Two plus Two equals What?

So it looks like this is how it works:  A few days ago, President-elect Trump tweeted that the contract with Boeing to build the next two Air Force One planes was, “...too expensive, 4 billion dollars!  Cancel It!”  Boeing’s stock took a nose dive, and publicists and politicians all over the globe got in front of microphones and bleated endlessly, with some agitation, that it was not true!  Boeing has only been working on a lousy $150 million project to talk about it.  They don’t have the specs yet to even start asking how much, so somebody pulled that number out of their ass.

Despite that, given the level of response to that single tweet, and the wide-spread nature of the response from all directions, would it surprise you to see on the front page of one of the scandal sheets on display at the checkout stands of our local grocer (all but the “family friendly” ones, anyway) a headline that shouted, “Trump Cancels $4 Billion Air Force One Project!

My first thought was, “Are you kidding?  Do you not know that all of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Fox News, CNN, and all the rest of the chatterverse has been debunking that story within the hour?”  Then I realized; they don’t care.  Their audience doesn’t read anything they don’t already know, and don’t care to start now, thank you very much.

My second thought was, “Who exactly do we have in this country capable of designing, building and flying what will probably be the second most complicated flying machine this side of the Space Shuttle.  I mean, besides Boeing.  Nobody, right?  So you really are full of doo-doo to even suggest it, right?  So, who are you trying to fool?”  The answer is:  the same people who elected him.

I supported President Obama, and to this day believe he did as good as he possibly could given the level of attack that started the day after his first election from all sides.  He ran a clean ship, and got the trains running on time, at some level.  All the bullshit they threw at him was based on lies, the new currency of politics in America.  At the time, most profoundly expressed on the night of his inauguration, the spirit that flooded the airwaves felt like a sign that a change was gonna be here.  It gave me hope.  Still does.

But it occurs to me: Now, the shoe is on the other foot.  The pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme.  However, the process is the same, just for a different group.

Obama gathered the poor, the dispossessed, the young, college educated ones, some of the working class and built an organization on their efforts, Organizing for America.  Trump made those people the enemy and built his winning coalition on the backs of the scandal sheet readers, the Fox News quoters, the haters and the fringers on the opposite side from the radical left.

Obama got his money from the lawyers, and the rich liberals.  Trump got his from the capitalists, and the rich conservatives.  And here’s the thing:  Just like Obama in 2008, Trump in 2016 has given his followers hope!

You can see them everywhere, the Trump folks.  “I’m with Her” is a message that has disappeared from the bumpers of America, but Trump rides everyone’s ass these days.  They walk with a form of victory strut, the one we did when Obama won, he was our man, and we grinned from ear to ear.  Now it’s them, and we look away.

But in the back of our minds, we are thinking:  He promised a whole bunch of things to a whole bunch of people, and now he’s gotta come through for them, and he’s got four years to do it.  He’s gotta build a wall, then deport a bunch of nonwhite people.  Then he’s gotta start my mine back up, or my logging crew, or my auto plant job.  He’s gotta slap China around, even though they buy so many of our T-bills that if they quit buying them we’d see the full faith and credit of the United States of America go up in smoke faster than you can say leveraged buyout.  He’s gotta slap the Russians around, even though he personally owes them millions, we hear.

And all the time, we’re going to be riding his ass like a loan shark on payday.  All those liberals and progressives are still here (you saw the vote totals), and we’re not having any of this, thank you very much.

The difference is, we’re going to fight back with the truth.  We’re not going to pass on fake news, that’s their thing.  We’re going to ignore his wife, as long as she stops plagiarizing, and his kids, who will hopefully sit down and shut up for the next four years.  We’re going to talk policy, and facts; we’re going to insist on reasonability, and cooperation, and building community, and shining a light on things going on around us.  When they go low, we’re going to go high, just like Ms Obama said.

What else can we do?  :-{)}