(With apologies to Walt Whitman)
After the 2016 presidential election, the gathering storm clouds were on the horizon and getting ominously closer. A rookie captain took over the helm of the Ship of State. He had never been trained to navigate the smallest fishing boat, but suddenly found himself steering the U.S.S. Constitution.
He chose as his underlings and shipmates, fellow rookies who had no idea how the greatest ocean liner in the world operated, but hired people with great wealth and personal loyalty, but no sailing experience.
He had promised everyone who voted for him that he was extremely qualified to sail this ocean liner because he had seen ships in the ocean and could navigate “by his gut.” When experienced seamen tried to counsel the captain on how to navigate safely, he would fire them, then tell the world how incompetent they had been. When asked why he had brought them on board in the first place, he would glare at the questioner and have him ejected bodily from the room.
The captain spent the majority of his hours on the ship tweeting insults to anyone who questioned his abilities as Captain, sometimes as many as 50 a day and at 3:00 a.m. Most weekends he was flown from the ship to his private mansion to a hit a little white ball with a stick.
In his mind, his was the only ship on the sea that mattered. If a nearby ship was in peril, he refused to lend a hand. He threatened to sink any ship that did not bow to him. He seemed to have an affinity for pirate ships sailed by cut-throats.
The numbers of hours he dedicated to actually sailing the ship remains classified and unknown. When he was not out hitting little balls around, he would spend weekends all over the nation holding massive rallies to tell his adoring red-capped audience why he was the greatest captain in history. There was even a nationwide daily TV program that sang his praises and never questioned his abilities or his knowledge of the Constitution and mostly fawn over his I.Q. That was his favorite TV show and watched no other program that questioned him. In dictatorial countries these are known as State Run TV.
This ship has nobody at the helm and his Party representatives dare not criticize or question his abilities. They feel obligated to answer to him only. They do not want to be accused of treason and made to disappear. The only people that can put an end to this captain-less ship nightmare are those poor souls aboard. They and not the captain are in control of their destiny. All aboard, rich and poor, will perish. The storm has been raging for over two years and the jagged coastline is dead ahead. We shall hold our collective breath to see if clear heads prevail and send this incompetent captain back to his mansion for good to tweet out his memoirs.
In Liberty,
David Almaraz
Ese David,
You are the master of the U.S.S. La Mera Cuerda!
The ship sank long ago with Hillary Clinton unsuccessful steering clear of the rocks. Click your heels three times and say “President Trump is my President”. The ship will be run for another four years. Get used to it.