The White Spheres, 54th Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): A useful portmanteau of "Musk" and "Trump" is "Mumps," which is appropriate in these days of viral epidemics and a vaccine skeptic/conspiracy nut heading the Department of Health and Human Services. "Trusk" is the obvious alternative, but that sounds too much like "trust" of which there is not a lot going either way - of the American people for their leadership or the leadership for the American people.

Since the two are nearly indistinguishable these days, we can revise our daily and ever-growing mantra to use the name Mumps instead of Musk and/or Trump. Mumps posted a picture of himself to social media wearing a crown on his head and the words, "Long live the king." Mumps has spent roughly a third of his time in office playing golf on his own for-profit courses at considerable expense of taxpayer money for travel, logistics, and security. Mumps personally profits from the money spent on each of the trips. Mumps claimed that Ukraine had somehow started the war with the invading Russian army and falsely called Zelensky an unelected “dictator” who took money from the U.S. to go to war with Russia. Mumps is demanding half of Ukraine's mineral wealth in exchange for providing military support. Mumps spread a lie that U.S.AID had shipped $100M of condoms to Hamas. Mumps suggested the U.S. should take over the Gaza strip and "own it," displacing all of the native Palestinians to create some sort of Middle East Malibu. Mumps hinted at taking over Greenland and Panama using military force and suggested Canada should become the 51st state. Mump imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China and then lifted the tariffs on our North American neighbors after they repeated pledges that they had already made. After firing the workers in charge of U.S. nuclear-weapon safety, Mumps realized that those workers were actually kind of important but didn't know how to call them back. The very same thing happened after Mumps fired Agriculture workers who were combatting the avian flu. Mumps proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and then threw a hissy fit when the AP didn't adopt his new names. Mumps blamed the L.A. wildfire crisis on some imaginary "giant faucet" in northern California and then ordered 2.2 billion gallons of water dumped from the state's reservoirs onto Central Valley farmland that didn't need it and where it won't benefit firefighters at all (but will cause problems this summer when droughts begin). Mumps replaced a four-star general as Secretary of Defense with an inexperienced, alcoholic, black-out drunk Fox & Friends weekend host. Mumps named a vaccine denier to head HHS, a Russian asset now directs National Intelligence, and a conspiracy theorist is the new FBI chief. Mumps fired the African-American four-star general chairing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling him a D.E.I hire, and replaced him with a white, three-star general. The first female commander of the U.S. Navy was fired as well for the same spurious reason. Mumps pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the convicted January 6 rioters, including the most violent felons who pled guilty to attacking and, in some cases, killing police officers. Mumps withdrew the U.S. from both the Paris climate-change treaty and the World Health Organization. Mumps tried to end the constitutional birthright citizenship of those born on American soil. After a tragic air accident, Mumps blamed the incident on "DEI," even as he admitted he had no evidence but just "common sense." Finally, there's Mumps' "greatest hit," the continued Big Lie that the free and fair 2020 election was somehow "rigged" against him, despite the absence of a shred of evidence and multiple lost court cases.  

The Greek stoic Epictetus said the way to happiness is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. Changing the actions of Mumps is clearly beyond my power but it is very much within my power to remind people of his criminality, his vulgarity, his lack of intelligence, and his narcissism. It is my hope that pointing out their fragility and ineptitude, and reminding people of it, will contribute in some small way to political resistance and ultimately to an end to this unconstitutional and contemptuous regime. Le roi est mort and a luta continua.      

Approval of a president's performance has always differed across party lines. Before Trump took office in 2017, the gap in approval between parties during a president's first February in office ranged from 21 to 60 points. In 2017, the gap rose to 79 points under Trump and increased to 84 points in 2021 under Biden. It is now at a record-high 89 points for Mumps, and that 89-point gap is the real "Gulf of America." I don't see that gulf closing any time soon.