Trump’s dream cabinet is nation’s nightmare

I used to think that “aphorism” was a breathing disorder, a kind of asthma for short people like me. But I recently learned I was full of them, and they produce no immediate danger. You just buy a cheap nose spray, breathe deeply, and wisdom bursts forth.

Here is my aphorism of the day: a President is known by the Cabinet he keeps. Or nominates. Or maybe just dreams of. What is a dream to President-elect Donald Trump, however, is likely to be a nightmare for the nation.

That is a little grandiose, but I can’t shake it. Donald Trump is an insult to the traditional Republican party (may it rise from the grave soon) and a real, not imagined, threat to the country as we know it and love it.

In his first term, four Cabinet nominees were rejected, the most of any president in our history. Rejection is not rare, but it is also certainly not routine. And it is predictable. And most reasonable president’s try to avoid it.

This time, so far, at least one, Matt Gaetz, to be nominated as Attorney General, was gone in a flush. “The former congressman paid for sex, possessed illegal drugs and paid a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017, according to the 42-page report on President-elect Donald Trump’s former pick for attorney general.” Could Trump not have known anything about Gaetz’s character before nominating a scumbag? That doesn’t seem so to me.

The spectacularly unqualified Pete Hegseth’s qualifications for Secretary of Defense: alleged serial sexual harasser; drunk on the job, and television “presenter,” a great term for a guy who can read what others write. Most of us would think something more is required of the person to direct as complex and vital a department with several million men and women in branches from the skies to the ocean depths.

Robert Kennedy, Jr., nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services, is a cesspool of crackpot theories about fluoridation and vaccines. Beyond those dangerous fixations, he doesn’t seem to understand that there are limits to his authority. He wants his daughter-in-law hired by the CIA to investigate the assassination of President John Kennedy. That it happened over 60 years ago andhas been investigated thoroughly is apparently no concern to Junior. What new evidence might be found from anyone relevant still alive is a mystery. RFK deals in mystery, fantasy and delusion. That is a danger.

Rod Serling, the science fiction wrter, wrote long ago, “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn."

Rod Serling would not ever been nominated for a Trump Cabinet. He was a science fiction genius who understood the real world.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.