CSotD: Polishing Up The Handle
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In case you missed it, and particularly if you didn’t, FIFA has capitalized on the clear path to success in the United States. On the eve of the World Cup tournament, they guaranteed something or other by creating a gaudy, ridiculous “Peace Prize” and awarding it to Dear Leader, whose country will be co-hosting the event along with Mexico and Canada, who don’t get any baubles but then again don’t require them.
The trophy honors Trump for having halted eleventy-billion wars and being really good-looking and wise and stuff, and for being as hard to flatter as an eight-year-old.
Brown suggests that FIFA is tampering with the world’s most prestigious tournament, and I’d certainly put it above the Olympics, though I’m nearly always stunned by the level of interest in cricket, which kind of sneaks up on you because so much of its audience is around the Indian Ocean. Which counts in reality but doesn’t show up much on American TV and after all, which matters?
Anyway, it’s one of the great honors of his life to receive this participation trophy for a sport that there is no record of his ever having played or showed the slightest interest in, but he’s a fan now and will remain one until somebody else dangles a shiny object in front of him.
FIFA used to have to collect millions in bribes to determine what nation would host the tournament, but this simplifies things remarkably, leaving the question of whether, when you feel off the gold foil, the trophy itself is solid chocolate or just hollow.
FIFA’s only challenge now is to find a way to teleport fans from other countries directly into the stadiums, since Trump plans to have ICE patrolling the area looking for people who don’t belong here. But as long as the tourists stay away from restaurants, hotel entrances, sidewalks and the United States, they should be okay.
In any case, flattering Dear Leader may have the effect of taking some of the snob appeal off the game in this country, and I’ll be excited to see Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood standing cheering in the skyboxes while Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly lead a drum circle in the stands.
In the meantime, the Golden Phallus will join the rest of Trump’s gilded accoutrements surrounding his otherwise uncluttered desk. When you only work two or three hours a day, it’s important to get the decision-making to an efficient minimum and Goris seems to sum things up.
The key to good management is to hire the right people and then get out of their way.
Second-best plan is to hire good-looking, telegenic people and stay out of their way as well. In fact, just stay out of the way, because there comes a point when the facts are so overwhelmingly against you that attempting to address them just makes you look dishonest or foolish or something not so good.
It becomes an issue when your tough-guy law-enforcing hero winds up on a list of war criminals. One of the problems with making policy based on watching Clint Eastwood movies is that, in the real world, Dirty Harry would have long-since lost his badge and perhaps faced charges himself.
And don’t tell Dear Leader, but we’re currently dwelling in the real world, where sometimes the best you can do is pass the buck and hope some fellow with a misplaced sense of honor will take the charge and let you off the hook.
The flaw being that you can throw out all the Pentagon reporters who refuse to write approved stories, but it turns out there are reporters who still know how to report even without being spoonfed by the official sources.
The other problem being that when the public is able to see what is going on, it becomes an issue that Dear Leader has to wake up and address, despite his clear preference for staying out of the way of his appointed staff.
Lao-tzu wrote
A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, “We did this ourselves.”
Dear Leader certainly makes no attempt to talk little and avoid being praised, but the more immediate point is that, however much he denies the polls, he not only fails to honor the people but is beginning to be despised. He manages to tick every box on Lao-tzu’s list of things not to do.
Granlund salutes the holidays with a cartoon about how both sides want things, damn them. The Democrats want poor children fed and housed and to have health care, while the Republicans want tax breaks for billionaires and for brown and black people to be rounded up and deported.
Poor Santa has to find a way to please them both!
Whamond suggests Santa might pare things down to a reasonable level by fulfilling his traditional role of knowing who’s been bad or good, a tradition reinforced by people who find it fun to remind their children that they are under constant surveillance:
It’s good training for their adult life, where facial recognition, license plate readers and the pinging of cell towers assure good behavior from everyone, and if we take little footprints of babies in the maternity wards, why not scrape a DNA sample from inside their little cheeks?
I’m joking, of course. We’re closing the maternity wards.
There could be another way of looking at the list, Moudakis suggests: Not only does his Santa find there are more nice kids than naughty kids, but he’s overwhelmed with the number of kids who are just hungry.
What you plan to do about that obvious disparity is more about you than it is about Santa. We know what Santa would want to do to, but we also know who it is that really makes these things happen.
And it sure isn’t that fellow who rose to power by polishing the handle on the big front door.
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