An Agent of KAOS

 

If you're as old as I am, you will remember the 1960s TV sitcom Get Smart, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. (If you're too young to have seen it, you might have seen the 2008 film that was based on it—although probably not; it was a pretty big flop.) The series was a parody of another popular TV series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which itself capitalized on the popularity of the James Bond franchise. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon played agents 86 and 99 of the secret government agency CONTROL. They were the good guys. Their chief adversary was Siegfried, an agent of KAOS.

His supporters think Donald Trump is one of the good guys—an agent of CONTROL, if you will. He certainly seemed to be in control on July 13th, when a would-be assassin's bullet took off the tip of his ear and he had the presence of mind to pause for a photo op before the secret service hustled him offstage.

But Trump is obviously an agent of KAOS.

His speeches are insane, incoherent rambles on windmills, toilets, sharks, Hannibal Lecter, Arnold Palmer's... you know. (He calls it "the weave," but a more common term is "dementia.") And have you forgotten his presidency? Apparently half the country has. They claim they were better off four years ago. Apparently they completely forgot about COVID-19. It's been estimated that his reckless handling of the pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Remember the constant turnover in the west wing? It seemed that every day someone was being fired or resigning in frustration, something he was apparently proud of. ("I like turnover. I like chaos.") As expected, his Supreme Court nominees voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, turning the country into a chaotic crazy quilt of conflicting abortion laws.

And how can anyone forgot the chaos of January 6, 2021, when he became the first president in our history to refuse to peacefully transfer the reins of power, instead opting to incite a violent insurrection?

In a couple of months, our country will once again be thrown into Donald Trump's chaos, and this time it will be even worse. Last time, there were people who were able to control his craziest impulses. (Drop a nuclear bomb into a hurricane?!) This time, there will be no guard rails. He will surround himself with sycophants who will serve without question. The judicial branch won't control him; the Supreme Court has granted him immunity. And if the Christofascist Heritage Foundation has its way, Project 2025 will undermine the legislative branch. The checks and balances carefully put in place by our founding fathers will effectively be removed, turning our country into a fascist autocracy.

Republicans I have admired—Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Ford—would never have stood for this. Even the ones I don't have much use for wouldn't. (We live just a few miles from where Reagan is buried; lately, I sometimes imagine I hear him spinning in his grave.) They would be appalled that their party elected a corrupt, pathologically dishonest demagogue like Trump, much less enabled him, with the aid of the Heritage Foundation, to systematically dismantle our government. But the Republican Party no longer exists. There is only the party of Trump, the party of chaos.

I could cry, but as Siegfried would say, "This is KAOS. We don't cry here."

Bernie Kopell as Siegfried