The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Denny the Dealer and I were hunkered down in a watering hole up north and the waitress had just brought us our beers. Denny, always on the lookout for an ‘angle’, held up his hand and said, “Wait a minute. Is that what I ordered? “ The waitress didn’t know Denny, at least not yet, and she said, “Didn’t you order an IPA?” There was just enough uncertainty in her voice that Denny pronounced that no, he had definitely ordered an ESB.

You maybe never have known a boy like Denny the Dealer. He doesn’t believe in paying full price for anything. He thinks you should buy him dinner, I guess for the pleasure of his company. He will take a broken tool back to the hardware store, possibly not even the one he bought it from, and demand they replace it or give him a discount on the new one. Or on something else he wants to buy. He has a scam for everything from mailed packages to airline tickets. If you dropped him in a bazaar in Constantinople or a tourist shop in Tijuana, he’d make them sweat for any puny profit they might make off him.

He has a business that he pays virtually no taxes on. I asked him how that was even possible, naïve about the nature of corporate tax laws, and he spent half an hour describing various offshore corporations he’d created, multiple bank accounts that shifted money from one to the next so that they never showed more than $10K at some magic time for the IRS. He has money in another person’s name, underage and therefore beyond the revenuers reach. I assume he spends more time in fiduciary sleight of hand than he does in his business enterprise. You want to see capitalism in action, you need to drink with me and Denny.

I’m going to assume, for the sake of friendship, most of what Denny does is legal in a strictly tax law sense. Moral, I think we can safely say moral doesn’t weigh in on Denny’s calculus. Money, they say, is the root of all evil and maybe so, but what I know from watching folks who think money is pretty near Everything is that it usually doesn’t buy them happiness. Easy living, yeah, but it’s hard to be happy when you’re always worried someone is going to get the upper hand in your deal.

Our waitress was obviously flustered, what with screwing up Denny’s order, so she reached for his glass to take it back, dump it and get his ESB. Denny didn’t hesitate, he just offered to take the IPA and pay half price, fair is fair, he said. The waitress was considering it. At least until I said, “He’s pulling your leg. He does this everyplace we go. He ordered the IPA. He thinks it’s funny to horse around.”

When our relieved but somewhat puzzled waitress left, Denny shook his head. “I try to teach you a few tricks and what do you do? You’ll pay full price for everything, Skeeter, and lemme tell you, that’s not how the real world works. Full price is for suckers like you.” I took a long sip of my own beer. Which, being the first of the day, tasted like liquid pleasure. “Worth every penny,” I said, already knowing what Denny would say in reply.

What we used to call flip-flopping, we now call the art of the deal. I know, it seems cruel to pepper the Prez with questions about Trump Always Chickens Out, nasty questions he points out, when all he’s doing is ‘negotiating’. The stock market roller coaster follows every reversal judiciously, one day up when the tariff threat is lifted, next day down when the tariff is back on, all head-spinning stuff but probably exciting for you day-traders. Small businesses, not so much. Anyone who has their retirement funds tied to the Market, kind of a scary ride these days.

Consistency, Emerson told is, is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I’m not sure Ralph Waldo would assume inconsistency is the paragon or parakeet of big minds. Sometimes it looks more like just a confused state of mind, possibly the result of wee morning tweeting and social media overdose. Nevertheless, rest assured these aren’t daily reversals, they’re negotiating tactics, not TACOs. Course, if it looks like a chicken, squawks like a chicken and poops chicken shit endlessly, it might really be a chicken.

Half the news that floods through my newspapers and internet feeds is a reversal of yesterday’s reportage. TACO is angry with Putin one day, going to be dire consequences, next day there’s rumors of a breakthrough and possible peace meeting, followed of course by the news that Putin has scaled up the assaults, and you know tomorrow’s flip-flop. Deja-vu all over again. And again. And again.

These are strange times and getting stranger by the minute and by the tweet. We take it for granted now that every morning we’ll rise and shine to a new law of physics handed down by the logic-averse White House and ratified by the toadies who, like Pence, smile their frozen acquiescence and wait their turn. To say Democracy hangs in the balance, well, maybe that seemed hysterical a year ago, but how about now? A buddy, a veteran of Viet Nam, asked me how I liked Nixon these days. Nixon looks pretty damn good.

The Trump Reality Show operates on the premise that the audience needs constantly new shocks and awe, otherwise we would turn our limited attention spans to a different channel. The sad truth is, the clown king is right, we crave the tension and the suspense. It’s a cliffhanger every day now, forget who won the ballgame yesterday, forget your kid’s birthday, forget changing the oil on your car. You got what short attention you can give fixed totally on the Next Tweetstorm. Today it was threatening Iran with Total Annihilation Unlike Anything Seen in the History of the Universe!! Does that grab your attention??

Well, not as much as it might’ve before he said the same thing to the North Koreans…. My worry is that the Trumpster has sense enough to realize that he can only ratchet up the rhetoric so far and then he’ll have to actually DO something. You know, maybe a small pre-emptive strike on a Balkan state who hasn’t paid their share of NATO dues. THAT should bring your attention back to sharp focus.

What most of us are focusing on these days is how we have a rogue President in the White House, a man uninterested in reading much of anything, not even a one page briefing report, and who has decided the only bright person in the room is the guy he admires in the mirror every morning. If ignorance is bliss, we can count our blessings here in the Yew Ess of Aye. But if it’s a prescription for error, hang on to your seats, the ride is going to get a lot rockier before we get rid of this narcissistic huckster.

So close … and yet, so far. The Nobel Peace Prize was Donald’s for the asking. He had already declared victory for the world and, of course, himself, the Master Wheeler Dealer of the Century, the man who showers accolades on himself deserved or not. He had wrung concessions from Little Rocket Man by threatening nuclear holocaust on the Korean Peninsula and now all he had to do was show up in Stockholm and accept the prize.

Easy as pie for the Donald. Nothing to it. Those other yahoos, those previous presidents, they’d taken the long route, sent over diplomats, set the table, delved into those pesky details, laid the groundwork … only to have it blow up at the end. The Trumpeter was not going to be pulled into that vortex of complexity, not for a minute, no fool he. Throw the Hail Mary and before the ball had even begun to descend toward the goal line, declare Victory and grab the Prize. Be home to Mir-a-Lago in time to catch Fox and Friends and take the congratulatory call from Hannity. Fantastic work, Mr. President!

Oh sure, they said the Koreans might worry about John Bolton mouthing off after writing that article proving beyond the shadow of a doubt we had the right, if not the moral imperative, to attack North Korea pre-emptively. And when he mentioned they should follow the Libyan model for disarmament, maybe they worried Fearless Leader would end up in the same ditch as Ghaddafi. But that’s the kind of tough talk that works far better than subtle diplomacy. So what if a week ago the deal with Iran was torn up. A deal’s not a deal unless Donald says it’s a deal. After all, he is the master of the Art of, well, you already know, the Deal. And he was offering Little Rocket Man a deal. You disarm those nukes, we’ll make you rich and happy.

Well, if you can’t trust Trump to honor a deal, who can you trust? He gave you a chance and you turned your back. Now you’ve pissed him off. You’ve cost him that Nobel, no easy thing for him to digest. He’d already had one made and if you think he’s sending it back, you don’t know jack about negotiating. Surrender now!