A Reality Check for Donald Trump

Donald Trump doesn’t want to appear stupid. When he paid no taxes on one recent return [the other nine of the last ten years were not made public], he said, "It proves I’m smart."

The Donald needs to show he’s just as smart as the scientists who say the Earth is heating up. It’s only about 97% of them, and the new President says it’s not absolutely certain. He may be figuring on a couple of fall-back positions. If it does turn out the climate is heating up, he can always say, “Maybe, a warmer climate will mean a longer growing season for crops, and besides, I like tropical fruits.” The next fall-back position is if it’s really Global Heating and not just Global Warming, that could stimulate some great new technology that will have spill-over benefits for society. 

Where will we get all the money to develop technology on such a scale? It’s already there! We merely take our military economy, and use the money currently spent on battle-ready carrier groups and new planes like the F-35 that crash on test flights. Then, there are the 800 plus US military bases around the world, costing hundreds of billions every year. Also, don’t forget the plans for modernizing our Triad of Nuclear Weapons that we no longer need now that Russia is the new President’s personal friend, and China has substantial business interests with the US. Whom are we aiming our ICBMs at anyway? Both these Capitalist economies should pay their share, come war or peace. Donald Trump, the new leader of the Western World, is the acknowledged master of the art of the deal. So, let our new slogan be “Make Deals, Not War.”

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The second Reality Check for the Donald is the number of fancy properties he owns around the world, especially the jewels in his crown of fortune such as the golf courses at the edge of the sea in Scotland at Aberdeen and Turnberry, the one at Doonbeg in Ireland, and the one in Palm Beach Florida. Some of the other 13 Golf Clubs around the world must be hardly higher than sea level, as well. 

Two of Trump’s other holdings are in great danger — Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach and Trump Towers in the middle of Manhattan — both at the mercy of the coming higher tides.  Mar-a-Lago, His Palm Beach Club has been described as “lavish,” “splendrous,” “ornate” and more, all set upon a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth. Trump Tower is on the Island of Manhattan between the tidal Lower Hudson River and the tidal East River. 

Donald may think that he and his wife Melania are safe in his penthouse suite at Trump Tower (shades of Henry VIII). But, the elevators will short out in a second when the salt water from rising storm surges come in. He also must think that when oceans rise from the melting of the Himalayan glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet, he can just plant another couple of rows of palm trees at the shores of Mar-a-Lago to soak up the water from the coming high seas at Palm Beach. I bet the Dutch never thought of that.

The Donald must live in the mental illness of “wishful thinking.” How else can we describe a man afflicted with tiny hands and thin wrists, who buys up all those championship golf courses. 

All those millions of Americans (especially in Oklahoma and Texas) may have thought, like Donald Trump, that Global Warming and Climate Change were a great hoax perpetrated by a conspiracy of European scientists and business interests in Denmark and Germany who want to corner the market in windmills. Unfortunately for all the climate denialists, Mother Nature is unimpressed by money. She is, however, perturbed by all the people who have followed a profligate lifestyle that has turned the Earth into a gigantic greenhouse. So, She has upped the ante by visiting upon them a multifaceted Reality Check: droughts in Texas and California, record heat waves in the SouthWest, wildfires in Tennessee and western North Carolina, and floods in the upper MidWest — numbers of people enough to believe in climate change, at least.

Donald Trump may not read much, living as he does in his own bubble of wealth and elegance, but some of the Donald’s wannabees must already believe in climate change, if not Climate Extremes. They will surely tell him that the water traps his vaunted golf courses will soon become estuaries of the sea, and Mar-a-Lago … don’t ask. Perhaps his own children will have the courage to tell their father that Mother Nature has many more ways and means, more than Papa Donald has millions, to convince them all that Global Heating has begun and Climate Chaos is already a tradition. If he needs a Court Jester to tell him, Gadfly will apply for the job.