A Fabulous Night in Sonoma

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It’s not easy keeping up with our Commander in Chief, who one day posts a picture of himself as a radiant Christ-like figure in Biblical robes healing the sick and another day attends a Universal Fight Club match in Miami at which martial arts fighters pound the snot out of each other, meanwhile conducting Operation Epic Fury, which has cost at least $300 billion so far and does not seem to be winding down. Seventy percent of Republicans approve of this, which suggests something like religious devotion, so the online deification of him is maybe the direction the party is taking. It’s a radical new phenomenon in our history, but there’ve been so many of them in his era that it’s hard to keep track.

The Founders never anticipated this, insanity as an accepted policy, the unashamed self-aggrandizement, the use of U.S. attorneys to go after political opponents. My dad departed the scene in time to avoid seeing it, he being an admirer of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and so far the policy of continual frequent and ferocious insult seems to be working fairly well. The Supreme Court has gone along with it for the most part and if it resisted and the C.i.C. issued an executive order dismissing four Justices, who would intervene? The Court has no army or navy, no Imperial Court Enforcers in paratrooper gear to carry out its will. If the C.i.C. got it in his head to send Special Forces into the Vatican to grab Pope Leo, it would cause an uproar for a day or two, but in our media age, storms fizzle out quickly. If the C.i.C. issues an executive order granting himself a lifetime appointment, which general is going to step forward and say, “Over my dead body” and what distant base will he be reassigned to? With 70% approval among Republicans, the Senate is not likely to take action. Newspapers are cutting back on journalism, and the influence of a Times or Post editorial is less than that of the average drum majorette.

Democrats seem exhausted by the sheer volume of outrages, the egomania, the chaos, the unreality. It’s like the Universal Fight Club that took the place of boxing. Obama v. Romney was like Louis vs. Schmeling but Artificial Politics is with us now and ChatGPT will be able to create algorithms to flood the Web with outrages, take the opponent’s face and create realistic horrific video that will pound the crap out of the most honorable public servant. The birther phenomenon of 2016 was kindergarten and we’re in high school now, heading for college.

I imagine my fellow Episcopalians are amused by the Jesus Trump, one more juvenile prank by America’s oldest fourth-grader — how does one respond to insanity? You see a man come running down the middle of Broadway shouting things you cannot quite make out and swerving up onto the sidewalk and running past you — you don’t challenge him, you keep an eye on him, you prepare to take evasive action, but he goes galloping past and it’s simply one more minor incident, so trivial you may not even mention it to your wife when you come home. There are crazy people in the world.

When a crazy man commands the world’s most formidable military force, however, it creates a problem. The captain in the West Wing who holds the nuclear football must be thinking about this: he has the code, the C.i.C. needs the code to send the order — what if the Commander is dressed like Jesus and is shouting things that make no sense about the election stolen from Viktor Orbán and the framing of Jeffrey Epstein and the media conspiracy to deny the Gulf of America and the need for Greenland?

Has West Point prepared the captain for this eventuality? I’m only asking.

There are advantages to being 83 years old and one is the Not My Problem option. I went off to Sonoma last week and hung out with some people my age and we stood around singing Do you remember when we used to sing sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la-de-da and everyone knew the words so we sang Chantilly lace with a pretty face and a ponytail hanging down and Goodness gracious, great balls of fire. Pure silliness. I loved it. We’ve been horrified long enough. We can be horrified again on Friday. Time to dance with our arms in the air and be joyful.

Joy is one thing the C.i.C. has never experienced in his adult life. Poor man.

Garrison Keillor © 04.13.26