Everyone who assumed White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly was the adult in the Oval Office, gritting his teeth as he endured his term as Donald Trump’s firm but fair babysitter, raise your hand.

I would raise my hand but I’m too busy writing about how foolish that hand was. Daft hand.

When I look back on it, there was no reason whatsoever to have thought Kelly was different from Trump’s other clones. He was a former general, for one thing, part of the inept military structure that has lost American wars hand over fist since Vietnam.

The American military strikes me as a trap for the sexual mistreatment of female soldiers, a primary source of gun-happy thick-necked dishonourable discharges, a waste of trillions of school/health dollars, etc.

But I won’t dwell on this. For this is the male institution — they are the most girl-hating of all backyard tree forts — that good people are counting on to grab the nuclear codes before Trump vaporizes the world out of petulance.

Whatever their politics, people needed Kelly’s decency to go unquestioned. So when they saw him sigh as Trump nattered idiotically at reporters or hang his head as Trump went off-roading in those weird post-presidential happy-clap rallies, they assumed he was fed up with Trump.

He wasn’t. He was simply another Trump with four stars. (Is that a good number? I don’t get the American military bacon-and-baubles system.)

Kelly, 67, is a liar and a racist. He lied about a Florida congresswoman and refused to apologize, thus causing grief for a pregnant military widow and her little daughter. Funny that all the females in this paragraph are black.

He called Gen. Robert E. Lee “honourable,” and said the Civil War was not about slavery but “the lack of an ability to compromise.”

What would compromise have been? The South could keep its slaves and flog them skinless but no longer pour brine in their wounds, as Lee did with his slaves, male and female? That the North would free them, but only on weekends?

In this light, Churchill failed to compromise with Hitler on the matter of Great Britain being invaded by Nazis. Churchill was a real stickler on this; he may in fact have caused the Second World War by feeling equally chippy about Europeans being put to the slaughter.

Oh, that Winston. Hitler’s pet nickname for him was “Krümelkacker.” It means nitpicker. (I made this up.)

Back to modern times. Kelly was merely using Trump as his “flattering adjacency,” the fashion world’s term for improving your look by standing next to an atrocious outfit. You can only look better by comparison. In this scenario, Trump is Harvey Weinstein and Kelly is his flattering adjacency, the now shunned Donna Karan (“Are women asking for it?” she said.)

In the political world, Kelly is no longer flattering Trump by standing beside him. They are twins. Trump is Kim Jong Un and Kelly is Kim Jong Un’s body double.

They are the Itchy and Scratchy of Washington.

We won’t get fooled again. If you read Dexter Filkins’ New Yorker profile of ExxonMobil’s Rex Tillerson at the U.S. State Department, don’t assume that Tillerson has asked what he can do for his country. He is exploring what his country can do for Exxon Mobil.

“I truly believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” said Anne Frank, who was right about most people. Except in modern times, I would say to her, when it comes to the Trump administration.

For a brief moment, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham was seen as a reasonable counterweight to Republican true believers. But no, a few golf games with Trump — I take it Graham was caddying — and he’s back in line. “Ah do declaire, Mistuh President, thayut shot landed lack a duck on a June bug.”

In some ways, the whole Trump mess is a flattering adjacency in that Anne’s good people stand next to it and look fabulous. Prime Minister Trudeau certainly does while Stephen Harper attacks his own country and grovels like Uriah Heep.

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The key to surviving Trump is to assume the worst while always hoping for the best. Trump and his people are the taint.

In Washington, keep a wary eye. Count your money. Keep your pyjamas on at night; they’re filming you. And watch your drink. Is there a residue? Does it smell of bitter almonds?

Trust no one.

hmallick@thestar.ca

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