Moonwatcher

Near the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in what is called the Dawn of Man sequence, the leader of a tribe of man-apes brains the leader of a rival tribe with a large bone.

In the novel by Arthur C. Clarke, the killer ape is called Moonwatcher. He tosses his bone club into the air and it is transformed into a modern day satellite. Drones are our bones.

Donald J. Trump is our Moonwatcher, our throwback, whose answer is always violence of one kind or other, either threatened or real, from cheering on his followers to rough up protesters, to promising to bomb North Korea into oblivion.

Trump goes to seemingly endless meetings of world leaders where he is now a grim-faced virtual pariah, whose seemingly endless train of political and legal baggage trails him like a serpent's tail.

Most recently, there he was in Argentina, front and center as usual, his red tie drooping like the flag on a caboose, bringing his dimness and stupidity front and center, as well, for all the world to see. 

There are always group photos at these meetings, and the people in them are civilized people for the most, there because they see their duty as leaders to somehow move civilization forward by consensus and mutual consideration. They are serious people going about serious matters for a long-term common good and in that they are civilized. 

Moonwatcher's common good is Moonwatcher, always and forever. He is a simian predator, as civilized as his namesake. His tribe is himself and his family and all who enter that primitive orbit do so at the risk of the irreplaceable loss of whatever they hold dear. Moonwatcher is our demon Asmodeus, Destroyer of Men. The moon he watches is his pruned face reflected in the slime of the swamp he created and rules like a Frog King.

Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Justin Trudeau, and Emmanuel Macron, among many others are truly civilized people, no matter what their politics. And each has been the subject of Moonwatcher's brainless and uncivilized insults. And their individual and collective responses have been measured and polite, the only way to respond to such primitive behavior. 

They are effectively shunning Moonwatcher, leaving him to wallow in his juvenile narcissism, no matter how potentially dangerous, while they go about the adult's work of leading responsibly and intelligently, two traits absent in Moonwatcher's DNA. They must recoil at every necessary contact with Moonwatcher. 

Robert Mueller is also a civilized man. His life and career have been guided by the Rule of Law. He has fought and been wounded in the jungles of Vietnam and he led the FBI for twelve years. He has seen at very close hand what man is capable of and he has pressed on toward the light. 

He has endured the crazed charges and insults from Moonwatcher and he has simply pressed inexorably on. He is our champion of history, defender against the bone-wielders: the cross-burners and the family-destroyers and the racists and anti-Semites who reflexively seek to tear down what has been built up over sacred time by the civilized among us. 

They too shall pass, like Moonwatcher.