Not a Single Brick

We start the new year as we ended the old one:

With a deranged old man holding the country hostage over a xenophobic fever dream that will never come true.

I’m talking, of course, about the continued government shutdown over the president’s insistence that he can bully Congress into funding his idiotic (and totally imaginary) wall on the Mexican border.

This comes despite the fact that Trump abandoned his early promises that Mexico would pay for the wall, and then couldn’t get funding for his simplistic, fear-based solution even when his party controlled both chambers of Congress for multiple years. And it comes despite the fact that Democrats have absolutely no incentive to compromise with Trump on anything. And it comes despite the fact that fewer than 40 percent of Americans support this boondogglish foolishness in the first place, and that the percentage of support drops into the 20s when people are asked if the wall is worth shutting down the government. And it comes despite the fact that ex-Trump officials, who are becoming as plentiful as cicadas, are now admitting that the wall is never going to happen. And it comes despite the fact that illegal immigration is down, and a damn wall wouldn’t stop anybody anyway. And it comes despite the fact that… well, you get the picture.

Basically, the president has gambled the tattered remnants of his pathetic reputation on fulfilling a bizarre campaign promise that only the hate-filled, the ignorant, and the delusional ever believed in the first place.

Trump now says that the resulting government shutdown could last “a long time."

It could indeed last a long time. Not because Trump is a shrewd negotiator who is standing firm on principle, but because he is a sociopath who doesn’t care about the people he’s hurting and the country he’s damaging.

Yes, within this whole sad spectacle, there is just one thing that all Americans can agree upon:

The Steel Slates is a great name for a rock band.