The Secret Service trusted with Trump's leash
Would never trust the moron with control.
The steering wheel's kept firmly out of reach;
they'll trot him out in time to speak his role.
'Til then, his backseat door stays firmly locked;
he'd just break something, left at large, alone.
The crazies mustn't penetrate his box,
And--if they could--they'd smash his god-damned phone.
Each agent's vetted; tough case to suborn!
But Trump knows any mortal has a price;
some burn for hookers, some crave bootleg porn.
There's opportunity exploiting Vice.
As midterms loom, there's not a lot of time
to stem Trump's tidal wave of gangland crime.
John Dean'd been taught "the Truth will set you free"
but understood the fetters forged by fear.
The path he blazed in"use immunity"
led some who'd been estranged to now draw near.
Republics stand because the voters trust
our public servants serve the public good.
A venal slave to Mammon and to Lust
lacks any sense of what he ought, or should.
Steve Bannon smells the trap and wants control
of narratives explaining what went down.
Of all these crimes, which highlight his own role
and which we must attribute to the clown.
The race is on! Who'll be the first to break?
The last to sing gets roasted at the stake.
Trump paid for lawyers to coordinate
the testimony House Committees heard.
They coached each witness to prevaricate;
we'd be great fools to take them at their word,
Such bullshit hadn't echoed in those Halls
since Reagan shipped the Mullahs lethal toys.
'Til Cassidy stepped up and showed some balls,
we'd trusted governance to good old boys.
Democracy requires the public know
when those in highest office turn to crime.
There's leniency for those who fess up, though
the last to testify will serve most time.
To keep omerta once one colleague's sung
is gonna get the bitter-enders hung.
When Kissinger proposed she should appease
aggression to ease Putin past this mood,
Ukraine demurred to take it on her knees;
Zelensky's answer's eloquently crude.
When Neville Chamberlain sold out the Czechs
as if the Nazis wouldn't then grab more,
such causes have predictable effects;
what followed was a more appalling war.
It shouldn't take a genius to discern
such cowardice just magnifies the threat.
But politicians don't get paid to learn;
what Caesar knew, more modern minds forget.
Old lessons History could teach the sage
get lost too often in this smartphone age.
The perestroika Gorbachev endorsed
moved Fukuyama to proclaim the "end
of History"; that swiftly ran it's course.
This Kremlin--under Putin's--no one's friend.
The Tsarist empire's lust for ice-free ports
that meant so much before goods moved by rail,
burns still in Putin's atavistic heart;
to be snuffed out when his aggressions fail.
Ukrainians reject this noxious guest
despite the Kremlin propagandists' spin
faux foes of fascists in it's fictive press
betrayed their very Slavic next-of-kin.
Unending Peace, as Kant had dared to dream,
must first defeat this monster's war-machine
The Kaiser crushed the Belgians, French, and Dutch;
the Tzar groped towards the exit of this war.
A world away, one captain's out of touch,
ice-bound and drifting farther from the shore.
To lead in combat takes both skill and nerve,
and some part--we conjecture--is innate.
Unsatisfied in peace, each chose to serve
unknowing what adventure'd be their fate.
The purpose missing in so many lives
is not revealed in stars, or dice, or cards
Not individuals, but teams survive,
when challenges are other-worldly hard.
His ship's a loss, but with all personnel
Sir Ernest Shackleton walked back from Hell.
The Polish cavalry all died, of course,
when blitzkrieg blazed at will across their plain.
Machine guns devastated man and horse,
and Putin's sure his troops would do the same.
The Kremlin's propagandists strain to shift
the Nazi stigma of aggressive war.
Where journalists disdain to touch that shit,
just Tucker Carlson's Putin's eager whore.
Technology rolls on, with each defeat
as counter-counter measures swell the price.
Behemoths on steel treads look obsolete
like massive theropods pursuing mice.
The tanks that turned the tide at Marne, an Rhone
seem maladapted to this Age of Drone.
