It’s best to be a smaller mole

EDITORIAL: WHAT OTHERS THINK

U.S. President Donald Trump is busy. Very busy. He’s up to his neck in trade wars with China, promising billions of dollars of tariffs against that country’s products.

He’s coming up with his own world-view on how many people died after hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, claiming his administration did a great job there. (Despite the fact the accepted number of deaths in Puerto Rico from the storm is almost as many as those from 9/11.)

He’s fighting with Canada over the North American Free Trade Agreement, tossing down offhand end-of-days threats about the automobile industry or the dairy industry almost every single day.

Sometimes, it’s like he’s got a hammer in both hands and he’s just looking for his latest target.

But when you’re one of the moles in the great Trump whack-a-mole game, maybe the point should be to be the smallest mole, or at least to be sure, somewhere on the table, that there’s a bigger one.

(Please do not take this editorial entirely seriously.)

It’s well known that President Trump is a living, breathing example of “you are what you eat.” His Twitter pronouncements can often be directly tied to what he watches on television and often, because of his viewing choices, what he watches on Fox News. Issues that Fox raises become issues that Trump raises.

So maybe we should be making ourselves the smallest target possible — staying under his radar completely. Not a peep. Not a sound. Take shelter during the storm and wait for it to inevitably move on to things that make better theatre.

Or maybe, just maybe, we should be working hard to make a bigger mole.

You could just start a faux scandal to place the blame on someone else. Raise a stink about Moldova’s trade imbalance with the U.S., or the way the Maldives are out to get Donald Trump’s relatives and seize their business interests. But then again, it would hardly be fair to direct all that rage on another real and undeserving victim.

Maybe, we could just invent a whole new nation to be the target.

Maybe the European Union, China and Canada could jointly finance a blanket Fox News advertising campaign on the antiAmerican trade intentions of Oceanton, or else one that highlights Narcostan, that evil country of ridiculously violent drug gangs working to supplant MS 13 and take over the U.S. drug trade. (And don’t say that it couldn’t be believed: there’s a fair number of recordings of Trump that suggest he believes the U.S. F-35 is an invisible fighter jet.)

Let’s make ourselves a smaller mole, or invent a bigger one.

Because there’s absolutely no chance that Donald Trump is going to stop whacking things.

The best plan is to have him find someone else worth whacking.

An editorial from the Charlottetown Guardian