THE SECOND INAUGURAL
He was all packed, ready to attend his second inauguration on March 4, as predicted by those Nostradamuses at QAnon.
They had jacked up the room rates at the former president’s six- star hotel down the street from the White House in honor of their founding father’s return to power.
The faithful expected to flood the capital for the swearing in of a second term so richly deserved could be the largest inaugural crowd in history—by the ex-president’s count. The anti-maskers would serve the dual purpose of making Biden look bad by triggering a new wave of infection.
Quel le desappointement!
Not since I attended a Jehovah Witness convocation at Yankee Stadium in 1949, along with 90,000 other eye-witnesses, drawn by the widely advertised preachment that Armageddon, the end of the world as we knew it, was coming later that week ,had I felt so let down by an authoritative prediction.
Nada, zilch, zip. Nothing! It was just another day in the life of “the previous guy,” as the honorable other senator from Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, referred to the 45th president on MSNBC (“The ReidOut,” March 12).
The previous guy was still in his old Florida home, playing golf, making lists of people he should have fired before leave office, meeting with right wing extremist groups, planning a second phase of the January 6th invasion of the Capitol, whatever else presidents emeritus do after their labors on behalf of their country end.
Normally, the previous guy would be spending the time before his hearty breakfast of an Egg McMuffin or two tending his Twitter account, sharing his thoughts on the major GOP issues like Dr. Seuss books and Mr. Potatohead, denouncing the legislators, the traitors who voted for his impeachment.
Twitter, the modern equivalent of conducting a front porch- campaign, an institution begun by that great Republican William McKinley in the election of 1898, had been the way he told his fans where his head was at.
But that was before the Godzilla of social media, Twitter, decided to shut off King Kong’s direct line to his 88,936,841 followers, 12 hours after some tweets about the attack on the U.S. Capitol, an action joined by Big Tech fellow travelers Facebook, Instagram, You Tube, Snapchat and Twitch.
What a slap in the face to one of the five living ex-presidents! Just because he now seemed to be spreading misinformation, which some said tended to incite the political activists on the Capitol steps.
This was a big customer they were insulting.
Since opening his Twitter account on March 18, 2009, he had sent out 59,953 tweets and retweets (according to TweetBinder blog). The numbers also include what Twitterologists call the ex-president’s short thoughts, “brain farts” or accidental communication.
And it was not as if there was anything new about his spreading misinformation. This is a man who was incapable of not lying any time his mouth was open. The same thing happens when his fingers touch a keyboard.
By suspending his account, it was as if Godzilla had stepped on King Kong’s air hose. Big Tech, he could argue, was muzzling a president ‘s first amendment’s rights to incite mobs and second amendment rights to bring guns and other weapons of self- defense while redressing grievances at the Capitol.
Twitter and their co-conspirators knifed him not only in the back, but in the front. You could hear him virtually opening the window in his new Trapezoid Office above the Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, like a Howard Beale in “Network,” shouting he was “mad as hell and he was not gonna take this anymore. Things have got to change.”
He would get even in 2024. For the good of the nation, the party, and his 88,936, 841 followers in his next administration he would nationalize social media, so we would have a democracy free and open, a democracy like his friend and mentor V. Putin practices in the Russian Federation.
There are those who say we have nothing to fear but fear itself from those clandestine meetings with right wing extremist groups on the golf course. So what if he promises the freedom fighters air cover for the next protest, as JFK promised the Cuban insurrectionists at the Bay of Pigs. He’s only meeting with some of those fine people in our extremist ranks to exploit them and fatten his own purse.
Marvin Kitman
March 16, 2021
