We are about to inaugurate a simpleton, which is dangerous not because he's a simpleton but because his enablers are far from simpletons. They are scheming hyenas, honey badgers, and jackals. Trump himself is an oblivious child of privilege, as clueless as W, of whom it was said he woke up on third base and thought he'd hit a triple. Trump got his hand caught in the pussy jar, but by then it was the least of his sins.
Our new smoocher-in-chief is similarly cruel and heartless by nature, like a feudal prince (but without Machiavelli's insights). No one has ever said no to him, so he pulls the legs off insects with impunity. Kindness and moderation are signs of weakness. But again, the fault isn't with Trump but with his nebula of sycophants. This miasma of parasites will be harder to eliminate.
But (cue wringing hands) who will come to save us? Not the valiant Hillary, that's for sure. Mortally wounded by the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune. Who then? Elizabeth Warren? Bernie? Cory Booker? Michelle? Meryl? (Nice job of goading him, by the way.)
I have a better idea. Someone who's never held public office, so there's no public record. But it's someone who has built an extremely successful worldwide business in just a few decades. A business that has its admirers as well as its detractors, a business that has become the symbol of America, a business whose tentacles have reached into almost every community. A business that continues to overstep the bounds of what we think is appropriate for a chain of coffee shops. A chief executive who speaks his mind (in complete sentences, even), yet seems to change his mind every couple of months. A man who has nonetheless almost single-handedly changed the American landscape.
So it's time for me to swallow my disgust at his slander that "no one knew" Italians drank coffee before he saw it for himself; the company founders talked of little else in the years before they hired him and finally took him to Italy to show him what they meant. Let us forgive him his unforgivable error in buying, then selling the Sonics, treating a civic treasure like a personal toy and kicking it to the curb when it became tarnished. Instead, let us give him credit for the mantra: "We are not in the coffee business serving people; we are in the people business serving coffee."
We could do worse as a country. In fact, we're about to learn how much worse.
UPDATE, Jan 10th: Seattle Times reports that Schultz would have been nominated as Secretary of Labor, had Hillary won.
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