We are all on Vance's humiliation tour

'Blessed are the peacemakers' was not said by Jane Fonda

Our hapless vice president has nicely illustrated the plight of Republicans who submit to Trump, stumbling dutifully from campaigning for Hungary's Viktor Orbán to disastrous peace negotiations with Iran to lecturing our Augustinian pope on Saint Augustine's "just war" theory.

Given how disastrously the first 15 months of Trump's second term have gone, he is lucky that he picked JD Vance as his running mate and packed his cabinet with people ripe for humiliation, whom he can blame for his incompetent, deranged, whim-driven leadership style.

This is like a dark version of the 1969 movie, "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," except it's more like, "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Time to Bomb Denmark."

It's not that I regard Trump's campaign to wreck our country and our international alliances as harmless fun. It's that virtually the entire Republican Party is too afraid to get off his hell-bound train.

It's gotten so bad that even the fanatical leaders of Iran are starting to look sympathetic. Imagine the fun of working for their propaganda ministry.

Leo XIV, the first American pope, is proving to be far more popular than the president. This, I suspect, is the main problem. Trump cannot stand to be outshone by someone who has made clear he is not afraid of him. Leo happens to be my fellow Villanova alum, and I am the nephew of an Augustinian, but my non-Catholic friends love His Holiness.

One of the funniest things about the situation is Trump's and his minions' tone deafness. When Leo criticized the war on Iran and said "Blessed are the peacemakers," Trump & Co. reacted as if he had quoted Jane Fonda instead of the Sermon on the Mount. Pete Hegseth, at a prayer service in the Pentagon, quoted something written by Quentin Tarantino for "Pulp Fiction" as if it were real Scripture.

Granted, Samuel L. Jackson's delivery was convincing in that movie.

As for FBI Director Kash Patel, let's just say it is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a drunken fool than to sue The Atlantic and leave no doubt.

Sometimes I unwind by playing games. There are several animated variations of Monopoly that you can play on your mobile device, created for Hasbro by Marmalade Game Studio. The version set in pre-WWI Paris has a choo-choo train circling the city, but it never stops to let passengers on or off. This could be the basis of a suspense thriller like the 1994 "Speed," in which Sandra Bullock's bus is set to explode if its speed drops below 50 mph.

As the French would say, "Laissez-nous descendre de ce train!"

(You can look that up as I looked up the pronunciation of the street names in that version of Monopoly.)

I honestly don't know how we get off this thing we are stuck on with Trump. It's not as if we can move to a colony on Mars to avoid getting blown up. Besides, I could not bear to leave my beloved city of Washington, so lovely in springtime, for a dusty pile of rocks.

Plenty of people, myself included, have been urging everyone to vote. Never mind that Trump is determined to steal the election, because he can never be wrong and can only lose an election rigged by treasonous Democrats.

Have you noticed, by the way, how he has drained all the force out of words like treason and terrorism by overuse?

Those of us who can afford it have the option of moving overseas, or spending a lot of time traveling. My friends Alan and Will, in addition to their home in DC, now have a place in Bordeaux. I cannot begrudge them their escape, especially since they are big foodies and have included me many times over the years in the multi-course gourmet meals with paired wines they enjoy hosting.

Most of us, both here and abroad, are exhausted by Trump. As I write this, his approval rating on the economy is down to 30%. It may be tempting to note that he is nearly 80 and the Good Lord could call him home any day, but I wouldn't count on it.

Other than reciting the latest appalling headlines—and let's spare ourselves from any more of that today—all we can do other than remember our civic duty is to live our best lives.

That, and try to get control of the blue properties so you can build a hotel on Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

Richard Rosendall is a writer and activist who can be reached at [email protected].

Copyright © 2026 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.