesn’t it? Well, my fellow frightened Americans, try this next one out for laughs: As of this very week, the data is all in and its consensus now public record: 2024 marks the very first calendar year, ever, in which the average global mean temperature consistently lodged 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial times — exactly what the 2015 Paris Accord was hoping to prevent is precisely what happened.
Now, regrettably, the cow’s not only out of the barn, but its hide’s engulfed in flames.
As you’ll recall (or not), sweet readers, the 2015 Paris Agreement concluded that human-caused warming absolutely must, for the sake of all life on this planet, never be allowed to exceed beyond 1.5 degrees. Otherwise, up even fractionally further, the worst impacts of climate change would trigger an irreversible feedback loop. Oops! Come 2030 (only five years away) we’ll have already lurched across the 2 degrees Celsius threshold.
This isn’t conjecture. It’s not science fiction. This is an all too real tragicomedy of missed opportunities and warnings gone repeatedly ignored.
So, here’s where we find ourselves, and even were all fossil fuel manufacturing halted tomorrow (Ha!), alligators would still be able to bask in the tropically-balm waters of the Arctic Circle come century’s end.
Of course, back in 2015, everyone gathered there in Paris foresaw 1.5 being ultimately being breached some one day; it’s just that nobody imagined it being within our own day. This day. Today.
One knows the indelible writing’s on the wall when the mathematical simulations of every computer model’s worst-case-scenario prove even more quaintly optimistic than such luckless White Star Line wireless operators aboard Titanic.
And, right on cue, sweet Jesus, in stumbles Trump . . . again, a man who only understands television metaphors. Oh, pitiable Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, how dost thy shine such radiance upon one never born to a manger, but to reality TV?
It seems now impossible to recall that there once was a time when such schemes as raising the living dead was something only wackadoodle Hollywood served up. Well, welcome America, one and all, to our brand new, week-one opening revival episode of Dystopian Don — resuscitated from cancelation by the incessant drumbeat of overwhelming fan demand.
I have no gift to bring/That’s fit to give
our king
Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum
As you’ll recall, back in the late teens, Donny T’s original series ran for four farcically-frenetic years, only to be controversially and unceremoniously canned in 2020, a victim of poor ratings fatally combined with both public exhaustion plus an unforeseen, out-of-left-field pandemic. Then, against all shameless odds, it was unexpectedly green-lighted again just this past fall, slated now for rerelease in early 2025.
Assumedly, the four-year hiatus since Season 4’s cliffhanger-ending to Dystopian Don, titled “Storm the Capitol!” has given time enough for its new production development team to accrue reams aplenty of juicy raw material to lead off 2025’s Season 5 opener, titled, “Vengeance Is Mine!” Again, y’all tune in to its inaugural, midday episode, first airing on Monday, Jan. 20. All the wagging tongues promises it to be a ratings’ bonanza: Dystopian Don, the show where everyone’s a winner!
That said, any subsequent consequences of, say, a possible viewership-plunge occurring during follow-up episodes will, inevitably, only reiterate just what scant, minimal thought the producers paid toward introducing any hint of a reflective learning curve for their politically-incorrect star — except to remind us of why Dystopian Don got so deservedly axed in the first place.
But, hey, hey, all you last-minute shoppers, his bible sure makes a gonzo Christmas gift! Ho-Ho-Ho!
Nor is it much of a stretch to concede just how quickly said sequel’s trainwreck lead might be written out altogether, should the flame-throwing arc of his self-destructive narcissism combust just a bit too far beyond his base’s tolerance for having their lives reduced from merely shitty to totally squalid.
Think Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men. The show straggled on for a while without him. Sure. Worse even than ever before, it became. Certainly. But what the comedy’s producers failed to remotely grasp was that their viewing audience couldn’t give a gnat’s ass about Sheen’s private demons’ production interruptions.
Deplorable behavior? So what? Backstage difficulties rate irrelevant: “Come on, dudes, we just like watching him entertain us.”
And, good citizens, therein lies the crux of why we hired back L’Orange to lead us yet again through eternal Hell: He’s entertaining.
Come, they told me/A newborn king to see Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.
—Howard Lewis Russell
Next time we meet up, bois, it’ll be a spanking new year littered of brand new resolutions freshly broken. Let Prophet Howard here salve your shattered shards of regret, at
AskHoward@dallasvoice.com. See y’all on the flipside!