If the Shmoos Don't Fit...

PARIS — Across Europe and beyond, old friends once smitten with America now view it with despairing contempt — an immigrant nation of warring "liberals" and "conservatives" that exceeds any théâtre de l'absurde playwright's imagination.

After a long look around in what was the United States, I found those catchall political labels so yesterday. Americans fall into two main categories: those who know about Shmoos and those who don't.

I'll get to them in a second. The top line here is that not nearly enough eligible voters realize the looming threat. If November elections go wrong, all the planned 250th anniversary hoopla will be for a country that no longer exists.

An unhinged madman backed by entrenched plutocrats could muzzle dissent, repress protesters with deadly force and paint "Fuck Off!" in big red letters on the Statue of Liberty that a once-admiring France gave to a different America.

Much of that is already happening fast.

Cartoonist Al Capp came up with Shmoos in 1948 — small, smiley blobs shaped like bowling pins that laid grade A eggs and gave milk. When anyone looked hungry, they happily expired to be fried like chicken or grilled like steak.

Their antics were so amusing that no one needed movies or other entertainment. But they bred quickly and consumed nothing, making them bad for business. Authorities hunted them into extinction.

Today, mutant Shmoos with human attributes vote uncritically for politicians in thrall of a malevolent Supreme Leader, who hammers away at whatever upbeat bald lies they want to hear. Others don't bother to vote at all.

Capp, a rapier-sharp political observer, explained why he came up with them:

"I was driving from New York City to my farm in New Hampshire. The top of my car was down, and on either side of me I could see the lush and lovely New England countryside... It was the good earth at its generous summertime best, offering gifts to all.

"And the thought that came to me was this: Here we have this great and good and generous thing—the Earth. It's eager to give us everything we need. All we have to do is just let it alone, just be happy with it."

I remembered Capp on Memorial Day, driving around from my Provence olive grove. The top of my old Peugeot was down. On either side I could see the lush and lovely French countryside. The good earth at its generous springtime best, offering gifts to all.

People are people. Borders are only lines on a map. We can still save what is left of a bounteous planet if we can just stop screwing it up.

The French are hardly free of their own crises. But a president who attempted anything close to what Donald Trump gets away with would likely be strung up by the heels from the Arc de Triomphe. Football and tennis are spectator sports. Not democracy.

In America, a third of the electorate supports Trump no matter what he says or does. Another third is ready to walk barefoot over hot coals to get rid of him. The rest mostly opt out in apathy or ignorance, which enables his perverted party to game the system.

A tyrant-in-waiting wants to deface Washington with own triumphal arch, way higher than the one Napoleon commissioned to celebrate victories that cost about five million lives. By the time it was built, the emperor was ignominiously exiled on a remote island.

Trump is an aging useful idiot of a billionaire ruling class intent on steadily widening the gap between rich and desperate. Racism and xenophobia are increasing. Meantime, he wreaks unchecked havoc abroad, fanning hot embers into flame.

A New York Times reporter asked Trump if anything constrained his global power as commander-in-chief. "Yeah," he replied. "There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me."

But he has no morality and not much of a mind. "I don’t need international law," he said. "I’m not looking to hurt people." This from a man who blithely threatens to wipe out ancient Persia, a society of 92 million. That should scare the stuffing out of a Shmoo.

Look into those "wars" he claims to have ended. Reporters who cover them know he has stopped no conflict but rather has triggered devastating quagmires. He is silent about Sudan's vicious civil war, the world's worst humanitarian calamity.

China now girds for potential conflict with America. Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu feed Trump's bottomless ego while raining hellfire on Ukraine and Lebanon. Relations with India soured largely because of his sons' cryptocurrency dealings with Pakistan. North Korea is increasingly hostile.

Iran humiliates America, gaining regional clout as it hurries to build a dirty bomb. Trump rejected the 2015 accord in which Iran pledged to make no nuclear weapons and allowed outside inspectors to keep close watch.

That deal began with French and German efforts in 2003 when George W. Bush's Iraq invasion fortified Iran. A final Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action took 18 months. It only unblocked frozen Iranian funds, hardly the ton of money Trump claims it paid.

Diplomats who negotiated the JCPOA call Trump's war a lose-lose situation for America. Costs rise toward a trillion dollars, and it is depleting American weaponry. It adds yet more hardship for families around the world struggling to make ends meet.

Meantime, blocked U.S. foreign aid is killing millions. Trump allowed Elon Musk, who came from South Africa on a student visa and became the world's richest man, decide that helping the world's poorest families survive was a waste of money.

Trump let Covid-19 run wild for his own purposes. He quit the World Health Organization leaving unpaid dues, fired American public health attaches abroad and brought home medical workers who detect new deadly diseases before they spread.

Ebola, spreading fast in 11 African countries, has reached Brazil. As he did with Covid, Trump wants to stop U.S. citizens exposed to the virus from coming home for care. Two protesters have died so far near a U.S. base in Kenya where he wants to hold them.

Borders cannot stop pathogens anymore than killer "weather events" or migrants fleeing starvation, if not oppression. Scientific data show all three outpace earlier predictions. Ignoring the causes only creates worsening effects.

Anyone can admire anyone for whatever reason. But U.S. presidents are sworn to uphold the Constitution and protect all citizens' life, liberty and happiness. Consider one recent pre-breakfast blast on Trump's private "Truth Social," all in capital letters:

“Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people [sic] to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane through an open border that only an incompetent president would approve."

The authoritative Center for Migration Studies estimates a small fraction of that, with few who were criminals or insane. Most await judicial hearings. In 2024, Trump ordered Republicans to block a bipartisan bill to stem the flow so he could campaign on a crisis.

"Over 40 percent of the undocumented...overstayed their visa, not entered through the US-Mexico border," it reported. Those without documents increased by 650,000 from 2020-2022, but many families from Mexico and Asian countries left the country.

Homeland Security vetted asylum seekers before they were allowed into America to await court hearings. Multiple factors, including returning migrants repeatedly sent home, inflate the numbers.

In sum, the report says, until Trump sealed the borders in 2020 under Title 42 during the Covid pandemic, he allowed more migrants into America than Biden — 52.2 percent compared to 48.6 percent.

The official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says during Biden's term jobs for citizens increased by 7.2 million and five million for foreign-born workers, both legal and undocumented. That fed prosperity and helped curb post-Covid inflation.

As for Social Security and Medicare, undocumented migrants paid $16 billion into both funds but they receive no benefits.

This sort of distorted reality comes from every direction.

Now Trump plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of own twisted idea of America. He posted a symptomatic "truth" when star performers he had touted in glowing terms for his birthday bash dropped out when they saw its MAGA taint.

"Nobody wants those third-rate losers," he wrote. Instead, he offered something better: "Me!" After all, he continued, he was the "Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, drawing larger audiences with only a microphone than Elvis did in his prime.

There is hope, as Trump's tsunami of Big Lies veers deep into crazy. Americans are protesting peacefully and singing along with the Boss. Bruce Springsteen, among so many others, bang on alarms that resonate in the reddest of states.

But along with that, far more Americans need to step back to see the larger picture.

These Reports date back to 2015 when Trump began his creeping coup d'etat. I've watched him for decades, a greed-obsessed sociopath who has systematically exploited an unraveling of American values and principles since the 1980s.

I've gone from Chicken Little to Cassandra, thrusting a wooden lance at windmills. Lots of others with louder voices have done much more. Yet each year, more Americans believe what they believe, with infinite "sources" to comfort bias at any extreme.

Now anything goes. Billions vanish because of blatant corruption. The Constitution is shouldered aside. Federal agents get away with murder. If lesser nations don't "behave," as Trump told Oman, he will just bomb them.

There is far to too much to detail. Focus on the fundamentals.

After 60 years of covering bad trouble all over the map, nothing burns more deeply in my memory than Daniel Hodges, a Washington cop, bellowing like a wounded buffalo, as insurrectionists smashed his face against a door, jabbing him with an American flag.

Rioters beat him viciously. Steven Cappuccio, 52, stole his police phone and shoved it into his mouth so he could attack with both hands. He repeated, "How do you like me now, motherfucker?" Someone else tried to gouge out Hodges' eyes with his thumbs.

That scene hit me hardest, but there was so much else. We saw it all in real time, along with the rest of world. The defeated president watched it happen, refusing even to stop goons with a noose chanting, "Hang Mike Pence."

Cappuccio was sentenced to 85 months in prison for "sadistic cruelty." Biden gave Hodges a Presidential Citizens Medal. Trump pardoned about 1,600 insurrectionists on his first day in 2025. He called them heroes punished by the corrupt Biden machine.

Then Trump tried to compensate them from what he considers his personal treasury — the nation's income tax receipts. From the beginning, he refused to reveal his returns. At first, he claimed he was under audit. The IRS said that was no problem.

Eventually, the New York Times shed light. He paid next to nothing, using accounting hoop tricks that led to felony convictions for fraud. The packed Supreme Court gave him cover while in office. Among so much else, taxes slipped off the radar.

Then an IRS contractor leaked Trump's first-term tax returns to reporters. He was arrested and jailed. The president sued the IRS for $10 billion in damages although, as chief executive, he had responsibility for the agency.

In a "negotiated settlement" one judge called a sham, the IRS is permanently banned from auditing Trump, his sons, his company and others in his inner circle. The president was handed back nearly $1.8 billion to compensate those mistreated patriots.

That is one travesty the courts put on hold, and Trump decided to back down. One encouraging sign of resistance. But others continue as he weaponizes justice against anyone who irks him.

One example: Courts awarded E. Jean Carroll a multimillion-dollar settlement for sexual assault, what one judge defined as rape. She remains unpaid. Instead, federal prosecutors pursue potential charges of perjury or improper donations to her defense.

On MS Now, Lawrence O'Donnell rails against what he says is the most corrupt crime family operation in world history. Others hammer away with facts. But the media mainstream mostly pokes at the edges in disconnected fragments.

The president's cultists, who holler bloody murder if someone steals their garden gnome, make excuses and counter with absurd what-abouts. Shmoos just smile and twitch their whiskers.

During French glory days in the 1800s, Victor Hugo wrote: "France, France, without you the world would be alone." Then three German wars ravished the country, leaving millions dead. After the last war, America stepped up to help.

Today, Germans are the good guys. France is crucial to the Atlantic alliance in a new world order, with effective diplomacy and a nuclear-tipped military force de frappe. Its defense of human rights, free trade and development aid offset America's inward turn.

In the end, all crises pale compared to climate collapse.

Fossil fuels and much else are poisoning Earth's ecosystem. American wherewithal is vital to common action while there is still time. Trump and his rogue elephants are off in the opposite direction. Come November, every Shmoo will count.