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We now live in a yabbocracy overseen by thieves for whom the rule of law that has held this country together for 249 years no longer exists. They are yabbos.
The question has arisen among sane people again and again over the last ten years: Who are these people?
I think I know. They’re yabbos, best described by what they are not. They’re not men. They’re not women. They are human beings, but only in the barest sense that they are of flesh and blood. Some examples are necessary. Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who during the same week it became known that there will not be money for SNAP food assistance for poor people, decided that she would use taxpayer money to buy two ultra-luxurious Gulfstream jets for her department that cost $172 million. She’s not a woman. She’s a yabbo.
Meet Paul Ingrassia. He’s not a man. When he nominated Ingrassia to run the Office of Special Counsel, Donald Trump described him as a “highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional Scholar.” Ingrassia withdrew his name from the Senate confirmation process this week when it became known that he had texted on a Republican group chat, “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time,” and that the Martin Luther King holiday should “be tossed into the seventh circle of hell.” Paul Ingrassia, who still has a job in the White House, is a yabbo.
Who says that kind of stuff? Who called Black people “monkeys” and “watermelon people” and praised those who believe in slavery as a group of Young Republicans recently did in yet another group text? Yabbos, that’s who.
How else do you describe the people behind what is going on in this country right now? Their Maximum Leader, the yabbo who goes by Donald Trump, tore down the East Wing of the White House last week. I mean, the ground where it stood is now a level patch of dirt and the dust and dregs of construction debris. He intends to build in its place a monstrosity which he already calls the “Donald J. Trump Ballroom.” The thing, which has a footprint larger than the entirety of the rest of the White House, will seat 1,000 people and is shown in an architect’s rendering as festooned in gold leaf and marble and crystal chandeliers. He broke multiple laws when he leveled the East Wing. He did not seek Congressional approval and funding, as other presidents have done when they did renovations to the White House. Instead, he is paying for his Towering Tomfoolery with donations from billionaires whose companies do business with the U.S. government and who seek favor with Trump. For this, and many, many other reasons, he is a yabbo.
We have never, in this country, had National Guard soldiers from one state deployed to the streets of a city in another state against the wishes of that state’s governor and the city’s mayor, as Donald Trump is attempting to do with soldiers from Texas and other red states to the cities of Portland and Chicago, both of which have Democrats for mayors. Who does this? A Republican yabbo.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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