If you’ve seen one Trump speech you’ve seen them all, the pattern rarely varies.
Confession: I didn’t watch the Kabuki performance also known as the State of the Union address. Watching Donald Trump sputter and spew for two minutes is torture enough, let alone two hours, which is nearing Fidel Castro territory. I also don’t need to be gaslit about the state of our country. It’s obvious that by any objective measure it’s not good, unless one happens to be a billionaire or in the top tier of the wealth class; unless one despises immigrants and takes supreme delight in seeing them brutalized by heavily-armed masked men; unless one believes that government is best run by fools, grifters, and kleptocrats. I have no idea what Dumb Donny means when he bellows that America was moribund under Joe Biden, but is now the “hottest” country in the world. Hot in what way? In the way Trump and his pal Jeffrey Epstein evaluated underage girls back in the day?
No way was I going to subject myself to the spectacle, which, unfortunately, would include seeing the smarmy, self-satisfied, smiling mugs of shitbirds like Vice President Shady Vance and Speaker of the House, Christian Mikey Johnson. Masochism isn’t my thing. Why bother? If you’ve seen one Trump speech you’ve seen them all, the pattern rarely varies: I’m so great, strong, and powerful; everything is fantastic, like no one’s ever seen before, this is America’s Golden Age; our enemies are evil and very stupid people.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
Instead I watched a futbol match, the second leg of the Champions League playoff tie between Inter Milan and Bodo Glimt. Over the last two or three seasons, Bodo Glimt has become the giant killer of the Champions League, knocking off big clubs like Manchester City and Atletico Madrid, no mean feat for a Norwegian team whose home is 70 miles into the Arctic Circle. Around 55 thousand souls call Bodo home; the Aspmyra Stadium where Bodo Glimt plays seats around 10,000 supporters.
Last week Bodo handed Inter a shock 3-1 defeat, a result which some attributed to the icy cold and Aspmyra’s plastic playing surface. It did take most of the first half of that match for Inter to begin looking comfortable, but the end result was no fluke: Bodo outplayed and out-hustled the Serie A leaders, leaving Inter with a hill to climb back in Milan. Given that Inter scores more goals by a big margin than any other side in Serie A, a 3-1 deficit, while significant, was by no means insurmountable.
In theory, at least.
As expected, Inter came out of the blocks strong and immediately put Bodo in a defensive posture. Set up in a 4-4-2 low-block formation, Bodo spent most of the first half defending against Inter’s onslaught of crosses, headers, and shots. On the rare occasions when Bodo recovered the ball they couldn’t do much with it. At the half the score was nil-nil, which favored the visitors more than the hosts. Inter needed to score a first half goal to increase the pressure and force Bodo to take more risks offensively and open up their shape.
The second half started like the first, Inter dominating the ball, Bodo holding its shape and defending, but the longer it went without an Inter goal, the more risks Inter was forced to take — and the more the anxiety among Inter’s fans grew. Surely, Bodo couldn’t maintain a defensive posture for a full 90 minutes. As it turned out, they didn’t need to. In the 58th minute, Inter’s Manuel Akanji, usually a reliable and cool-headed defender, committed a howler, turning the ball over deep in Inter’s half which Bodo pounced on and scored. Talk about a momentum shift. Now Bodo’s aggregate lead was 4-1, and Inter only had thirty minutes to score three times to force extra time and possibly a penalty shoot-out. But it was a bridge too far for the Italian giants. The lads from the Arctic Circle would score again in the 72nd minute, effectively sealing their place in the Round of 16, an amazing accomplishment for the tiny Norwegian club. Their traveling supporters were delirious with joy. The final aggregate tally was a decisive 5-2. Inter was beaten, no question about it, and no excuses.
As an Inter fan I was disappointed, but at the same time reminded of why futbol is the most popular sport in the world. In this game, improbable things happen all the time, big clubs falter, small clubs produce miracles, matches are won on the last kick of the game. Fans rejoice and fans despair. Reputations are made, and reputations are ruined.
The journalist John Harwood described Trump’s State of the Union performance as “grotesque.” Frankly, that describes Trump’s entire political career. I didn’t need to watch to know that Trump would make a mockery of the evening, that he would leave another shit-stain, another mark of his stupendous arrogance and idiocy, to the rapturous applause of a political party he has remade in his own buffoonish and incompetent image. American carnage, indeed, the slow, agonizing death of a thousand cuts perpetrated by ghouls, grifters, assholes, racists, pedophiles and misogynists.
I watched a demise of a different sort, one that is merely temporary and redeemable, which may not be the case for our teetering democratic republic.
