COMMENTARY: Graves Registry: Let 'em eat liver! | Opinion | benningtonbanner.com

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

At least with George W. Bush there were interludes of relative sanity.

Every so often, someone comes up to me and tells me that they deal with the madness that is running rampant in this country by tuning it out. My reaction is to say (or think), "That's exactly what they want you to do.” I have to concede, after last week, I certainly can understand the impulse.

I can't bear to look or listen to Donald Trump, but I read his latest inanities. They still originate in a nightmare Dr. Seussian mind but, minus that monotonous monotone he affects, they go down a little easier.

You also run the risk of some hearty laughs by completely disengaging. In her introduction, the head of the Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler, called JD Vance "the coolest vice president in the country's history." Mr. Vance humbly conceded that he was, indeed, cool, although he thought it was a low bar, something he must be accustomed to squatting to clear by now.

Besides Stephen Miller, the only person who comes to mind who might possibly be less cool than JD is that lawyer who inundates local television stations with his commercials and evidently thinks that potential clients may only be capable of retaining one digit phone numbers.

In a statement that recalled Marie Antoinette's admonition about the advisability of cake as a substitution for starvation, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. gave more credence to his admission that a worm had eaten part of his brain by telling an audience at an Eat Real Food rally in Texas (where else?), “If you buy a porterhouse, it’s going to set you back. But you can buy liver or the cheaper cuts of steak that are very, very affordable.”

What a comfort it is to people struggling to feed their families for words of encouragement from people who never had to worry about much of anything. In keeping with the general inclination by the Trump administration to stray from the truth, Kennedy was lying. Statistics by the U. S. Bureau of Labor estimated that ground beef prices are up by 22%, the fastest increase since the first Trump administration.

The high cost of food may be the reason that the U.S. Olympic hockey team was served Big Macs in the White House in celebration of their gold medal win. It might also be a reflection of the president’s level of culinary sophistication.

Mr. Trump made a congratulatory call after the team defeated Canada. Like most everywhere else, the president isn’t always at his best on the phone. He can’t even congratulate someone without inserting a nasty little Trumpian comment into the conversation. You might recall the “he knew what he was in for” remark to the recent widow of a fallen serviceman. That might be a reflection of the president’s ability to summon up even a modicum of compassion for anyone else’s pain.

The call to congratulate the men’s hockey team went viral because he made a remark about “being impeached” if he didn’t invite the victorious women’s hockey team to sit through his State of the Union address. I honestly don’t know why the prospect of impeachment worries him with all those devoted little lackeys in Congress so determined to keep him out of jail. He has dodged it twice already.

The women, who found Trump’s remark “distasteful and unfortunate,” declined to attend the interminably boring address (it’s called dodging the bullet) and enjoyed a meal with actor/cookbook author Stanley Tucci at his favorite restaurant in Milan, Italy.

It probably says something very profound about the difference between incurring Trump’s favor (Big Macs) and standing up to his crass insults (superb dining in a Milan restaurant), but I want to get on to a couple other things.

Trump was in his show-biz element at the State of the Union address on Feb. 24 and he had Curly and Larry seated behind him to jump up and clap at every lowbrow high point. He managed to mention his disappointment at not being allowed to bestow the Congressional Medal of Honor upon himself because he once visited Iraq, where he was probably guarded by more people than the crown jewels.

“I decided to go to Iraq. I was extremely brave. So brave in fact that I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor,” he said.

I don’t understand why even the most devoted MAGA members aren’t absolutely mortified by cringe-worthy statements from a draft dodger that denigrate and diminish the courage and sacrifice of the people who actually deserved the nation’s highest honor.

General Bone Spur once remarked that the bravest thing he did during the Vietnam War era was to not contract a social disease from his libertine lifestyle.

One last note: After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto reportedly made a prophetic remark: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

I sincerely hope those words don’t come back to haunt America. In conjunction with international war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, himself a disappointed recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and self-appointed head of his expensive Board of Peace, authorized a military attack on Iran on Feb. 28 that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Small wonder that there are reports that the basement of his fabulous ballroom is a bomb shelter. The rest of us are on our own.