And so has Ross.

And life is good. He showed up this morning around 11, We had a chat, we had lunch, we ran some errands, and thne we came back to the apartment and had a cuddle.

And I have been cuddle deficient for a long time. Cuddles are good.

Otherwise, life goes on. Trump approaches the White House as we speak. I bet things are goig to get really interested in the new year as Inauguration Day (or as Trump refers to it, Doomsday) looms ever closer. I predict that he will begin to panic once there is no longer a set of holidays and a change of year in between him and a job he never really wanted and certainly never dreamed he could actually get.

And I think he is still trying to sabotage himself. He has mroe or less told his supporters that “lock her up” and “build a wall” were just words that “played well” with the rubes… in other words, them.

And he’s doing it in this creepy way, like he’s saying “You guys knew all that was bullshit, right? You knew I didn’t mean it. Sure, it worked on those other people… you know, the morons and hicks… but not on us cool, smart people, right?”

I honestly think he is doing that to assuage his conscience. Yes, he does have one, albeit a primitive and stultified one. Now that he has won the election, he is beginning to feel bad about all the lies he told and now he has to convince himself that nobody really believed them and therefore he is not going to be building a kingdom on lies or anything.

I also think that, like anyone going into a job for which they feel woefully unqualified, his strongest desire is to lower expectations as fast and as far as he can.

However, one thing troubles me about the Old Mad King To Be : he has been talking about how important it is for America to maintain and expand its nuclear arsenal, and by what can only be sheer coincidence , Vladimir Putin said the same thing a couple hours later.

Now I know that for a lot of people who are younger than me, and to a lot of idiots my age or older, the Cold War era was the good old days, when you knew who the enemy was and Kindly Uncle Reagan was in charge.

Of course, he’s the one who ended the cold war first place. But these people value nostalgia over reality every single time, so those things don’t matter, any more than the fact that it’s Republicans who spend like sailors and Democrats who balance the budget matters to them,.

They love their Imaginary Reagan, and that’s all that matters.

But I was around for the end of the Cold War. I was around when the threat of a nuclear holocaust hung over everything like the smoke from a crematorium. I remember what it was like to know that thick-necked narrow-minded hawks and little boys in men;s suits playing games were in control of the life or death of the entire planet, and there being absolutely nothing I or anyone seemed to be able to do to change that.

When I celebrated the Berlin Wall going down, I was mostly celebrating the end of that.

And I do not want that back. Even knowing what I know now, that the whole thing was a giant boondoggle designed to keep people scared while the Military Industrial Complex stole the public’s money by the fistful, and that it was never very likely that Reagan or Bush would have pushed the button… I still do not want it back.

The world was far stupider back then. Stupid enough to think that the world could be divided into the good people and the bad people that easily, that the other side was nothin but mindless and implacable evil,and that anything was justified as long as you could claim it contributed to the fight against the apparently infinite evil of The Other Guys.

And to be honest, I don’t trust Trump with the nuclear codes. He might unleash Armageddon just to get back at a reporter who pissed him off by reporting the actual truth instead of Trump Brand Truth.

I can only assume that they will do with him what they did with Reagan when the senile dementia really started kicking in, and that’s add a few technically illegal complications to the launch process in order to keep the President from being…. hasty.

I don’t think Trump will have the moral authority to start an actual war, however. Not even with some big terrorist attack that oh so conveniently happens at exactly the right moment to justify what they wanted to do anyway. The vast majority of people know that the last War in Iraq was a total disaster and people are going to be asking a lot of very pointed questions as to the bona fides of any and all justifications for war.

That doesn’t mean he can’t do it, of course. Thanks to all the executive order nonsense the Americans tolerate, the President can do that shit without even asking Congress. Heck, without even telling them.

Because, of course, when going to war, the last thing you want getting in the way is the will of the people.

But without popular support from the people or the military, it would be met with great resistance and possibly even outright defiance.

And Dick Cheney has emerged as a top Trump adviser, so he might just be able to talk Baby Donnie into doing it. That could lead to a cultural standoff between the federal government and damned near everyone else.

I don’t know what happens then. Riots? Revolution? Assassination? Violent suppression of dissent? What happens if even the Supreme Court is against the sitting President?

I am betting on impeachment. I don’t think Donnie is nearly as smart as Reagan, nor is he as willing to listen as Dubya, and so he will not be able to shield himself from it.

And that trial should be a hell of a show.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.