The long shadows of petty tyrants

It's been about three weeks, America. We've had plane crashes, more mass shootings, and one sure-seems-like-a-coup-to-me by an unelected billionaire and a handful of frat boys that I'd report to the cops for breaking into my bank information if they were down at my at my shady neighbors' house doing this over pizza rolls and Pabst Blue Ribbons. But I suppose the glee I've seen from all my Republican friends and family that these boys have cut off food supplies for starving children and for Lutheran charities in South Dakota are worth giving up everyone's personal information. Owning the libs, am I right? Have I missed anything? Oh, wait. I forgot about that gorgeous new resort President Donald Trump suggested building by ordering a foreign country to get out 'cuz we're taking over. In the spirit of charity, what I believe may have happened to the president is the 'G' in Greenland and Gaza may have tripped him up, bless his heart, and he just got confused is all. He'd been ranting so long on the Greenland bit and demanding his way with it, and we all know how he is when he wants his way with something: "When you're a star, they let you do it!" He thinks he's entitled to one, he's entitled to the other. It's an easy mistake, when you think about it like that, Republicans will tell you. We'll certainly be able to afford it, once all these tariffs — which you must understand by now that Americans will pay for, not Canadians or Mexicans or whomever he seems to think he's threatening to use them against this week — are levied. But in any case, that was quickly forgotten in the exciting new invasion started over at the Treasury Department by Elon Musk and the Musketeers. Certainly, the access to all our private data information, which China and Russia and all sorts of nefarious outsiders are always working away to hack, has now been cracked as easily as a bowl of nuts on the family Thanksgiving table. If it's occurred to me how valuable that data is, I'm sure it's occurred to the Musketeers, who are accountable to absolutely no one to keep that data safe. But I'm sure that people who bleed greed will do the right thing. My goodness, we haven't even talked about the Cabinet appointments. There's the conduct unbecoming down at the DOD, or is it that the DEI over at the RFK with the DHS? Oh my, so many acronyms. Let me try this one more time. The DEI is officially out over at the DOD, yes, that's it. And it's a good thing, too. If you strip away all those pesky DEI standards — you know, just get it down to its basic principles, which mean: Does this person look the most like me? Then Pete Hegseth certainly does look the most like Trump. Hegseth's past of running smaller nonprofits into the ground with outlandish debt, alleged licentious relationships, reckless addictive behavior, vocal opposition to women in combat, and weekend host on Fox News was probably music to Trump's ears, a Ken doll for Trump's Malibu Dream House cabinet. Then there's the carcass-hauling, bear-planting, vaccine-denying, worm-brained guy Trump wants to be in charge of the nation's health. In less than 20 days we've seen Trump pick a fight with a bishop, blame a plane crash on two presidents before him, and rename a gulf that wasn't his and a mountain out of spite. By the second day of his reign, we all watched Republicans twist themselves into a pretzel to defend what many saw as a Nazi salute — two of them — following the inauguration by a smirking unelected man they said was just "gesturing from his heart," who then went on X to unleash a bunch of puns, including "bet you did nazi that coming" with a laughing face emoji. I know what it was, and so do you. Just like I know what an insurrection was, as did the more than 140 Capitol Police officers injured on duty Jan. 6, 2021. We've seen this administration already issue orders to West Point, immediately banning our newest elite Army cadets from forming or attending Latin Cultural Club, engineers clubs for women, Blacks, or Hispanics, the Korean-American Relations Club, Native American Heritage Forum, and many more. What we haven't seen are grocery prices or egg prices or any of those things actually become a priority but, hey, the handful of transgender athletes in the whole country are now banned from playing sports so we've got that going for us. Hallelujah. There is a saying attributed to various authors for more than a century, and I'll paraphrase it here because I keep returning to it lately: When small men cast long shadows, you can be sure the sun is about to set. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.