“Putz —A jerk, or a self-made fool, but this word literally means penis.”
One of Claude Monet’s most famous paintings is called Impressionism, Sunrise (1872), depicting the port of Le Harve. Perhaps it is enigmatic to declare that this painting reminds me of the US Congress. I will explain. The lines between water, land, sky, people and boats are all blurred. There is very little to distinguish the various blobs. Only the sun rising above the horizon is clearly visible and is distinguished by its unique color. Consider Congress, a gray blob of indistinguishable crooks and imbeciles, all bought and paid for by innumerable interests, foreign and domestic. Watch this performance by senators screeching at testimony of Robert Kennedy for a small sample of the torrent of bilge that comes from that body. The one beam of intelligence, clarity, and simple honesty I ever hear from Congress is from the representative from Kentucky’s 4th district Thomas Massie.
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With this in mind, consider the actions of President Donald Trump. To all of the backstabbers in his own Republican party, and even to many Democrats, he acts like they are his pal. Perhaps the worst case is his support of Senator Lindsey Graham, the dumbest and most destructive, who will wreck Trump’s presidency on the way to world war. But the one guy he goes after, the target of personal attacks, is the one and only Thomas Massie. The fact Massie actually supports the true (as opposed to political maneuvers) America First agenda does not seem to be understood by the president. The one thing that Trump could actually accomplish to make the US and the world at large a better place is to root out the neoconservative war mongers from the Republican party and national discourse. That would be the greatest investment of his political capital. Yet he singles out Massie. (see Massie’s response here)
With Trump one is always guessing whether he is an idiot or playing 4D chess. His actions against Massie answer the question. The word to describe the man of such contradictions comes from somewhere in the recesses of my brain, tapping into my Jewish, Eastern European heritage, was putz. I never recall thinking of, let alone using that word before; yet that is what I now think of Trump.
Postscript
This little rant should not be taken as an implicit critique of the also excellent Senator Rand Paul.
