Straining at F-Bombs, Swallowing Camels

The only thing "AnthonyHatesMayo" dislikes more than over-rated condiments is hypocrisy and selective indignation

Editor’s note: Anthony Lucido keeps telling me that he’s away on vacation shortly, but his fertile pen didn’t get the memo. And so this exquisite rant. Enjoy!

—Steve

Straining at F-Bombs, Swallowing Camels

By Anthony Lucido

After Donald Trump recently unleashed a supposedly unpresidential profanity to express his exasperation over the unceased “cease fire” between Iran and Israel, many of Trump’s Pavlovian critics on the right — the nattering Bulwarkians, et al. — expressed outrage at Trump’s latest violation of norms. You know all the usual suspects. Undoubtedly, David French, the self-anointed conscience of conservatism, reiterated his favorite theme: any conservative, especially any professing Christian (of which I am one) who attempts to justify — or fails to denounce, with appropriate righteous indignation — Trump's behavior has been reduced to an unprincipled court jester for Trump by the Cult of MAGA.

What attention should be paid to these “Have you no decency, Orange Hitler?!” exclamations by the moral guardians of the conservative movement, who demand a return to mature and measured statesmanship, OSHA standards of presidential decorum and the preservation of the Anthony Blinken Guidelines For Proper Salad Fork Usage at Bushwood?

None. None attention. Let the Pharisees scold into the void from the Lido deck on the NR cruise.

The reason that I simply do not care about Trump’s oh so shocking potty mouth (or his trademarked Mean Tweets, or his fast food desecration of what used to be salmon and quinoa Saturday at the White House, or his hilarious, often grammatically incorrect, Randomly capitalized X rants) might be because I am a rube hypnotized by Glenn Beck to believe that Trump is the reincarnation of Darius the Great and I own several bespoke Q-Shaman genuine Tatanka hoodies which I wear to Trump rallies while holding my hand-lettered “Own the Libtards!” sign. Or it might be because I am angling to be nominated for Condiments Czar. Or, perhaps, it's because I can’t help but notice what the hyper-vigilant manners police don't care about.

Based on their paucity of outrage, they don’t care about the ten, or twelve or twenty million unvetted illegals who swarmed over our border at the invitation of the welcoming Biden administration. More to the point, they don’t seem to care much about the women and children among that group who are being sex-trafficked, raped and murdered, to say nothing of those used by the cartels as drug mules or worse. Are there terrorists among the invaders? Meh. Trump just called Brian Stelter a very dumb potato man.

Trump’s long overdue decision to drop a few bunker-busters on Iran was the most profoundly moral thing a U.S. president has done in the last 50 years

Trump’s moral betters don't seem to care about normal, law-abiding Americans displaced from their jobs, or those who have watched their communities be overrun by gangs of civic-minded Maryland Men. After all, it is only a few apartment complexes, the distant view of which is completely obscured by the security gate and the arborvitae. And what of Israel? And the Mullahs? And a new reality in which the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism, an Islamic fundamentalist gangster state that has murdered thousands of American citizens and soldiers, will still have pallets of Obama bucks but no nukes? If we’re going to talk about morality and personal character, I’d argue that Trump’s long overdue decision to drop a few bunker-busters on Iran — that is, the mostly peaceful enrichment sites that Tucker Carlson assures were only to develop clean energy for schools and hospitals and a perhaps a glass bottomed submarine to study the rich, aquatic life of the Dead Sea — was the most profoundly moral thing a U.S. president has done in the last 50 years. All the POTUSES before him who knew not to chew one's popcorn with one's mouth open at “Hamilton” didn't drop the MOPs. Trump the mouthbreathing “felon” did.

“But he once said ‘Shithole countries’”! He’s a monster! Focus on what’s important!"

I didn’t start out as a Trump guy and I'm not a palace guardian. Trump can be impulsive, petulant and thin-skinned. Although, as Lucretia recently wrote, it might be time for all those diplomatic and strategic and economic geniuses who continually portray everything he does as misguided and idiotic and disastrous, to shutteth up. At least until second breakfast — scrapple and Poptarts — has been served. In any event, I would never allow Trump to get away with shooting someone on 5th Avenue, especially if he used a bump stock. And maybe, if we lived in less perilous times, I could get behind a petition to force Trump to take a course on presidential etiquette and creased pants at David Brooks University.

Until then, so long as Trump does not donate the proceeds from the White House swear jar to another Dr. Oz for Senate campaign, I’ll live with his willful and wanton breaches of international standards of decency. And I’m comforted knowing that on days when I cannot bear Trump’s culture-coarsening conniptions, my fainting couch has a Shiatsu massaging setting. And cup holders.