War Powers and Chrome Bumpers

The dog’s name was Springhead. Springhead and I watched TV news together practically every day. Reginald Bump was in the White House.

Bump had recently announced his decision to remove the North Portico to make way for the construction of a presidential gas station. Bump assured the public that the station’s design would blend with the Neoclassical architectural style of the historic structure. The White House Gas Station would be reserved for fueling the president’s limousine and other official White House vehicles as well as the vehicles of important White House guests and donors, who would be issued special “Chrome Cards” for exclusive use at the WHGS.

In announcing his gas station project, President Bump said, “For more than maybe 150 years, many people have wanted a full-service gas station at the White House, but nobody did anything about it. Now finally it is happening under Bump.”

It was well-known that that Reginald Bump was obsessed with chrome. Chrome fixtures and design elements had been installed throughout the White House to accommodate his occupancy. The customized décor was in keeping with the president’s peculiar sense of style. The Bump remodel featured a collection of classic chrome bumpers on display in the Oval Office. As well, a special White House Office of Heritage Chrome had been created for the purpose of regular and frequent chrome maintenance and polishing.

President Bump’s favorite chrome pieces were gifts from foreign dignitaries. These included some quite rare retro chrome bumpers. Some were reported to be one-of-a-kind original chrome articles backed by detailed and verified provenance records. These items were highly valued among chrome cognoscenti. Some considered them priceless.

The gas pumps and fixtures at the White House Gas Station were to be all chrome, of course, including the windshield washing squeegee containers and paper towel receptacles.

Video on TV of meetings and ceremonies taking place in the Oval would feature the White House chrome collection in backgrounds and in brief panoramic shots of the office. Whenever chrome came into view, I swear that Springhead would emit a soft whimper. I would look at him sympathetically.

For me, the feeling in those moments of televised chrome was heartfelt dismay over what I saw as a desecration of the historic People’s House. I don’t know whether Springhead shared my dismay or if he was instead responding to an instinct bred into the canine species involving raising a hind leg at the sight of a shiny chrome bumper.

Much like his obsession with chrome, Bump was fascinated by the military. He had ordered up a grand military parade in the nation’s capital, scheduled coincidentally to take place on his birthday. It was meant to be a demonstration of military might—not military might in the abstract but the military might that he alone possessed in his role as Commander in Chief.

The parade had not been applauded by the exuberant audience he had imagined. That the event had by most accounts fallen flat annoyed him briefly, but he did not ruminate on disappointment. That was not his nature. Instead, he denied the reality of disappointment. The parade had been glorious, historic, the likes of which had never been seen before. Reports to the contrary were fake news or Democrat propaganda.

Riding the momentum of his parade success, Bump focused his fascination with military power on deployment. He loved the word “deployment,” and he deployed federal troops to the streets of Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Chicago. Any city in the country could now become a theater of military operations. I looked at Springhead. Springhead shrugged it off. Springhead was an optimist. He felt that sending troops to the streets of America was a political loser.

Bump’s deployment of troops (including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Customs and Border Protection agents) arrested and detained an estimated 1,800 people per day (including CBP arrests along the borders with Mexico and Canada). The Bump administration’s goal was to deport a million people per year. Although the arrests included many people with no criminal record as well as a disturbing number of U.S. citizens, the operation was being conducted supposedly to stop an “invasion” by “the worst of the worst” across our southern border. 

As if masked soldiers on the streets of America were not spectacular enough, Bump and his tin soldier war secretary soon opened a new front for military operations. Fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela were the new threat. With the help of the military’s most modern surveillance satellites and aircraft, the enemy fishing boats could be located and with precision blown out of the water. Reginald was thrilled. This was better than the fireworks at his birthday parade!

Blowing up fishing boats and their crews with no proof of drugs on board, let alone any real threat to national security, appeared to some to be illegal and immoral. It amounted to murder on the high seas, but this was of no concern to Bump. It was an official act, and the highest court in the land had said it was okay.

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Some other stuff for later,