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American Nightmare and the Disaster of Election 2016

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American Nightmare and the Disaster of Election 2016 AMERICAN NIGHTMARE AND THE DISASTER OF ELECTION 2016 As Christmas weekend approached, Donald Trump gave the world an early Christmas nightmare, by asserting in a tweet that he would expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal, upending a reduction course set by presidents of both parties over the past four decades. Further, rather than wrapping Christmas presents, Trump tweeted against a pending U.N. resolution that criticized Israel’s settlements policy. The Obama administration, fed up with Israel’s refusal to seriously negotiate with the Palestinians to give them the state they deserved, and angry with Israel’s continuing West Bank illegal settlements in territory allocated to the Palestinians, abstained from the UN condemnation of Israel’s colonization of Palestinian territory, assuring that Israel would throw a temper tantrum. Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed “iron- clad information” from sources that reveal the Obama administration drafted the UN document that condemned Israel for building illegal settlements and pushed the motion through the UN, claims that the Obama administration denied. Netanyahu replied he would give the evidence to the Trump administration, and with his new fake hairpiece, bulging pot-belly, bluster, and propensity for conspiracy theories, no doubt Netanyahu could join Putin in Trump’s best-bro authoritarian club. Trump and Netanyahu exchanged bro-love tweets with Trump assuring Bibi that all would be well when he assumed office, telling Israel to hang tight in the meantime. Trump’s tweeting was getting serious people alarmed. Arms control experts worried that “Trump’s willingness to Tweet about nuclear weapons raises the possibility of Trump doing the same as president – and more to the point, the possibility of him doing so amid some species of international crisis or escalation.” Experts pointed out that Twitter was a blunt and aggressive means of communication, especially in Trump’s sweaty and small hands, and could escalate in a crisis to trigger nuclear war.128 115 AMERICAN NIGHTMARE AND THE DISASTER OF ELECTION 2016 Another Christmas delight, providing some clues to the emergent type of Trumpian political discourse in the coming era, came from Carl Paladino, the co-chair of Donald Trump’s New York state presidential campaign who spouted about Michelle Obama “being a male” who should be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe” to live “in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.” Earlier, the Trumpian comedian had barked out a fake news headline: “[Barack] Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Her[e]ford.” Paladino had visited Trump Tower earlier in December, spending an hour with the president-elect, and meeting with Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, Stephen Bannon, Jared Kushner, and Michael Flynn, who would be leading the way to take the U.S. in 2017 into the Swamps of Trumpland. However, yet another swamp creature mysteriously disappeared from Trumpworld. Jason Miller, who had been a loyal spin doctor and communication advisor for Trump throughout the primaries and campaign, had been appointed before Christmas to the high-level post of overseeing White House communications strategy. Yet, one day later, on Christmas Eve, Trumpworld announced that Miller wouldn’t be taking the post after all, and that he wanted to go home and focus on his family – a code word suggesting that Miller had been a bad boy and was now shunned from Trumpworld. Jilted Jason thus provided another example of how Trump discards his most loyal subjects with regal impunity, and that there can be no less secure employment in the land than working for King Donald the Fire Demon. Meanwhile, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway had announced she was not taking a White House job so that she could spend more time with her young children, but through December and into the New Year, she continued to appear frequently on television, trying to present a cheerful demeanor to spin Trump’s latest absurdities. Yet her Mission- Impossible was taking its toll as the once-perky and pert Kellyanne was becoming increasingly haggard and wizened, as if the daily lying and spinning were turning the media princess into a witch. As the year 2016 came to its inevitable end, Donald the Twitter King kept those inappropriate tweets coming. In response to Democrat and Republican calls for official investigations of the Russian hacking, Trump tweeted, Bah humbug, investigations: “I think we 116.
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