extraordinary
becomes ordinary
through repetition

First off, yes I can count and there are 6 syllables in extraordinary.

My blog, my rules (anyone else remember the Australian TV show, The Librarians?) …. but I digress.

Today’s haiku is adapted from the passage in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Piece, The Art of the Self-Deal (download pdf of article) by one time Ronald Reagan speech writer, Peggy Noonan (which used to count as Republican Royalty) where Ms. Noonan writes about Trump-era corruption:

We’ll quickly posit what we mean by Trump-era corruption. I see two general areas, personal enrichment and the use of government to satisfy private goals.

The personal-enrichment part is suggested by recent and frequent reports showing that Mr. Trump’s net worth, and that of his family, has surged dramatically in his second term. This isn’t just wealthy folks seeing their stocks go up: Trump businesses have developed positions in industries over which the administration exercises power.

And there’s the sheer scale: The extraordinary becomes ordinary through repetition; scandals add up and become a blur, not a call to action. But the country pays a cost for all this. Institutionally, everything happening today sets a precedent. Every abuse we accept widens the range of possible misbehavior for the next administration.

As always, the whole world is watching. What it has seen lowers the esteem in which it formally (if grudgingly) held Americans. It embarrasses us before the world. It hurts our heart a little. We were the morally rectitudinous Doughboy GI Marshall Planning JFK and Ronnie People who made the wall come down. We did our best each generation to be equal to our reputation, or at least to have some class. There are foreign-policy implications to all this. Some day we’ll need friends and see only the satisfied spite of the previously jealous.

Nothing good comes from this. When corruption is allowed, it governs not today but tomorrow too.

The extraordinary becomes ordinary through repetition.

Nothing good comes from this.

When I think that we are already so worn out with all of this and there two years to go, the bearable, in the face the extraordinary becoming ordinary through repetition becomes un bearable.

I can no longer see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I cannot imagine a light at then end of the tunnel.

I cannot even see the tunnerl.

All I can see the end of the movie, The Planer of the Apes.

Charleton Heston character, Taylor, rides along the ocean to find what is left of the Statue of Liberty and he realizes that all the technology that was supposed to send him off into space and bring him back home worked.

Taylor was home.

But while Taylor was gone, the World went a little crazy and a destroyed itself as it once was.

The unthinkable had been become thinkable.

All Taylor could do was pound his fist on the sand in frustration.

And say, “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

I watch the news.

I read the news.

And I pound the sand.

And I say, You maniacs!

And I say, You blew it up!

And I say, Ah, damn you!

You knew what you were doing and you did it anyway.

Right now I that’s what I see when I look for any glimmer of light at the end of any tunnel.

on the assumption
president is rational …
admit have my doubts

We must therefore prepare for the following possibility: That Mark Carney was right, and this relationship will remain altered, regardless of who occupies the White House.

No one is coming to save us. Our response must take these facts into account if it is to be effective and sustainable in the long term. While it is entirely understandable that tempers are running high and that a majority of our fellow citizens are feeling a strong desire for revenge, a response based on retaliatory tariffs will not take long to rebound to our collective detriment.

Let us look at this purely objectively: This response assumes that Mr. Trump, when backed into a corner by any damage arising from countertariffs, will call off the tariff threat in order to save face before, or soon after, the midterm elections. In short, it is based on the assumption that the U.S. President is a rational actor – something I must admit I have my doubts about.

From the opinion piece, Canadians can’t assume the next U.S. president will drop tariffs by Daniel Dufort in the Toronto The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition) 2 Sep 2026.

In short, it is based on the assumption that the U.S. President is a rational actor

– something I must admit I have my doubts about.

One more time.

Something I must admit I have my doubts about.

What is the word I am thinking of here … what is that word?

Understatment?

I feel using the word understatement is an understatement.

let’s be clear it’s not
about house or rules any
HOA would make

It is NOT about the house.

It is what the house stands, well, stood for.

There are places around the world that most folks feel better knowing both these places are and that these places are protected.

I think there was, for a large part, a global sigh of dismay when the Cathedral of Notre Dame burned down.

I would count the White House where the President of the United States has lived since the John Adams moved in 1800.

Yes the place has been renovated, added on to, rebuilt from the inside out and even burned down.

But at its core, in a country where anybody, it was said, could grow up to be President, it was where the President lived.

Where Ronald Reagan, JFK, Ike, FDR, Teddy and old Abe himself all lived.

It’s where Thomas Jefferson once served ice cream.

That house stood for something.

It said to the occupant that they were temmporary.

That holding the office and living in that house was a trust that came with the job.

It was implied that who ever lived there would work for all American’s to make America better by the time they moved out than it had been when they moved in.

That’s what that house …

That’s what living in that house stood for.

Well, maybe anybody could grow up to be President, but I think we have proved that having just anybody doesn’t work.

So the Supreme Court says the National Trust for Historic Preservation has no standing is saying what should and should not be allowed in the way of White House Renovation.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has no standing when the most recognizable home in America gets an addition that any HOA would have over ruled anywhere else.

You know what I mean?

Any HOA Board of beer drinking neighbors would have made a better and quicker decision that the group sitting in the Supreme Court Building.

And ONCE AGAIN, here is the real tradgedy.

Five of nine members of the Supreme Court ruled against the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

And when they made their ruling, they knew, in their hearts, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald world where it is always 3 a.m., they know they made the wrong ruling for the wrong reason for the wrong feller at the wrong time.

They knew it.

They know it.

And I will say this.

If it wasn’t for the hatred in their hearts for anything opposition, I would bet that 99% of American’s don’t like this either.

They know it.

And still, it goes on.

The trick of this administration has always been taking the level of offense to the next level so that earlier levels of offense pale in comparision.

But we think each day, now we have reached the limit.

And each day, we find, there are no limits.

As former President Obama said once about the birth certificate nonsense, “remember when we thought that was as crazy as he could get.”

I am sick about this and sick about what it stands for as a measure of how far we have fallen away.

I am sick, that as a measure of what was destroyed by those people, it could turn out to be a half way mark.