Tag Archives: TRUMP

PINBALL

POSTED: MAY 1, 2026

This week I was in a rather low-end bar to see a friend perform some of her original music, and as it was a small place I arrived early to get a good table. While I ordered what turned out to be a rather unmemorable meal and warm beer, I watched a small group of young people huddled around a vintage pinball machine. It looked like it was from the 1960’s. Its form and function were classic. The pin ball would come out the top and the player would use the controls to flick paddles at strategic times and with sufficient conviction to make the ball rebound back up and to score points by hitting various sensors. Lights and noise would occur indicating the positive results of the players impeccable timing. In terms of new generation video games, this was a very basic game  – no one shooting at you when you are trying to execute a move, for example.

The machine a player would have to feed with money for each play but if certain levels of scores were achieved it would result in a free beer or glass of wine, and for higher scores a free bottle of wine, or shot of liquor. It seemed from the records recorded no one had yet hit the level in one day to get to the top category for a free bottle of vintage scotch.

As a game it is not very positive. At best you are hoping to delay the ball making it to its ultimate destination at the bottom but that would eventually happen of course. Its also somewhat personal in that you are playing against the machine and not against another human opponent other than comparing your total score with that someone else.

Even in legend, like The Who’s Pinball Wizard, the triumph of a good play is overshadowed by the ultimate result – the failure to keep the ball in the game- it will always find its resting place at the bottom of the machine.

I have never been much of pinball player, but while watching the various players take their turns a micro epiphany occurred.

Trump views everything as a pinball game. Something of a pinball management style. He does not really have an end game, just a strategy to throw the ball out there and then react to what is happening, try to make it work for his own ends and along the way, get some points. In his case it is financial benefits and ego points but once that ball hits the bottom – well it’s only a game! Let’s play again! We have seen this in his late and too limited support for Ukraine, his perspective on Venezuela, taunting of Canada and Norway, ending long term supportive relationships with Nato allies, and rolling the dice on Israels expansionary plans in Gaza, and now Iran.

And if it all goes badly? Well, it’s just a game.  Put in your (Americas) money and play again.

Of course, the rest of us have to live with the result of his actions but now that I can put his behaviour in perspective I can at least stop trying to figure it out. There is no plan. It is a game. He does not care about the outcome.

 

Django

P.S. After writing this piece, it occurred to me that there is an even darker side to this pinball analogy. Trump may see himself not as a skilled pinball player but instead as the pinball, just reacting to what comes but always making it through to the bottom no matter what obstacles are in his way.

STORM CLOUDS

POSTED: DEC 1, 2024

The U.S. election happened. The worst thing occurred and yet the sun came up the next day. The election of Trump was so clearly a win for so many who want the world to go back to an awful place, where we pollute at will, don’t let women make their own choices in reproductive health, exploit the lower and middle class to benefit the wealthy, and only help those who are being oppressed if there is something in it for us.  Its hard not to talk about it.

But I am going to try to not talk about it much. Trump is a monster – that’s clear. But he was elected by the majority of those who voted. To some extent that tells us that the American electorate is very self interested. Seeing the exit polls, in many cases, for many it also came down to people being upset with inflation and the cost of living and the only thing they can do is to vote against the person in power.

Yes, there were other factors: the terrible management of Israel’s bombing of their neighbours with seemingly no guardrails, and worse, America as a co-conspirator;  a decision to run (at the 11th hour) a replacement candidate who was not the best the Democratic Party had to offer and without the usual soul searching and clearing of the air, that occurs with a leadership convention; and an electorate tired of inflation, uncertainty and not getting ahead. This is the case around the world of course and has little to do with the Biden Administration. Every responsible country tried to bail out the individuals, businesses and institutions that needed it during the pandemic and that money was printed by each government and today, we have inflation as a result. We all want the goodies but we don’t want to pay the price. The classic question the party not in power  loves to ask in times like these  is “are you better off now than before the existing leader took office?” Well of course not. It will take decades to work our way out of the debt/inflation we created to solve that short term crisis.  So, if you are in power at the time of rapid growth, job creation and stability, you will probably get re-elected whether you had anything to do with those things or not and if you were in power when the economy needed bailing out, your term will be short.

But the nature of democracy is that everyone gets to vote. They don’t have to justify their decision, or even show up to vote to be part of the society affected by the decisions. Over a third of the eligible voters did not bother coming out to vote for what was clearly an important time in history. Less than a third of eligible voters chose Trump and even few than voted for Kamala Harris. For a country that presents itself as the beacon of democracy, that beacon is pretty dim.

It may seem that I am able to put this in perspective. I am not. The world is a mess, and it is now about to spiral downward with an irresponsible person in the Kremlin, and an irresponsible and less predictable person in the White House, a war criminal running Israel, China just waiting to choose its timing, and most other governments scrambling to satisfy their unhappy citizens. In my own country of Canada there is a strong movement to the right and no shortage of bad decisions occurring. It will get worse of course with Canadas largest (by far) trading partner now run by a bad real estate developer.

I am part of the generation that was going to fix things. Over the decades even though progress has been slow on human rights, minority representation and only limited progress on the environment, the sawtooth has had a slightly positive slope until the pandemic and we now appear to be sliding backward.

I watched a bird recently trying to make its way in terrible weather. It tried without success to fly strait to where it wanted to go and kept getting pushed back. I was sure it would lose its strength but then it attacked the wind on the diagonal and used the winds power to gain altitude and then gravity to gain forward movement. In sailing terms the bird was tacking but able to do it not in a two dimensional world like us on the sea, but in the three dimensions of the sky.

So, what are we to do about this world we are now in? I don’t really know other than  as individuals making good personal decisions every day. In my case I will hug the people I love, treat all respectful people with respect, and continue to support the causes that matter in the communities I can influence.  And try to apply tacking where I can.

Django

A single bird tries to weather the storm