And don't go mistaking Paradise for that Pleasure down the road

Paradise, 16 June, photo by AFP via BBC.

My Allegory of Fire
by Donald J. Trump

and what we saw
at Pleasure
what a name
right now
but what we just saw
we just left Pleasure

[Chorus: "Paradise!"]

for Paradise https://t.co/O4m1xXK0dA

— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) November 18, 2018

Meanwhile, Emily Jane Fox of Vanity Fair (h/t Raw Story) has been reporting on Emperor Trump's intense anxiety over the fate of his eldest son, Junior, expecting to be indicted over his involvement in the Russia business, and now she's looking into its motives. What's he anxious about?


Most reporters don't seem to think this is even a question, taking it presumably for granted that a dad would obviously be upset at his kid getting busted, which is shallow on a couple of counts, because the report is evidence of more than just the possibility that our emperor has some normal human emotions:

• that he's aware that some real crime was being committed by Junior and the Russians (what a name for an early-60s tribute band), and that the Mueller investigation is concerned with something a lot more serious than a witch hunt—as I've been saying about all those intense activities in July 2017, the Goldstone-Junior emails were revealed and the emperor, in Germany for the G-20, flew into a flurry of remarkable activity, from the secret meetings with Putin to the airborne staff meeting in which he and Hope fabricated a cover story—the most sustained and focused work we've seen him do in his entire presidency—and
• of all the normal human emotions you'd expect him to show, even if you don't believe he's a psychopath, where would you rank tenderness for the son he once knocked to the ground in front of his college roommates and of whom he still enjoys saying he and Eric "were in the back of the room when God handed out brains"?

Indeed:

"... from people who have known the president well, who know the family well, it’s not necessarily concern for the fate of his child, because he’s concerned about the fate of his child,” Fox said. “He’s concerned that if Don Jr. is indicted that it could perhaps have implications on him.”

The reporter suggested Trump was an even worse father than the man who raised him.

“This is not someone who is a parent who is deeply affected by what will happen to his child, but instead by what could potentially happen to him,” Fox said. “I think all the time about that New York Times story about the taxes that the Trump family had paid, and it explained the depths to which Fred Trump went through to protect Donald Trump, to bail his son out every time he made mistakes.”

Putting your dumbest child in a position where he's exposed to criminal prosecution and then moving mountains to protect yourself from the consequences is a family tradition.

I'd add: this is another example of why that court-gossip approach to the Trump administration, repulsive and frivolous as it may seem, is really the right way to cover it. Because these are the things that matter to these people. They aren't interested in policy and government except in an old-man-yelling-at-clouds way or as an enemy, the businessman's enemy, with its annoying taxes and regulations. They're interested in committing crimes and beating each other up, like the counts and dukes of old, and these are the things that drive policy and government just now,