Donald Trump’s motley cabinet is getting a bum and a dumb rap

You know America is circling the drain when a minor TV sitcom personality and D-list comedian-turned-podcast host is considered a formidable political force capable of offering a sitting president trenchant geopolitical advice.

Some of you, dear readers, may think that opening sentence, laced, admittedly, as it is with condescension, is meant to offend the legion of mostly mixed-martial-arts-addicted men who listen religiously to Joe Rogan for his trite life lessons and juvenile soliloquies about all sorts of serious matters from pandemics and global heating to presidential politics.

It is not. It is, instead, not only a statement of fact, but persuasive evidence of how stupidity has become the principal prerequisite for success in a decaying country that, long ago, abandoned the idea that governance required intelligence.

The natural consequence of the primacy of idiocy in what could charitably be called the “public discourse” is the absurd notion that Rogan is qualified to suggest that President Joe Biden – a decrepit old man who, it must be said, will be remembered mainly for being the bosom-hugging buddy of a wanted Israeli war criminal – may be courting World War III by permitting Ukraine to target Russia with US-supplied longer-range missiles.

“There should be some sort of pause for significant actions that could potentially start World War III,” Rogan recently implored Biden.Such is the measure of Rogan’s influence, that his plea was reported by several “sober” news organisations, including the fast-fading-into-irrelevance Newsweek magazine.

As of this writing, Rogan has not been appointed by president-elect Donald Trump to his cabinet of conspiracy theorists, cable news talk show “stars”, and various charlatans, racists, Islamophobes, alleged sexual assaulters, and confirmed thugs in suits.

I suspect that Rogan was not inclined, quite sensibly, to take a hefty pay cut from his lucrative gig.

Many others have abandoned their comfortable perches on Fox News and the rancid fever pit otherwise known as the far-right-media “ecosystem” to take up the urgent call to serve their dear leader.

But rather than recoil from the spectacle of Trump’s clown car cabinet when it takes the helm early next year, I plan to dip into a well-deep bowl of popcorn and enjoy watching America implode by its own glorious hand.

Remember, almost 79 million Americans – close to 50 per cent of the voting electorate – cast their ballot for a felon who has been described by his ex chief of staff, among a parade of the president-elect’s former “inner circle”, as an “idiot”, a “dope”, and a “moron”.

Whatever other conclusions can be drawn by the results of the 2024 presidential campaign, this much is clear: Most Americans have a low to near non-existent bar for high office.

Still, unlike the frothing, apoplectic members of America’s so-called “left-leaning” commentariat who appear on CNN, MSNBC or pen columns for The Washington Post or The New York Times, I am not blinded by gooey nostalgia.

As a happy result, I am not hankering for a return to the sensible old days when the unindicted war criminal and, apparently, new-found resistance leader, Dick Cheney, was the vice-president of a criminal regime that set up torture “dark sites” after having trafficked in trumped-up “intelligence” to justify the calamitous invasion of Iraq.

That is historical revisionism of the most instructive order.Speaking of sprawling, administration-wide criminal enterprises, I suspect that if Tricky Dick Nixon were still sulking around, he would have been invited on CNN and MSNBC to join the rehabilitated Cheney in condemning Trump as posing an existential risk to the rule of law and the US Constitution.