INTRODUCTION
Thursday, March 2nd, dawned clear, cool, and windy. There was a...palpable? Sure, I'll go with it...palpable feel of excitement in Newport News. I mean, you could actually reach out and just squeeze the excitement. It was supple, full, and smooth, like the breasts of a ca. 1980's Playboy Playmate, hair held up with enough hair spray to puncture a small hole in the ozone layer above the little cornfed American town in Iowa where she grew up, emblematic of the time when Trump was King of Atlantic City and a rapscallion robber barron of Real Estate.
But my goodness how the times do change. That is what someone pointed out to me on Thursday as I walked towards a meeting on the waterfront.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
The shipbuilder I was talking to nodded over towards the CVN 72, berthed in the James River, currently in the closing stages of its RCOH. Every morning the ship puts music on its loudspeakers while the crew carryout their cleaning stages, shop vac and broom replacing Captain Aubrey's Holystones. "When I was in the Navy, no one spoke Spanish," he said. "Now the CVN72 is playing whole songs in Spanish". I listened a little closer and he was right. "You see," he said again, sheer happiness spreading across his face "times do change."
"Yes," I answered. "Sometimes for the better."
In this day and age it seems that every act can be interpreted as a political act. I don't know how the CVN72 picks their music (it isn't always Spanish...one morning it was Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper", with extra cowbell), and I'm not suggesting it was a dig at Trump. It very likely was little more than a coincidence. But I found it, nevertheless, an interesting counterpoint to the day, and to the man due to arrive that afternoon.
REPORT
And so he did. A few minutes before 13:00 there was the massive "fwhomp-fwhomp-fhwomp" that signaled the arrival of millions of rivets flying in formation, three V-22 Ospreys and two Marine Ones, some carrying Trump and his entourage, the others empty, presenting a befuddling shell game to any intrepid would-be-terrorist. ISIS scientists are wise to it, and apparently have been playing endless versions of a five shell two pebble game of "find the pea", trying to get down into the American psyche and find any discernible patterns. Luckily, nothing to show for it so far.
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| Hats off in the Wardroom!! What, is he cold or something? |
Those of us not at the event all ran to the windows of our buildings like school children to see the huge craft (and the Ospreys truly are gigantic). The lucky few (about 2500 shipyard workers) at the event all let up a boisterous cheer. They had been there since around 10:00, milling about in the ship's hangar bay, squeezed in between Sailors and Press. They had been subjected to long replays of Foghat's "Slow Ride" until an astute officer on the CVN78, professional as always, pointed out that to continue to do so who would constitute a most grievous violation of the Geneva Conventions. So they switched to Zeppelin, which went down a lot smoother. The fact that both bands were British was not lost on the few Tories in the audience, still desperately clinging to the dream that America would realize the error of its ways after nearly 250 years of Independence, and come crawling back.
That slim sliver of hope was dashed when Trump, after touring the ship with the CO and other dignitaries, was lowered into the Hangar Bay on one of the Ford's massive aircraft elevators to the strains of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA". People everywhere felt a collective shiver in their spine, a great disturbance in the Force, as the muses of taste and tact once again screamed aloud in terror, and were suddenly silenced. That song certainly has legs. You'd think over the last 37 years we would have come up with something better. But no.
Trump arrived wearing a recently obtained aviators jacket that made his hands look a little small and a CVN 78 Gerald R. Ford hat pulled low over the eyes, which he had wisely substituted for the red USA hat he was seen wearing after getting off Marine One (and also onboard ship in round table discussion). To some he looked tough. To me, he looked more like a baseball manager.
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| Trump Calls for a Squeeze Play. Bold Leadership from a Bold Man. Photo by the New York Times |
We were all very impressed. He did say that he wanted to build more ships, and more planes, and more boats, and that it was all going to come "very soon."
Oh Trump, you silly, silly man. One does not simple open the tap and get more ships. Though the additional money proposed would certainly help. Sequestration hasn't really caused a lot of job loss in the Shipbuilding industry, at least at NNS, but it has certainly made the work there more difficult, and made the workers more frustrated. There is not enough money to do the things that the Navy is wanting to do. It just isn't there. So I don't necessarily oppose additional spending for naval assets. I do think that the idea of stripping down other programs (among them the state department and foreign aid, those things put in place to help avoid having to go to war in the first place) seems, to me, to be incredibly short sighted.
Anyways, after 16 minutes of speechifying it was all over. He got back on the elevator, was raised up (thankfully) to the flight deck, and then he and his merry men fwhomp fwhomp fwomphed away.
ANALYSIS and CONCLUSION
The intent of the speech was to highlight the $54 billion increase in defense spending Trump had asked for in his address to congress. It think it was also an optics thing. On the heels of the Tuesday speech, in which the bear managed to dance for over an hour, this should have been an easy win. Nobody appropriates military hardware for his own grandeur while simultaneously distancing himself from responsibility of sending our military into the fight better than our President, at which the buck stops here, or there, or maybe over there. Maybe one day he will get it. Right now he doesn't. A bust of Churchill in his office, indeed!
But the Ford speech was overcome by other events. March 2nd was also the day that Jeff Sessions became fully embroiled in questions concerning his contacts with the Russian Ambassador to the point where ultimately he had to recuse himself from any further investigations over Russia, which now seem likely to continue. As of this morning Trump tweeted that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower after the election and before the inauguration, without offering any proof of those allegations. It's hard to know what to make of THAT, exactly. I can conceive of various intelligence agencies doing so as part of the their own investigations, but to put that on Obama's head directly (who seemed and seems to me very, very careful to stay out of the the current fray) is bad, and only gives credence to those saying that Obama is trying to somehow have a soft coup and take over the government. It's amazing to me how the spectre of Obama and..just the naked fear and hate so many people have of him continues to haunt our country - and maybe even our leadership. Let it go my friends. Just let it go.
Oh, and he also took a moment to mourn the death of The Apprentice, which is being cancelled. Christ. So much for looking, acting, and being Presidential. Maybe the Bear can't dance after all.
Trump may still well get his money to rebuild the military. But I would say that, aside from the people at Newport News Shipbuilding, this speech has already been well forgotten, a mere blip in yet another rough news cycle for a troubled administration.
Ultimately, Trump will not be judged on these sorts of silly events, but rather on what he actually does. So far, in the grand scheme of things, he's done very little. I fear that if he doesn't pull it together, his administration will be a full stop failure. While it would raise the prospects of him getting voted out in four years (which so far I would support), there gets to be a point where failed leadership will hurt us all.
POST SCRIPT
Though it won't hurt my prospects for the musical I am working on, simply called "TRUMP! The Musical". In the Second Act, Trump goes aboard the Ford and he sits down to the round table discussion, a group of sailors sing an extended aside:
***
SAILOR ONE: Look at that big shot over there.
SAILOR TWO: Yeah, look at him.
SAILOR ONE: I mean, doesn't he know that you got to...
Music begins, sort of a peppy kind of pop rock high school musical thing
SAILOR ONE (singing):
You got to take your
Hat off in the Wardroom!
You got to take your
Hat off for chow!
You got to take your
Hat off in the Wardroom, yeah
SAILOR TWO (joining in):
You know it's so rude
And he's being so crude
Yeah, you got to take your
SAILOR ONE, SAILOR TWO, and CHORUS:
Hat off! Hat off!
Yeaaaahhhhh you got to take your
Hat off! Hat offfffffff......
You got to take it off!
***
