How Many Truckloads Does It Take?

thefarmblog.com

The jewel heist at the Louvre proves what I’ve long felt, that going to an art museum induces stupor and you don’t notice what’s right in front of you clearer than day. Two men going to work on a Sunday in Paris, cutting a hole in a glass case, escaping out a second-story window on a hoist, as museumgoers strolled by — I’ve felt this same stupor looking at Degas. Two masked men in tutus could’ve tippy-toed past carrying a guard in handcuffs and I wouldn’t have noticed. Apparently, looking at jewels produces an even greater stupor. The burglars could’ve taken their time and made off with a wheelbarrow of crowns and gone out the front door.

One more reason for you and me to not invest in emeralds and to keep a hand on our wallet when in a museum.

Another factor in the success is the stupefying effect of the obvious. You expect thieves to work under cover, not in broad daylight. Which also explains the creation of the Donald J. Trump Ballroom, a glittery behemoth bigger than the White House itself. Every week the commander in chief commits sacrilege and does lawless deeds in plain view, sends masked agents to seize whomever they wish, ignores Ukraine while sending an aircraft carrier to battle small boats off Venezuela, accepts billions for his family from Arab sheikhs, sues the Department of Justice now in the hands of his former defense attorneys, and the citizenry is so benumbed by the spectacle, we turn the page and say, “Well, it’s just the president being himself.”

Surely the preservationists will speak up when he announces the erection of an Executive Tower and cranes with wrecking balls start knocking down the House itself because the Oval Office is too small and America’s greatness demands a 5,000-square-foot suite with a fabulous view from the 40th floor. Will the generals speak up if he appoints Trump Corporation vice presidents to be Joint Chiefs of Staff? Does the U.S. Constitution still reside in its glass case at the National Archives or has he removed it to bring it up to date?

Our population is aging and retirees are a powerful voting bloc and I’m sure they enjoy seeing an elderly man having a hell of a good time. Why not build a gigantic arch like the Arc de Triomphe and name it the Arc de Trump? Turn the Ellipse into a 52-acre amusement park and make some of the federal office buildings into luxury hotels. Update the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and replace the statuary with 3-D holograph projections of Cabinet members.

Americans under 65 are too young to remember Watergate, how a piddly little break-in at Democratic headquarters, the theft of some papers, led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon at the urging of his fellow Republicans. The country has come to accept insults twenty times more gigantic than ever before. Watergate was a slap in the face and the past nine months have been a dozen truckloads of horse manure dumped on your front yard. But after the second truckload, you don’t really notice. You pull your shades and use a lot of air freshener and go out the back door and hope for a good heavy rainstorm.

One of those Republicans who urged Nixon to step down was my friend Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming who was in Congress at the time and who died back in March at 93. He was a classic conservative, wary of bureaucracy and various idealisms, a champion of self-reliance, a libertarian who believed in “live and let live” and “the right to be left alone,” which made him accepting of gays and of abortion. He had been a delinquent in his youth and so he was not self-righteous and he had a sense of humor about himself as a powerful U.S. senator for almost twenty years. He once came to a show I did in Washington and told me a true story about Wyoming cowboys he’d known in his younger days who liked to compete to see who could pick up a fifty-cent piece off a wooden bench using only their bare buttocks.

He said he’d seen cowboys pick up half-dollars and quarters and try to pick up nickels but without success. He didn’t say he’d competed but I guessed that he had. I miss him. The country needs more people like him.

Garrison Keillor © 10.27.25