It can’t happen where?

Don’t believe me or  Sinclair Lewis? Then recall this creepy old philanderer’s cliché: Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

When I was a kid, way back when, my parents taught me it was impolite to ask people, in public, about four things: money, sex, religion and politics. And they said I should never pick a fight.

Now look at U.S. politics today. What’s it all about? Money, sex, religion and picking fights.

For a topper, as Donald Trump told Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in a 2016 interview: “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”

Yet what Trump, like any other fascist, wants to instill in us is fear. Just read the damn papers, or watch Faux News if reading is hard for you.

You don’t have to live in Venezuela to understand what Herr Schlumpf has got in store for you. I say “got in store” rather than “planning” because this guy is incapable of planning. All he can do is pose.

Don the john1 doesn’t have to use the word “fear.”

When he sashays down Main Street naked on Sunday, tonguing an AR-15, he don’t have to tell horrified churchgoers: “I’m naked! And I’ve got a gun.”

They get it. We get it. But Note to the Emperor: You don’t have to do it every day.

This fat little man has thrown the Fear of His Regal Putrescence into all 272 Republican members of Congress, and too many damn Democrats.

And why?

Because they’re scared of being “primaried,” and losing their salaries, perks of office, lavish pensions and the adoration of available young women.

Let me rephrase that, or let Alfred, Lord Tennyson pre-phrase it:

“Into the Valley of Death

“Rode none o’ them old men …

“Someone had blundered …

“Theirs not to make reply,

“Theirs not to reason why,

“Theirs but to do and die.

“Into the valley of Death

“Rode the 72 plus two more hundred.

“And their bright, hungry aides.”

Here let me present you with, or “leak,” the recent plea of a senator, aiming for higher office, i.e., half a White House. I received the message on a Senate back channel:

(Please no, God! To lose the Senate barber shop? And 165 days vacation a year? And the franking privilege? And the aides and interns? No, Lord, not the $4 million a year for aides and interns! And my pension?)

(The annual pension for a one-term U.S. senator  today — after six years on the job — $16,000 to $22,000, plus Social Security, based upon a base annual salary of $174,000. Plus whatever else he got, from the days when he actually worked, or, pardon me, “networked.”)

How can you, how can we fight something like that?

Well, we could turn to the man who made our country beloved around the world, traveling at his own expense to pay off his debts, 100 cents on the dollar: Sam Clemens.

Mark Twain nailed it: “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”

That’s why Herr Schlumpf will die soon, or soon after he leaves office. Because the only thing that hurts him is to hear people laughing at him. It kills him. Not painlessly, but legally. That’s why he watches only Faux News.

And as he gets more hysterical — if that’s possible — it’s because, for the first time in his life, he must know that millions of people — his “subjects” — are laughing at him.

And as our whiny Fűhrer reveals himself more and more each day, the world finds more reasons to laugh at him. He can’t stand that. So he keeps digging his grave deeper, every time he opens his mouth. Because he’s not really speaking, he posing, he’s preening. Cause he’s too stupid to keep his mouth shut or to do anything else.

Well, hell, it’s worked for him so far, hasn’t it?

1. a john (lower case) is shorthand for a man who frequents prostitutes. Not necessarily children, but still, prostitutes. Or porn stars.