Outgoing Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn (back) listens to US President Donald J. Trump deliver remarks during a meeting with members of his Cabinet. Getty Images
Outgoing Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn (back) listens to US President Donald J. Trump deliver remarks during a meeting with members of his Cabinet. Getty Images
Go on, away with you now. Go watch Trump crumble. It will be far more entertaining than anything here. For all I have to write about is putting hooks in a garage wall. It is dull, it is orderly and it's the polar opposite of Trump. Be off with you.
Trump right now is wondrous entertainment. His administration is entropic. The mob that gathered around him, that collection of flakes and parasites, creeps and bullies, liars, shouters, grifters, chancers and members of his family, are all of them, in one way or another, thieves or would-be thieves.
And they're falling apart, have been doing so for months now, because there is nothing to hold them together, for at the heart of the mob is a moral nothing, an absence, that goes by the name of Trump.
They clung to him while he went up the hill, their eyes on the lure of booty, but now that he's rolling back down again, one by one they're letting go and running for their lives.
For without trust or love or truth or any form of integrity to bind them to each other or to Trump, they are revealing themselves for the no-good parasites that they always were. They are ratting on each other. They will rat on Trump. They may already have done so.
As the disorder swells unstoppably, their fear is deserved. Their grief too. Justice is on to them. We more or less honest souls can watch their unravelling with a clear conscience and a heart as light as a dandelion seed.
Meanwhile I am tidying my garage. As entertainment it just doesn't compare with Trump. Though I have to say that it has surprised me.
Trump right now is wondrous entertainment.
A lifetime ago I worked briefly for a bloke with the world's most orderly garage. Its walls were hung with tools in the way that a Christmas tree is hung with baubles, except that if you take a bauble from a tree it leaves no trace, but if you took a tool from this man's wall its ghost appeared behind in the form of its outline traced on the chipboard. It was as if the wall was already pining for the tool's return.
And if he'd lent the tool to someone, the man would pin a scrap of paper in the space, noting the date and the name of the borrower. Here was order made manifest. And at the age of 18 I thought it vile.
It seemed to me that the garage reeked of fear. The man imposed such order on his tiny empire because he was scared of what lay beyond the garage walls, scared of disorder, of life's exciting jungle, its random chances, its delicious dangers.
But I am not 18 any more and I am more forgiving. For as we age we find disorder less appealing. Perhaps we are subconsciously aware of the gradual dissolution of our own bodies, of their entropic descent towards their constituent parts, of the threat of that ultimate disorder, cancer. And at the age of 60 I've just tidied the tools in my garage.
For as long as I've lived here I've simply leaned my larger garden tools haphazardly against the garage wall. But gradually I began to find the arrangement displeasing. It was too messy, too insecure.
And the feeling grew until last week it grew too much and from the hardware store I bought hooks to fix to the concrete wall, and screws to fix them with, and a hammer drill and a masonry bit and I came home $100poorer and all in the hope of a little order.
Would Trump shell out $100 for a little order? I doubt it. His vanity is such that he is blind to what surrounds him. Order for Trump is being praised, is having his ego stroked. Order for Trump is feeling on the throne. The truth does not come into it. He's a monster of egocentricity, a true freak, which will make his demise all the more entertaining.
Unlike my hookwork. A DIY story is interesting only to the extent that it goes wrong. Mine went right.
The hammer drill hammered holes. Into the holes went little wads of plastic for the screws to grip, and into the wads went the screws. And when the hooks were up I shook them to see that they were firm and then I hung two brooms on them, two spades, a fork, a rake, a hoe, an axe, a grubber and a splitter.
And I stood back, and I saw that it was good and then I went inside and turned on the telly and sat in smugness to watch Trump's world descend, deliciously, into chaos.
