Five Minutes to Midnight

During World War II, the BBC World Service broadcast a nightly German language news program that began at exactly 11:55 PM European time with the words, "Deutchen Zoldaten am Rein, es ist Funf Minuten vor Zwolf!"  (German soldiers in the Rheinland, it is five minutes before twelve!).  'Five minutes before twelve' is a German idiom meaning, "Doom is at hand!"  It was a propaganda program designed to dishearten and scare the shit out of the Germans.  Near the end of the war, as Allied troops swarmed through the heart of Germany and German cities were being carpet bombed, the truth of those words was inescapable.  German officers abandoned their posts and headed to Argentina with their escapes well planned in advance.  Left on their own, soldiers shed their uniforms, stole civilian clothing, and ran off trying to pretend to be Frenchmen on bicycles.  Loosing a war is a bitch.

This past December was disheartening for the current occupant of the White House.  Every single former presidential appointee and staffer was headed to jail and or singing their hearts out acapella to federal investigators.  Potential appointees to replace those who were fired or were jumping ship were refusing suicide White House jobs.  You'd think he'd smell the poop in his panties and resign.  But no, not this cretin.  The last Republican President to abandon his sinking ship, Richard Nixon, was a cultured gentleman by comparison.  When it was clear that he'd lost the popular vote in the 1960 election, he conceded to John F. Kennedy even before the Electoral College results were in.  It was a gentlemanly thing to do.  And over a decade later, as Watergate closed in around him, he didn't wait for his impending impeachment.  He sat before the national television cameras and resigned, publicly.  He was a louse, but that last speech was a courageous cultured class act.  Years later, after he retired to suburban New Jersey, commentator David Frost jokingly asked him, in an interview series,  if he was considering any future political runs.  Nixon good naturedly joked back, saying, "Saddlebrook (NJ) already has a mayor."  Despite being a louse, he was a gentleman with class.

Not that I admired Nixon, make no mistake.  His primary accomplishment as President was pulling out of Vietnam so abruptly that it resulted in the chaotic humiliating helicopter evacuation as the Communist hordes swarmed into Saigon.  A total disaster disgracing every American service member who was killed or maimed in that war. Thanks DICK! Secondly, of course, was his 'opening up China' which led to the closing of almost every factory in America as millions of American jobs moved to China making that nation the economic power it is today, while destroying the American middle class.  Thanks DICK! 

As I write this in late December, SECDEF, the last adult in the room, has just jumped off the sinking presidential ship; literally leaving Der Fuhrer without any generals.  Our leader's Christmas gift to the nation? Shut down the government sending hundreds of thousands of employees home without pay.  Thanks DICKhead.  Not satisfied with sabotaging the planet's future by kicking the legs out from under worldwide agreement on climate change, he is currently causing the world's worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.  He blames everyone but himself.  And on Christmas Eve, he cruelly told a seven year old child to 'not believe in Santa.'  That was a step up for the man who stole thousands of little children from their immigrant parents and threw them in cages; who's cruel policies resulted in the deaths of two immigrant children, for which he blamed the previous administration during which not one immigrant child died in nearly a decade.

The Current Occupant ain't got no class.  He'd rather drag the nation through the mud than ever admit that he's screwed.  Someone suicidal needs to tell him, "Herr president, es ist Funf Minuten vor Zwolf!"  They are going to have to fumigate the White House after they finally drag him out of there, kicking and screaming and tweeting incoherently.

The only question is: Is it five minutes to midnight for him, or for our nation?

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