It is one of the biggest, most lethal, and most fearsome of all venomous snakes. Being struck by a taipan, it is said, is like being hit by a sledgehammer. Its principal prey is rats.
It is also physically imposing, a thing of gold.
Even the fearless Steve Irwin sweated bullets when he wrangled one for his television show.
Why am I bringing this up? Because while we all acknowledge that politicians are reptiles, most of them are far less dangerous than a taipan. We’re all used to the usual cold-blooded ones — the constrictor rat snakes and black snakes and bottom feeder nests of garter snakes who inhabit the drab holes of D.C. Offices.
Eew.
We know about the lizards small and big in the mass media…
We know about the omniscient anchors and pundits…
And we even know about the vast strangling, suffocating, and devouring departments and agencies of the imperial U.S. government.
And the Bushes…
And the Clintons…
And, you know, Reagan.
All of which means the reptile world of American politics is in no way prepared to understand President Trump. They’ve been hunting him for a couple of years now, and every time they think they have him, he turns and strikes them like a hammer, with a venom that killed their credibility long ago and paralyzed their ability to respond. They thought they had fangs or the constrictor power to kill him. His venom has robbed them of both strength and lucidity.
Other parts of the world recognize nothing but power, speed, strength, and potency of venom. Figuratively speaking, Trump’s taipan is from a different continent than they know, and he overwhelms the cobras and mambas and vipers and coral snakes of the predatory outside world Americans have forgotten about.
He is unpredictable, incredibly swift, big, and scary. This does not mean they want to go up against him. Quite the contrary. He taught them in a single stroke that America is no longer a slithering sneak on the world stage as it has been for the last eight years. The Democrats have been remarkably slow to discover the power of his venom. The world at large isn’t as dumb or slow as tortoises and snapping turtles. They’ve already learned a lesson the Trump haters of all stripes just don’t get. He’s the most powerful snake in the global zoo. That was the point of the airstrike. The Middle East got it. The Chinese got it. The Russians got it. Even the Pakistanis got it. Doesn’t matter what they say, they got it. And Trump had a nice dinner afterwards with Emperor Xi. If you think the world isn’t still afraid of Aegis destroyers, American aircraft carriers, and the most formidable Air Force on the planet, take a sedative and some warm milk and go to bed.
P.S. Alternative and completely counterintuitive music for those who understand the concept of three dimensional chess, which I recently discussed with my friend Patrick vis a vis Trump. Lucidity is a rare gift. If you don’t have it, you’ll never know you don’t.
I think it may have been Jack Donovan who said (of the other boogeyman Putin), it does not matter whether or not he is a good man. He is good AT BEING A MAN, and that is still more important. You can debate when to use violence (or in the realist/neocon/rational egoist school whether what Trump did was right or wrong) but anyone who has totally removed the option of violence from their list is doomed, as is their civilization. We are at war with Islam, and have been for more than a millennium. I like John Derbyshire’s idea of neither invading the world nor inviting it. An occasional bombing might be in order, though (provided you don’t invite the neighbors of the people you’re killing to be your neighbors, which was Hillary’s plan).