I Resolve To Follow The Leader

By midnight, January 1, I’d made my resolution list and decided to follow our fearless American leader.

Since nothing any longer matters in America, because we have evolved from George “I cannot tell a lie” Washington to Donald “15 lies a day” Trump, there is no longer consequence for total BS, alternative facts, hate speech, invented history, or creepy or criminal behavior.

So, I resolve to:

1. Start drinking again. If Trump can say it was a good thing that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and pull revisionist history from his posterior New Year’s noisemaker about the causes for the collapse of the Soviet Union — without a mention of Ronald Reagan — then I resolve to fall off my 27-year-old wagon. I’ll get smashed, invade someone’s home, loot, ransack, pillage, and steal the family car for a drunken joyride and tell the judge our leader said it was a good thing. Kinda like the East Hampton woman who was arrested last month at 3 AM on Stephen Hands Path near Cedar Street, where cops say she was drunk driving a 2004 Nissan north, swerving over the double yellow line into oncoming traffic. But listen, the alternative facts could be that she was testing out the power steering, right?

Besides, the poor woman only had a mere four DWI convictions in the past 10 years. Trump had that many bankruptcies and he was elected POTUS as a great deal maker. And in a time when Trump says that his peeps would cheer if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, why are we picking on this wretched soul for allegedly driving drunk, possessing cocaine, and risking the lives of innocents at Christmastime? If people like her are still out careening the roads of the East End after four DWIs in a decade instead of in long term, court mandated substance abuse rehab, then I’m pulling the cork out my Champagne bottle and bubbling down Montauk Highway.

2. Diss the military. Like our draft dodging commander-in-chief, I resolve in the New Year to never again tell a member of our military, “Thanks for your service.” It’s a silly habit I picked up after my brother John came marching home from Vietnam with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. This goes for all branches of our military, including the Coast Guard of Montauk that on December 31 — while the rest of us partied — sped to the storm-tossed site of a capsized fishing boat off Block Island, searching for two missing fishermen. A third fisherman had been rescued by another fishing vessel but the Coast Guard spent New Year’s Day scouring the lethal waters for signs of life.

This was after the Coast Guard service members finally received a one-time December paycheck for their daily service amid Trump’s partial government shutdown unless Democrats voted to give him $5 billion for his big boy Lego wall on the southern border. You know the wall he promised would be paid for by Mexico?

The search for those lost fishermen off Block Island was eventually called off. But last August, the same Montauk Coast Guard and another private vessel helped rescue seven people from a capsized boat off Montauk Point. They also rushed to the crash sites of two small airplanes that went down last year in the waters of the East End. The Coast Guard saves lives and protects our Atlantic border all year, every year.

So, under any other president, there would never be a question about the Coast Guard getting paid. But Trump is different. When his country drafted him during Vietnam, Tough Trump got a rich kid’s physical deferment. The New York Times recently quoted the family of a now-deceased Queens foot doctor — who’d long rented office space from Trump’s daddy, Fred — that as a favor to Fred Trump the podiatrist faked a note saying that Daring Donald had heel spurs, winning him a draft deferment from a war that he supported, often mocking anti-war protestors.

Donald’s feet were later healthy enough, however, to run for and win the White House, bashing along the way Gold Star mothers, heroic POWs, and a KIA soldier’s widow. Trump politicized a long overdue Christmas visit to the troops in Iraq, where he outright lied to their faces about giving them a 10 percent raise.

Then Trump would tag a combat decorated four-star Marine general “a dog,” even though no Trump has ever worn dog tags. Then Deferment Donald claimed that he would have made a good general. (Washington Generals, no?)

So, if our commander-in-chief regularly disrespects our military, shouldn’t we all fall in line? From now on, when I see wounded warriors, instead of thanking them for their service, I’ll smirk and say, “You knew what you were getting into. Besides, you got a 10 percent raise.”

3. Stop going to the gym. Trump says that unless you’re a beauty contestant with the audacity to eat food, going to the gym is for losers.

4. Start eating red meat again. Especially Big Macs.

5. Stop reading. Interferes with golf and tweeting.

6. Switch to Fox News. Escapist entertainment.

7. Choose coal over solar heat. It’s cleaner.

8. Deny global warming. There are no electoral votes in the North Pole. Besides, Santa is a Dem snowflake. So front rowers stay put. Don’t elevate your homes, or update septic systems on the East End. That’s fake poop the Fake News is reporting in the waters where your kids swim, fish, and Jet Ski.

9. Put America First. By buying more of Ivanka’s products made in $1-a-day sweatshops in “s**thole countries.”

10. I resolve to renege on all my resolutions. Gimme two weeks into the New Year, like everybody else.

Happy 2019!

denishamill@gmail.com