Let’s face it: if this weren’t so tragic, it would be farcical. In fact, maybe Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are intended to put The Onion, that well-known satirical journal, out of business. Or, maybe the nominations are a weird attempt at post-modern irony, especially since many of them make a mockery of the very Cabinet positions for which they are nominated. As our new “Celebrity-in-Chief,” maybe Don the Con is previewing a new game show called “The Apprentice Cabinet.”
Whatever the motivation, it is depressingly clear that these nominees are either spectacularly unqualified, right wing zealots of the worst sort, or, in Simon Schama’s words a “cesspool of crony capitalism,” or, in some cases, all three at once. A regular Trifecta! The Speaker of the California Assembly has provided another triadic and alliterative description: “Bullies, Billionaires, and Bigots.” My own preference is an admixture of the tv series, “Game of Thrones,” with the Book of Revelation. So, I would categorize the picks under the Grand Triad of “The Three Dragons of the Apocalypse: Greed, Stupidity, and Authoritarianism.”
I will leave you, gentle reader, with the job of determining under which category or label each nominee would fall. My task is to introduce this stellar line-up of real life Deplorables for whatever amusement one can take away from these nominees. What follows is a shorthand (or, backhand) introduction of each in the rough…