'Trump Declares Martial Law; Deploys Space Force'
Ever since Donald Trump, aka ‘President Goldfinger', was elected I’ve been having nightmarish dreams suggestive of incompetence, malfeasance, and endless bad hair days. The dreams are usually harmless, somewhat comical, and I don’t wake up in a cold sweat nosedive screaming for a parachute. Now, however, with the coronavirus nightmare a stark reality, my comically Trump dreams have turned into more practically realistic and frighteningly plausible scenarios.
I think I need to see someone. Here’s my latest episode, judge for yourself ...
“I woke up to a headline in the New York Times, ‘Trump Declares Martial Law; Deploys Space Force’. The story went on to say that in an unprecedented executive order by ‘President Goldfinger’ (that had become Trump’s media nickname, which he hated and really got under his skin) he had deemed it necessary to impose military law throughout the United States. Further, that he would invoke his 3rd Amendment right regarding the forced quartering of soldiers in private homes. The coronavirus, COVID-19, had gotten so out of control that the widespread panic across America had transgressed into looting and crime in the streets due to shortages of medical supplies, food and other necessities, especially toilet paper. People were using newspaper and that was causing massive sewage back-up problems, especially in the population centers of major cities as well as suburbia and parts of the mid and intermountain west. The stuff just didn’t flush. California had resorted to using organic kale leaves, but that left a disgusting green sludge. Southerners improvised as well. There were no winners.
At the heart of this sardonic collapse of social norm was the fact that President Goldfinger had canceled the 2020 presidential election. He claimed that it was a national calamity and a health risk for Americans to leave their homes and go to polling centers to vote. The state by state electronic voting systems did not work properly and were considered inaccurate, there was widespread gerrymandering, voter suppression was rampant, and foreign interference all combined to make it impossible for Americans to democratically elect a president. So, Trump used his executive power to simply cancel the election. Indefinitely. It was illegal, but it was ratified by the Supreme Court with justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch voting in favor of Goldfinger’s despotic extension plan.
Trump’s reasoning for calling up his newly formed Space Force for this particular mission was as bizarre as the Space Force itself. His inception of a Space Force was considered a good idea by his supporters and credible by many in the media, even in the military. But the ‘Force’ mission statement, which Trump says he wrote himself, caused some concern within the military community, and within science and academia ...’To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!‘ ...? Everyone knew the statement was plagiarized although Trump insisted he wrote it while attending the New York Military Academy boys‘ school in his youth. In the end, both Intellectually and practically, the Space Force was considered by most a blunder, and Trump a liar.”
My dream turned more severely nightmarish when I realized that Space Force troopers would be occupying my home ...
“In my dream I was in high school back in Brooklyn and I still lived at home with my parents and two younger sisters. My aunt Jo and uncle Joe lived on the second floor of our apartment building with my cousins Joey and Andrew. The third floor, the top floor, was usually rented out, and this space was commandeered by Space Force ‘F’ Troop, AlphaBeta Squad #13 for their quarters under Trump’s (Goldfinger’s) Martial law. There was nothing we could do about it. Needless to say it was an uncomfortable and awkward situation. To make matters even worse, there were five of them, three men and two women, and they all had show business aspirations. They were noisy, and up at all hours playing loud music.
It quickly became evident that they did not take the job seriously. They were in it for the money, for the uniforms and media publicity, and they used it as an interim stepping stone to move up in their own show business careers. Their specific talents were vague, and whatever they were they never practiced. Whereas Dommie Galino’s father a few doors down played trumpet in a club band in Manhattan and you could hear him practicing all the time all throughout the neighborhood ...especially, on summer afternoons, late, after we came home from school and before he rode the subway into the city. He was really good. I think he played at the Copacabana."
Needless to say, my dream has some interpretative challenges. On the other hand, the possibility of something like this coming to pass is not so far out of the question as to not consider its possibility, even probability, looking back across the past three and a half years of President Goldfinger’s reign of improbability.
Who would have thought or predicted that America would have elected a president with such a low bar for credibility, honesty, transparency, character, intellect, morality, justice, and a selfless sense of right and wrong?
There's a critical difference between honest transparency and being unwittingly unaware ...
“When I awoke from this dream, I realized that I was in a cold sweat this time. It wasn’t one of those dreams you forget almost immediately. It was one of those disturbing ones that stays with you for a while, and you can’t shake it off.
I wondered ...was I too old for the Space Force?”
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah
https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
Some past articles and op-eds