“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a Line . . .”—Omar Khyyám (1048-1131)

Omar Khyyám, a Persian, was one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the Islamic Golden Age and also a poet. The line quoted above is from his “Rubaiyat.” It comes to my mind frequently whenever Donald Trump is caught in a lie or some other embarrassing situation—and responds with a childlike tantrum and his usual rant of “Fake news! Fake news!” and spews out some of his “alternate facts.”  (Omar, being Muslim, wouldn’t even be allowed into this country Donald has proclaimed to be his personal gated community.) 

Trump’s words, often contradictory from day to day, live on—all of his inarticulate lies, boastings and misrepresentations. Couple his name to any phrase or word and Goggle it. Compare what he said yesterday with how he chooses to distort reality today. Truth checks and compilations of lies also are available on line at The Washington Post or New York Times.

Looking at these two men—the ancient Persian and the modern buffoon— also supports my long-held belief that a great many of the world’s greatest minds existed many centuries ago and that considerable intelligence has been slowly bred out of the human race over time. 

Trump also reminds me of the words of Alexander Pope (1688-1744): “A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” (It means that superficial knowledge is worse than ignorance. A person with little or no learning is very often seen to be vain, as he tries to show that he knows more than he does. The Pierian Spring is a mythological Macedonian source of knowledge of art and science—popular with the Muses, in the Mount Olympus neighborhood.)

We all learned as children that the sky’s blue, but science reminds us it’s becoming more and more often gray these days—from industrial pollution or the smoke of increased wildfires due to global warming. Donald dismisses scientists, claiming he knows more than the lot of them, despite the fact that they have devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge. This does not involve some superior knowledge he mysteriously has acquired in his lifetime pursuit of  wealth and public acclaim. He merely finds scientific fact inconvenient to his obsession of removing all restrictions on industry.

So as the world disintegrates, he spews out a few executive orders, rants the usual about “phony science” and “fake news”—and cuts funding for the sciences out of the federal budget. That’ll show everyone who’s running things.

Buy all his proposals, Donald assures a public gullible to the simple and superficial, and I’ll find ways to slip you a few dollars. That means he figures on handing the average person $5 while surreptitiously taking away $25 or $30 through devious measures as he flings open the doors of the national vault to himself and his wealthy friends. What a guy! Dumb as a post, but he seems to be getting away with it. He’s attempting to bully his way into the history books. But he’s still a loser.

It seems like just yesterday that Donald Trump insulted his way onto the ballot—then sold enough snake oil to get himself elected president. Along the way up popped a fabricated story that caught the imagination of the stupidest faction of the American electorate—that his opponent Hillary Clinton was involved in pedophile ring operating out of the basement of a pizza parlor. That, of course, was a true example of just what constitutes “fake news.”  A couple of months later, Donald announced that the turnout for his inauguration was the greatest in history. Actual photographs and eyewitness accounts proved that it wasn’t even close to that. Obviously “fake news” from Donald himself. 

But Donald persisted. His winning the electoral vote wasn’t enough. Hillary Clinton had actually won the votes of more Americans, indicating he was less popular overall. His tinsel ego couldn’t take it. Out came the charge that several million illegal voters had been bussed on the sly from Boston to polling places in Vermont. The surreptitious logistics and explosive results that would have been effected at the polling places in this relatively low-populated state are ridiculous on the face of it.

But ego-driven senility knows no ends. Donald even created a special government commission to investigate voting fraud—in a country where his own party has long labored to deny access to ballots to racial minorities.

A poll the other day showed that Donald’s snarky ongoing attempt to delegitimize the free press is having some success. Sadly, many people are ever at the ready to attach themselves to any crazy conspiracy theory. A poll Oct. 24 showed that 46% of registered voters believe major news organizations fabricate stories about him. However, the latest Gallup Poll showed Donald’s current personal approval rating having plummeted to 33%. The worst in history.

MEANWHILE, RECENT NEWS. Here’s a Nov. 3 report that illustrates what a self-centered, narcissistic autocrat we now have at the head of our government. “President Trump shot down criticism over the number of vacant posts within the State Department in an interview broadcast late Thursday, saying he is ‘the only one that matters.’ Speaking to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, he said the lack of nominees for important posts—including those overseeing Southeast Asia and arms control—won’t affect the work of his administation. ‘Let me tell you, the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters,’ Trump said. ‘Because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be . . .We don’t need all the people that they want,’ he said.. ‘Don’t forget, I’m a business person and I tell my people, Well, you don’t need to fill slots, don’t fill them. Without naming names, Trump also said here are ‘some people’ whose ‘thinking process’ he is not pleased with.”

Yes, indeed, Donald. Let’s not cloud the world’s future with any applicable intelligence stemming from the critical thoughts of knowledgeable people actually experienced in foreign affairs. And don’t forget to take along your golf clubs on your 13-day Asian pep rally.

A SITE OF INTEREST regarding the Republican “trickle clown” tax-plan sales pitch: “The United States is the richest country in the history of the world. Last year, the genius and muscle of the American people generated more than $18.6 trillion in wealth. This year, our brains and brawn will combine to create well over $19 trillion. Despite all the debt theatrics of the Republican Party during the Obama presidency, we owe just $6.2 trillion to other countries ― less than four months of our collective labors at their present value. . . Our country’s wealth is created by everybody. It’s not created by rich people. Rich people are what happen when the bookkeeping units we use to keep track of that wealth — the dollars ― get stuck on particular individuals. Sometimes these people fall into the world possessing such accounting anomalies in the form of inheritances. Sometimes they siphon them from other people through the daily operations of commerce. Sometimes Washington decides to hand them more . . . 

“On Thursday, President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and congressional Republicans proposed a multitrillion-dollar tax cut for a particular slice of very wealthy citizens. There is much more than math at stake: These are matters of justice, social prestige and political power. There is no economic law that governs how the $19 trillion we produce each year must be distributed. Figuring out who should get how much of that $19 trillion is a political choice — and the Republicans’ choice is to give much of that money to a few hundred financial dynasties.

“The GOP says its plan is an effort to “fix our broken tax code,” and there can be no doubt that the code is broken. Our fabulously wealthy nation is mysteriously plagued by poverty. More than 40 million Americans currently live in poverty, including 11.5 million children. Over 41 million people live in what the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines as “food insecure households.” Millions of Americans literally could not afford to eat at some point during 2016. Families living a little higher up the economic ladder generally have a tenuous hold on their middle-class status: 78 percent of U.S. households report living paycheck to paycheck . . .”  See: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-tax-plan-who-matters_us_59fc8ed4e4b0b0c7fa39d222?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

 A QUOTE OF INTEREST from George W. Bush’s book due for publication Nov. 14—of Donald Trump: “He’s a blowhard . . .I don’t like him . . . I voted for Hillary Clinton.”

.

.