Billionaire Shades of Grey

Is it my imagination, or a fact, that a lot of chatter about “mindfulness,” “living in the present,” etcetera (which, when genuinely practiced, I am not opposed to by any means) is afloat precisely when the time we are living in, the actual present, seems kind of intolerable?

I am now in Canada. The weather is, admittedly, kind of grey.

But is it that INTOLERABLE grey spreading over America like the smoke from those wildfires that, if Donald Trump’s INTOLERABLE executive orders prevail, increased fossil fuel industry activities and consequent global warming will fan?

I’d say not.

There might be grey areas in Canadian life as well as weather, of course. Such as regarding the anecdotal reports about who Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s real father was. A blogger began spreading the rumor that it was Fidel Castro, with whom Justin’s parents, had been friends.

The story? That Pierre’s “hippie-dippy” wife Margaret Trudeau had had a liason with Castro.

Result? Justin.

The theory has been proven apocryphal repeatedly. The grey has lifted, the sunshine of facts has largely prevailed worldwide. The fanciful collage the Medium article writer Karen Leibowitz (cited above) provides is a great try, but just that—fanicful.

I mean, how many men in the world must look alike if one out of every thousand men alive is a descendant of Changez Khan?

Okay, that’s tongue in cheek, but really.

But the grey never lifts in the United States.

So, POTUS Trump has extravagantly produced a tome called “Save America,” a photobook, and in it he revives rumors about Justin Trudeau’s paternity: ‘“A lot of people say that Justin is his son,” Trump writes in the book. “He says that he isn’t, but how the hell would he know!”

Of course, Mr. President. And of course YOU would know, since you know everything and can sum up everything in three- or four-word sentences like “It will be great,” and “They are bad people.” And because the United States is now really ruled by a sort of political mafia, the honorable Mr. Elon Musk being the seeming Consiglieri of the president. When those guys say day is night, well, it is.

A grey day at least.

Mr. Musk might think twice, though. Consiglieris only have limited power and can be chucked at will. In the case of Trump and Musk, that could be the dog finally wagging the tail, rather than the way it now is, the tail wagging the dog. Because Trump is nothing if not unpredictable, though in only one way is he predictable: that he is never accountable. He says whatever comes into his mind, such as Castro would be proud that his son, Justin, turned out a communist like Castro: “Castro had good hair, the ‘father’ didn’t, Justin has good hair, and has become a Communist just like Castro.”

Oh, astute political forensics! “Good hair” (and Trump is probably a keen observer of other men’s hair), and a hyper-capitalist“Communist.” Prize-winning investigative work.

In actual fact, if you wanted conclusive evidence that Fidel is not Castro’s Cher Papa, Trump actually hands that to you with that last “proof” of his. Because our Justin could be a Martian, but a communist he ain’t. And the World Economic Forum and its Canadian pet Justin Trudeau are no doubt having a long laugh over that one and Trump.

And Fidel?

Since there’s no heaven, he’s probably turning in his grave.