NEW YORK— Not just in this country but everywhere on the planet, so many have been mystified by, and contemptuous of, the petulant, childish, and erratic behavior of the Twitter-loving Donald.
An important clue has emerged, however, that should help explain the man. A clue that he himself—inadvertently? deliberately?—provided in one of those confounding early morning Tweets that the man is addicted to. In this one, he complains of “constant negative press covfefe.”
What exactly is “covfefe”?
Did he mean to link “coverage” to “coffee”? Possibly. At certain press events where coffee is available it is usually undrinkable, and might explain why the press, embittered by the brackish brew pretending to be coffee, almost always seems to favor negative press coverage.
As the newly minted word made the rounds on the Net, some entrepreneur immediately posted photos online, of a T-shirt with COVFEFE boldly imprinted on it.
That entrepreneur came closer than he imagined to the real truth behind “covfefe.”
The word is the name of an obscure region that the Donald and his loyal band of followers are from: the little-known Kingdom of Covfefe, nestled somewhere near the western edge of Russia. Its denizens are known as Covfefeans, its national colors are orange, white and red. The Donald is its hereditary ruler, and this alone explains why he acts as though he were not just the president of the United States of America but more importantly its Imperator, its Czar, its Reason for Being.
My Deep Throat source, who has lived in Covfefe for many years, gave me, over many a late-night session aided by countless mugs of beer, details of that mysterious place and of its ruling family, the Drumpfs. He also suggested that the public and the U.S. Congress demand to see his birth certificate. Has anyone seen it? That, and those tax returns, I suspect, will forever be objects of speculation.
Not surprising then that the Donald demanded loyalty from then FBI head James Comey, the same type of loyalty that tightly binds his subjects to him, an honored tradition in Covfefe. For hard-core Covfefeans to express any kind of dissatisfaction with the Number One Covfefean is simply unthinkable. The Donald, right or wrong! Were he to ask any Covfefean to fall on their sword for him, they would do so sans regret. Their philosophy? Not to reason but to do and die.
Covfefe right or wrong!
Thus, Covfefeans, it seems, have a sense of the world that is the opposite of us non-Covfefeans. To all of them, from ordinary man and woman on the street to vainglorious political honchos who are card-carrying Covfefeans, the Donald is the Man.
If he laughs at and withdraws from the Paris agreement on climate change, they too will scoff at hard scientific evidence.
Emulating him, they traffic only in deals, not ideals. The latter they rail against, and believe that any sign of altruism, of caring for the less fortunate, of being larger than who and what we are, goes against their very grain. The Donald, they say, is the Godfather of the Deal. If it means dealing with the devil, whether this takes the form of Putin or of Saudi Arabia or Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell—honorary Covfefeans, by the way—so be it.
Another noteworthy aspect of the kingdom, my Deep Throat says, is that Covfefeans generally have small hands. Which is why they keep grasping at things, just to remind themselves that they do have hands. In the matter of handshakes, however, they are at a disadvantage, unable to shake hands well or for any length of time.
Covfefeans are thus obsessed with size and inflating numbers, whether this be appraising crowd size on Inauguration Day or the tally of voters in the last election, clearly compensating for their small hands.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Covfefean society that my source revealed is the existence of a small but hard-core group of loyalists who happen to be Filipino. They have been accorded honorary status as Covfefeans, important as Covfefe happens to be an overwhelmingly white society. To be thought of as white has been these Pinoys’ lifelong dream.
Like lemmings they submit to the Donald’s tune and do not tremble at the sight of the cliff’s edge but rush to jump. Let no one then accuse them of betrayal: they will cling to that dream even when it turns into a nightmare.
Copyright L.H. Francia 2017
