Who Are We Now?

 Who Are We Now?

Saturday night, The Gridiron Dinner.  The Press and the Prez

will roast and be roasted.  The rule is, Singe but don’t burn.

Trump dons white tie and tails, tries out his standup: 

How about that Xi Jingping? President of China for life. 

That’s  great. I mean, he did that. I think it’s great.  

Maybe we should try that.  

Cameras aren’t allowed, but they say 

that schtick passed as a joke, that it

drew applause, even cheers.

So glad we don’t have to see footage.

The news has rolled on again, of course.

turns out there’s another Steele dossier—

that Putin put the nix on Romney as 

Secretary of State.  He preferred his good bud

Tillerson. Figures. Yep. He got his own tiller man.

What I just can’t get over is how

completely the Republicans have forgotten 

their fear of Russia. Now Lindsay and the gang

are so cooly post-Soviet, it’s hard to credit

the depth of the Ol’ Red Scare.  Seems an oligarch 

is a familiar type— capitalists understand unfettered greed. 

And some of us understand that the current

politicians’ refusal to govern means that 

the market is bound to crash again.

The worst people, the worst of times.

That’s who we are now.  And—hello—

we are under sustained attack.

                                        —Sef, 3/6/2018