Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

OH MY GOD—Jim Jordan is out here again, doing his sweaty best to turn the U.S. Constitution into a gym towel for Donald Trump! He’s bellowing about how the Mango Messiah—sorry, the ‘gag’ president—should have the right to fire judges and sic the Department of Justice on political enemies. Because apparently, checks and balances are for losers, and banana republics are just America with better fruit.

Let’s pause for one blinding second of reality: the DOJ isn’t the president’s personal law firm. It’s our Department of Justice—the people’s lawyers, America’s legal shield. But in Jim Jordan’s fever swamp fantasy, the DOJ is supposed to act like Trump’s mob consiglieri—knocking on doors, breaking kneecaps, and prosecuting anyone who doesn’t kiss the gold-plated ring.

Now, imagine—just imagine—if Barack Obama had ever suggested firing judges who didn’t rule his way. Or if Joe Biden said, “You know what? Let’s prosecute Mitch McConnell for being a crusty obstructionist.” Jim Jordan and the entire GOP would spontaneously combust in patriotic outrage! Fox News would run “DICTATOR WATCH” banners 24/7. Sean Hannity would weep on air about the death of democracy.

But when Trump says it? Suddenly, it’s “presidential prerogative.” When he threatens the rule of law? It’s “fighting the deep state.” When he demands vengeance against opponents? It’s “draining the swamp.”

Jim Jordan isn’t defending the Constitution—he’s defending Trump’s fantasy of monarchy. He’s helping to rewrite “We the People” into “We the Loyalists.” And if that doesn’t make your democratic hair stand on end, then congratulations—you’re already living in the Republic of Trumpistan, where justice wears an orange tie and loyalty is law.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Citizens of MAGAmerica, rejoice! His Tremendousness, the self-crowned monarch of Mar-a-Lago, DJ T — Defender of the Faith, Savior of the Golf Cart, and Captain of the Ship of Delusion — has issued a Royal Proclamation:

Indigenous People’s Day is hereby canceled, deleted, erased, obliterated, and replaced with the one true holy holiday — Columbus Day.

That’s right. By divine orange decree, the Mango Menace has saved us once again from the creeping scourge of wokeness and historical accuracy. The proclamation, read aloud from the gilded balcony of Trump Tower (formerly known as the White House), declared that “America will no longer apologize for its greatness, its explorers, or its heroic misunderstandings of geography.”

In his solemn address to a crowd of fifty diehards and one confused tourist, DJ T announced:

“By my royal proclamation — which is very powerful, people say the best proclamation — I am officially reclaiming Columbus Day. It’s no longer for the woke, it’s for Christians, historians, and oceanographic navigators, okay? The forgotten heroes. The people who use compasses — the good kind, not the fake ones on iPhones.”

The crowd went wild, or at least politely patriotic. Somewhere, a bald eagle rolled its eyes.

DJ T continued, bravely battling his teleprompter and basic syntax:

“Columbus was a great man. A man of faith. He brought Christianity, courage, and very strong maritime branding to the New World. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have the Fourth of July, or hamburgers, or, frankly, the United States of Trump — I mean, America.”

Ah yes, the sacred logic of historical revisionism. According to DJ T, the timeline goes something like this:

1492: Columbus discovers America.

1776: America declares independence, thanks to Columbus’s inspirational oceanic vibes.

2016: DJ T rediscovered America — this time for real.

In his royal decree, DJ T also took aim at those “radical woke historians” who keep insisting that Columbus enslaved, tortured, and accidentally jumpstarted centuries of colonial devastation. “Fake news!” he declared. “People forget, the natives loved him. They were giving him beads, fruits, maybe even votes. Very friendly people — until the radical left got to them.”

He went on to praise Columbus as “the original Christian entrepreneur,” a man who “saw an opportunity, took the deal, and didn’t let a little thing like the wrong continent stop him.” To DJ T, this is the true spirit of America — bold ignorance wrapped in divine confidence.

And of course, no royal proclamation would be complete without a little culture war spice:

“Indigenous People’s Day is too woke. Too depressing. Nobody wants to celebrate people who were here first — that’s not what made America great. We celebrate winners, discoverers, people who plant flags on things that already belong to someone else. That’s tradition!”

Under his new proclamation, DJ T has also announced several mandatory patriotic observances for the resurrected Columbus Day, including:

A reenactment of Columbus’s landing, starring Trump himself, arriving on a golf cart christened The Santa Melania. A national “mapless navigation” contest — to honor the spirit of being confidently wrong about where you are. And finally, a ceremonial “Blessing of the Globe,” in which DJ T points at a spinning globe, declares it flat, and demands applause.

Meanwhile, historians everywhere have quietly packed up their degrees and gone to the nearest bar. Oceanographers have collectively sighed and muttered, “It’s oceanic, not oceanographic,*” but no one’s correcting him anymore. They’ve accepted defeat.

But for DJ T, this is a victory for faith, freedom, and the God-given right to be wrong with conviction. In his words:

“Columbus wasn’t just a man — he was a movement. He didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know where he ended up, but he discovered something incredible anyway. Just like me in every policy meeting.”

And thus, by royal proclamation, the kingdom rejoices. Columbus is redeemed, Indigenous People’s Day is banished to the woke wilderness, and DJ T sails once more into the sunset — the great navigator of nonsense, steering America’s ship proudly and blindly toward the edge of the flat Earth he’s convinced is round only when convenient.

So, raise your red hats and toast to Columbus — the man who found what wasn’t lost — and to DJ T, the man who never met a fact he couldn’t drown in self-congratulation.

Because in the new history of Trumpian America, ignorance isn’t just bliss.

It’s policy.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Great Unicorn/Frog Insurrection of Portland — that dark chapter in American history when the republic teetered on the brink of collapse thanks to a ragtag army of inflatable unicorns, dancing frogs, and people armed with bubble wands. It was the day democracy nearly died — or at least that’s what the Department of Overreaction would have us believe.

According to government officials and cable news prophets of doom, Portland had become the new Raqqa overnight — except instead of ISIS flags, there were pride banners, and instead of AK-47s, there were biodegradable glitter cannons. One can only imagine the horror faced by the federal agents as they bravely confronted a woman in a unicorn costume doing interpretive dance to Lizzo. Truly, these are the heroes of our time.

The footage, of course, told a different story. There were no car bombs, no weapons caches, just a parade of overly caffeinated twenty-somethings twirling in rainbow tutus. But to the talking heads on “serious” news channels, Portland had descended into anarchy. “The city is lost!” they cried, as a slow-motion clip of a frog-costumed protester gently waved a peace sign in the background.

And then came the rhetoric — that sweet, spiced nonsense that makes authoritarian hearts flutter. Government officials took to their podiums, chests puffed and veins throbbing, declaring war on “domestic extremism.” Not the violent kind, mind you. No, they meant the kind that involves papier-mâché puppets and vegan food trucks. Overnight, America was told that dancing unicorns represented a direct threat to the homeland — the pastel face of terror.

To the untrained eye, Portland was merely having another Tuesday — a protest-slash-art-festival-slash-dance-off in the park. But to our brave leaders and their ever-loyal media hype machine, it was a counterterrorism operation. SWAT teams were deployed to handle a group of drummers chanting “Love is love.” One agent later reported, tearfully, that he had been “nearly glitter-bombed.” A near miss, indeed.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon probably held emergency meetings about how to handle the “Unicorn Threat Matrix.” Drone footage surely showed pink inflatables flapping majestically in the wind, each one tagged as a potential insurgent. Somewhere, someone probably updated the national threat level from “mildly annoyed” to “fabulously dangerous.”

But here’s the real kicker: these overblown responses weren’t mistakes — they were the point. Authoritarianism doesn’t begin with tanks in the streets; it starts when someone convinces the public that bubble wands are deadly weapons. By inflating peaceful protest into existential crisis, those in power get to play hero in their own delusional action movie — one where they save America from the tyranny of… interpretive dance.

So yes, the Great Unicorn Uprising may have ended without casualties, but the damage was done. Every glitter-covered sign, every frog costume, every inflatable unicorn was branded as an act of terror. America’s leadership stared into the goofy, inflatable face of dissent — and saw ISIS.

And perhaps that’s the saddest part. When a government becomes so paranoid, so performatively tough, that it can no longer distinguish between a terrorist and a TikTok trend, maybe the real threat isn’t in the streets of Portland at all. Maybe it’s the humorless, power-drunk bureaucracy that can’t tell the difference between a revolution and a rave.

Because when the day comes that we call dancing unicorns an “enemy of the state,” the only thing that’s truly inflated is the government’s ego.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

It’s always entertaining to watch people insist that the Earth is flat — a giant cosmic pancake, apparently held together by vibes and conspiracy theories — while geologists quietly sigh and go back to studying the 4.5 billion years of evidence saying otherwise. These are the same people who think fossils are “tests of faith” and that maps are “government propaganda.” But here’s the plot twist that might truly bake their noodle: not only is the Earth round, it’s also restless. And once upon a time, all the continents we know today were fused together into one magnificent supercontinent called Pangea.

Yes, dear deniers, the world used to be one big, happy landmass — no passports, no borders, no arguments about who invented pizza. Just one sprawling continent surrounded by a vast ocean called Panthalassa. Around 335 million years ago, the tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust cozied up together to form Pangea, a sort of prehistoric mega-merge that made today’s map look like a jigsaw puzzle that hadn’t been shaken apart yet.

But Earth, as it turns out, is a bit of a drama queen. She doesn’t like to stay still. Beneath our feet, massive slabs of rock — tectonic plates — are constantly on the move, grinding, colliding, and drifting at about the same speed your fingernails grow. Over millions of years, these shifts tore Pangea apart like an ancient breakup that took eons to finalize. South America drifted away from Africa, North America broke up with Europe, and Australia floated off like a sunburned introvert heading to its own island party.

This grand tectonic tango is why we have earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountains. It’s also why the coastlines of continents — like the matching curves of Africa and South America — look suspiciously like puzzle pieces that used to fit together. It’s not a coincidence. It’s geology.

Of course, if you mention this to a flat earther, you’ll likely get a blank stare followed by something about NASA faking plate tectonics to sell globes. These are the same people who think gravity is “a hoax” but can’t quite explain why their shoes stay on the ground. The irony, of course, is that Pangea’s very existence is one of the strongest proofs that the Earth is round — because only on a spherical planet could such slow, circular drift patterns even occur.

Imagine trying to fit Pangea onto a flat Earth model. You’d end up with Madagascar hanging off the edge, Australia sliding toward oblivion, and Florida somehow upside down. The math doesn’t math.

The evidence for Pangea isn’t theoretical — it’s written across the planet’s bones. Identical fossils of plants and animals appear on continents now separated by oceans. Ancient rock formations in Brazil match perfectly with those in West Africa, like geological twins separated at birth. Even magnetic minerals in those rocks tell us that they once formed near each other before migrating across the globe.

But perhaps the most humbling lesson of Pangea is not just scientific — it’s philosophical. The continents we now treat as separate, competing entities were once literally one. The divisions that humans obsess over today — borders, nations, flags — are, in the grand timeline of the planet, temporary scratches on the surface of a restless, rotating sphere.

So the next time someone insists the Earth is flat, maybe smile and hand them a globe — not to mock them, but to remind them that the story of Earth is long, complex, and beautiful. The ground beneath us has traveled across oceans, crashed into mountains, and will keep moving long after we’re gone.

Pangea is proof that the world was once whole — and that change, not stasis, is the planet’s true nature.

And if that’s too much for the flat Earth crowd to handle, that’s okay. They can keep clinging to their map of the cosmic pancake. The rest of us will keep spinning, drifting, and evolving — just like the Earth has done for hundreds of millions of years.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Gather ‘round, patriots and popcorn lovers alike — the Mango Menace is back on the mic. There he stands, bathed in his trademark nuclear glow, declaring in full caps-lock glory that “We must face the enemy from within!”

And for once, folks — he’s absolutely right.

Because the true enemy from within is sitting right there behind the Resolute Desk, orange-stained fingers wrapped around a Diet Coke, plotting how to turn the world’s oldest democracy into the world’s tackiest reality show.

Donald J. Trump — DJ T, our tangerine-tinted titan of chaos — now wants to bring the U.S. military into armed conflict with U.S. citizens. Apparently, he’s tired of peaceful protesters and wants to replace them with soldiers who salute him like he’s Caesar, only with worse hair and a louder mouth.

Forget the Founding Fathers — this is the Foundering Father, turning “We the People” into “You the Targets.” Somewhere, George Washington just ghosted us from the afterlife.

Let’s take a quick, sarcastic stroll down memory lane. In 1807, Congress passed the Insurrection Act — a law meant for rare, actual emergencies, like armed rebellions. Not for Twitter meltdowns, not for protests where someone waved a “Free the Weed” flag, and definitely not because DJ T’s feelings got hurt on Truth Social.

But leave it to Trump — the man who thinks the Constitution is an obstacle course designed to test his patience — to see it as a blank check for personal vengeance. “Oh, you disagreed with me? You’re the enemy! Bring in the troops!”

Because why have a functioning democracy when you can cosplay as a dictator?

And don’t even get me started on the Posse Comitatus Act, that dusty old rule meant to keep the military out of domestic law enforcement. DJ T probably thinks “Posse Comitatus” is a new MAGA country band. To him, every law that limits his power is “very unfair,” which in Trump-speak translates to “How dare you stop me from breaking it?”

He loves to talk about “enemies within” — the media, Democrats, protesters, librarians, anyone with a functioning moral compass — but let’s be honest: the real enemy within is him and his cult of sycophantic stooges.

They’re the termites in the beams of democracy — gnawing away while pretending they’re renovating. You’ve got cronies who treat the Constitution like a scratch-off ticket, cabinet ghosts who only emerge to say “yes, sir,” and a loyal base that cheers while he saws off the branch we’re all sitting on.

Meanwhile, the man himself wages psychological war on reality. “I alone can fix it,” he says, as the country catches fire. It’s like watching Nero, but with spray tan and golf carts.

You see, it’s not about protecting America. It’s about controlling America — specifically, controlling what we see, say, and believe.

He calls for law and order, but what he really means is “order me another law I can break.”

He promises peace, but only after he’s silenced the people asking for justice.

He wants loyalty, but not to the flag — to himself. Because in Trump’s mind, “country” is just short for “brand.”

He doesn’t see soldiers; he sees props. He doesn’t see citizens; he sees ratings. And when you combine ego with ignorance and add a dash of fascist fantasy? You get one hell of a recipe for disaster — or as DJ T would call it, “a perfect phone call.”

Let’s stop pretending. The “enemy from within” isn’t your neighbor, or your kid’s civics teacher, or the people marching for justice. It’s the orange autocrat and his army of bootlicking bureaucrats, hell-bent on turning the Land of the Free into the Land of the Fearful.

He’s not defending democracy — he’s mugging it in broad daylight while claiming it slipped on the stairs.

And the worst part? He’s convinced millions to cheer while he does it.

We’ve seen this movie before — the charismatic strongman who calls dissent “treason,” who weaponizes patriotism, who turns the military into a political accessory.

It never ends with parades and prosperity. It ends with smoke, silence, and regret.

But don’t worry, America! This time’s different — we’ve got better Wi-Fi, live-streamed tyranny, and hashtags to go with our collapse.

So yes, DJ T is right: there is an enemy from within.

But it’s not the protester, not the journalist, not the voter who dared to think independently.

It’s the mango menace himself — the Cheeto Caesar of chaos — and the pack of cowardly courtiers who’d rather burn the republic than admit they were wrong.

History has a funny way of warning us.

It whispers, “Don’t let the tyrants march again.”

But DJ T isn’t listening. He’s too busy practicing his salute in the mirror, wondering which uniform makes his gut look more presidential.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

This idea may have been addressed before but sometimes repetition is good. With all the layoffs and the cruel havoc being created by the administration there may be some silver lining in this cloud. The president seems hell bent to involve National Guard troops, so why do the Govenors not just call up the guard and have them do what they are really trained to do, support the community. Every state has guardsman and equipment to support disasters, and if the homelessness crisis does not qualify as a disaster we are not paying attention. There are places that could serve to be emergency relief sights to at least feed and care for the sick and injured. There are other places that could be set up as shelter. That kind involvement would be a positive integration of troops in our communities. The interface of troops could help with positive action. Could this program make it easier to put active troops on the streets? Yes, and it would no doubt be exploited for that, but the guard would not be armed and the administrations idea is intimidation not assistance. Our active duty personnel must be reinforced trained with what powers they have and what the Constitution's directives are. Retrain on UCMJ and specifically what are the kinds of orders that are illegal under the law. The nation is caught in whirl wind of destruction and we need to find ways and means to calm the wind and save our democracy. This may be able to accomplish some small part of that larger goal.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Every Halloween, when the moon hangs fat and pale and the wind mutters secrets through half-dead trees, one name inevitably rises from the grave: Dracula. No matter how many times we drive the stake, no matter how many times Hollywood “modernizes” him with slick hair and leather pants, the old Count just keeps coming back. He’s the pumpkin spice latte of horror — seasonal, enduring, and just a little overindulgent — yet undeniably irresistible.

But before he was the suave Transylvanian aristocrat in a velvet cape, he was Nosferatu, the rat-faced plague of shadows who brought nightmares to life in F. W. Murnau’s silent 1922 classic. Max Schreck’s gaunt, skeletal creature was less lover and more leper — a crawling disease that spread through Europe’s veins like death itself. Nosferatu wasn’t about seduction; he was pestilence wearing human form. That first cinematic Dracula was born not of romance but of fear — the fear of the unknown, the foreign, and the things that skitter just out of sight.

Then came Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the monster gained a title, a home, and a taste for dramatics. Stoker’s 1897 novel married Gothic excess with Victorian repression — sex and sin draped in lace and fog. His Count was a corrupted noble, a fallen angel with an Eastern European accent, a cautionary tale about what happens when desire and decay dance too close. Dracula was both warning and temptation, a mirror held up to a society terrified of its own hunger.

And if we trace him back further — peel away the myth like so much decaying flesh — we find Vlad III of Wallachia, or Vlad Țepeș, the Impaler himself. The man who allegedly dined among forests of skewered enemies, his goblet raised in toast to the writhing symphony of human suffering he’d composed. Historians still argue whether he was a patriot, a sadist, or a little of both, but one thing’s certain: no PR team in history has ever had to work harder to rehabilitate a legacy. Vlad didn’t drink blood — he spilled it. Yet through Stoker’s alchemy, this medieval warlord became the template for every undead seducer since.

Over the centuries, Dracula has evolved — or rather, metamorphosed. From Bela Lugosi’s hypnotic gaze to Christopher Lee’s feral elegance, from Gary Oldman’s tragic romantic in Coppola’s fever dream to the reflective antihero of Castlevania and What We Do in the Shadows, the Count has worn a thousand faces but kept the same gnawing emptiness at his core. He’s not just a monster — he’s a mirror. Every generation remakes Dracula in its own image, projecting onto him whatever we fear or crave most.

In the 19th century, he embodied sexual taboo.

In the 20th, he became the symbol of corrupt power — the aristocrat feeding on the masses.

In the 21st, he’s a tragic immortal, cursed by loneliness, haunted by what eternity costs.

We pity him now. The predator has become the victim, a misunderstood soul seeking connection in a world that has long since moved past candlelight and crypts. He doesn’t stalk villagers anymore — he swipes right. His coffin’s got Wi-Fi, and even immortality can’t save him from existential dread.

Yet beneath every reinvention, the same pulse of horror beats: the fear of what never dies. Dracula isn’t scary because he drinks blood. He’s terrifying because he’s us — our hunger for control, our obsession with youth, our inability to let go. He’s the embodiment of every selfish wish whispered at midnight: let me stay young, let me stay beautiful, let me live forever.

And so, as Halloween fog curls through our streets and little vampires beg for candy under plastic fangs, remember this — Dracula doesn’t lurk in the castle anymore. He lives in the reflection you avoid when the lights are low, in that part of you that wonders what eternity might feel like if it didn’t hurt so damn much.

The Count never died. He just learned to adapt.

And somewhere, in the shadows of every October night, he’s still waiting — charming, tragic, and forever thirsty.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Donald John Trump. DJT. The Mango Menace. The Orange Moron currently staining the White House upholstery with bronzer and ego in equal measure. One might think that after years of public humiliation, failed coups, and an endless stream of word salads that make expired mayonnaise seem coherent, he’d have learned the fine art of shutting the ever-loving hell up. But alas, silence is for mortals. Trump, as he reminds us hourly, is something far greater: a walking, tweeting, shouting embarrassment factory running at full production.

It’s truly impressive—if you view it as performance art—that one man can manage to humiliate an entire nation before breakfast. He opens his mouth, and international diplomacy collectively facepalms. Every time a microphone approaches, allies brace, adversaries rejoice, and translators quietly resign. Somewhere in Europe, a NATO interpreter likely wakes up in a cold sweat mumbling, “What does ‘bigly’ mean?”

In the annals of history, Trump will stand as the first leader who treated international relations like a WWE promo—minus the charm and self-awareness. His global strategy seems to follow a strict rulebook: insult allies, praise dictators, mispronounce basic geography, and then demand applause. Remember when he looked lovingly into Kim Jong Un’s eyes and said they “fell in love”? The world cringed collectively so hard that the planet’s orbit probably shifted a few millimeters.

And yet, the Mango Menace trudges on—sniffing, shouting, and stapling his name onto every success that wasn’t his, from veterans’ healthcare to Middle East peace frameworks. The man has the political equivalent of Midas’ touch in reverse: everything he actually handles turns to flaming garbage, but he’ll slap a gold TRUMP on it and call it a masterpiece.

Internationally, he’s that relative who gets drunk at the wedding and insists on giving a toast no one asked for. Everyone tries to be polite, smiling through clenched teeth, while the Orange Moron launches into his speech about how he’s the best dancer in the room, the smartest man alive, and how the bride is only pretty because of him. Meanwhile, the rest of the planet stares into their champagne flutes, wondering when America will finally wrestle the mic away.

Even our closest allies can barely hide their exhaustion. When the British Parliament banned him from addressing them, that wasn’t diplomacy—it was self-preservation. When Trudeau smirked behind his back, it wasn’t petty—it was the sigh of a nation forced to coexist with a walking caps-lock tweet. And when Germany’s Merkel rolled her eyes, that wasn’t annoyance—it was history recording its disappointment.

At home, his fans treat him like a messiah with a golf handicap. But the rest of us? We’re just tired. Tired of waking up to see what fresh humiliation he’s exported overnight. Tired of watching the “leader of the free world” communicate exclusively in playground taunts. Tired of a man whose only policy position is “me good, everyone else bad.”

The truth is simple: we just want him to shut the fuck up. Not forever (though that would be a blessing), but maybe just long enough for the world to forget that America once handed its nuclear codes to a man who can’t spell “hamburger.”

So here’s to DJT, the Mango Menace, the loudest orange on the planet. May history remember him for what he truly is: an international embarrassment in a cheap suit, screaming into the void, forever convinced the echo is applause.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Donald Trump — the modern-day Michelangelo of marketing, the da Vinci of delusion, the Picasso of plastering his name on things he didn’t make. Truly, the man is a master craftsman of the art of the illusion. He’s not a builder; he’s a brand sticker. If the world were a refrigerator, Trump would be the magnet.

Let’s start with the myth that Donald Trump is some kind of titan of construction. The man has never so much as held a hammer unless it was for a photo op — and even then, the hammer probably had “TRUMP” engraved in gold leaf on the handle. Every “Trump Tower,” “Trump Hotel,” or “Trump Golf Course” is really the same story: someone else builds it, finances it, runs it, and maintains it — and then Donald swoops in at the last second to slap his name on it like a drunk toddler signing someone else’s homework. He’s basically the brand equivalent of a raccoon rummaging through someone else’s trash and saying, “Mine now.”

And oh, the political rebranding! It’s art, really. In his first administration, Trump stood before the cameras and triumphantly declared victory for “fixing the VA” and “helping our great veterans.” Stirring stuff — except, of course, the law he was bragging about was passed by Barack Obama. But who cares about facts when you have the power of a Sharpie and an ego the size of Manhattan? Trump didn’t build the system — he just took Obama’s policy, crossed out the signature, and said, “Look what I did, everybody! Tremendous!”

Fast-forward to today, and here we are again, watching the same sad rerun with the Gaza ceasefire deal. The framework was hammered out under Biden, but Trump, never one to let someone else get credit for actually doing work, has decided to ceremonially rub his political taint all over it and call it his own. Because that’s what he does — he shows up after the heavy lifting is done, slaps his name on the label, and then declares himself the savior of mankind. It’s like showing up at the end of a marathon, jogging the last 20 feet, and demanding the gold medal — while accusing the real runners of cheating.

But there’s a catch: if anything he actually touches goes south — say, an insurrection, an economic collapse, or a casino bankruptcy (for the fifth time) — suddenly it’s everyone else’s fault. The deep state did it. The Democrats did it. The cleaning lady did it. The dog ate the country’s homework. Trump is the only man in history who can claim to be both the omnipotent genius who makes everything great and the helpless victim who never did anything wrong — often in the same sentence.

He’s a marketing savant, no doubt. Trump can take credit for the sunrise and blame the sunset on Joe Biden. He could rename Mount Rushmore “Trump Mountain” tomorrow, and half the country would swear he carved it himself with his “very large, very strong hands.”

So yes, Donald Trump is great at rebranding. He’s built a career not on creation, but on credit-taking — a mogul of manufactured glory, the king of counterfeit achievements. He doesn’t build towers, he builds myths. And in Trump’s world, the truth isn’t something that’s constructed — it’s something that’s licensed.