Why is there no school today, Mommy?

Because it’s Potemkin Day. National holiday. Everything closed to honor the Lord’s commandment about an occasional day of rest. Except, of course, the stores, the theaters, the supermarkets, and the restaurants. Major shopping day. We need lots of stuff.

What’s that : Potemkin Day?

Long story, littlegirl. Sure you want to hear it?

I always want to hear your stories, you know that. Even when I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Sometimes neither do I. All right. Many years ago — 232 years ago, to be exact — the Russian Empress Catherine II decided to take a boat ride from Moscow to the Crimea to check on the condition of her back country. Which at the time was not particularly good. Famine, disease, poverty, rampant corruption. Her entourage included a number of ambassadors from countries equally eager to assess the same thing for their own employers. One of her ministers, Grigory Potemkin, who also had an after-hours job as her lover, helped her devise a scheme to persuade them that everything was fine.

A fake village, of freshly-constructed building façades, like Disney World, and populated by actors was assembled every morning of the cruise on the riverbank for them to inspect, then as darkness came, it was replaced by strategically placed torches and candles to simulate illuminated windows while the buildings were disassembled and shipped ahead to be re-erected along the next day’s route so the dignitaries could see for themselves how prosperous Russia was — filled with bustling activity and happy citizens.

Pretty far out if you ask me.

Yes. But it’s amazing how many such deceptions can be perpetrated by really determined sycophants determined to defend their protected positions. And not all historians are convinced. But the designation ‘Potemkin Village’ has been used ever since to denote a fake papering over of a rotten situation.

And we celebrate that in this country? Why? What has all that got to do with us?All those people are dead and gone.

Well, 200 years on, a situation came up in which our home-grown version of Catherine, a guy named Trump, found a need to use a similar strategy, but this time, so desperate was he for the love and adulation of his subjects that he turned the game totally around, revising it to deceive not others but himself. He portrayed the country as a wild success story for his ‘gut’ theories of government and established a propaganda empire to support his view. Anything tending to contradict his portrait he simply labeled ‘fake news’ and ignored. For a while it worked reasonably well : after all the grandchildren from whom he was stealing the money to create his Potemkin village hadn’t yet been born, so they were in no position to complain, and those in power were too preoccupied with the details of redecorating their homes and offices with de rigueur gold trimmings that they had no time to assess what collateral damage they might be causing to the basic structure. But eventually his various ministers and technical experts realized that only disaster could lie at the end of that road. His spur-of-the-moment firings of people he had just hired meant that there was no security in their own positions. His deliberate destruction of the formal institutions of government meant that they couldn’t even be sure of exactly what it was they were aspiring to. Even the corruption became unpredictable. They could no longer be guaranteed delivery on their earmarks and loopholes and rackets..

What to do?

They finally decided they would have to turn his own tactic against him. His insatiable thirst for praise (always claiming to be a genius, with the ‘biggest’ crowds at his rallies, his ‘highest ratings’ of any president in history, being everyone’s ‘favorite president’) fell apart at the seams of its own own accord until finally he and a couple of close allies were his only remaining fans. But he was also in fact still the President, and therefore in control of many of the levers of power. After much discussion a secret cabal was formed to enable the real work of government to be performed without his participation, leaving him under the impression that it was still he who was in charge. The Potemkin village was constructed around him, not by him, to wall him off from the real world in a cocoon of fake news. The windows of the White House and Air Force One were doctored to show adoring crowds no matter where he looked, and the sounds of cheering and Hail to the Chief were piped into every room he entered. Special editions of the newspapers were published showing that his every plan was a roaring success. His cell phone was monitored to bring him only good news, including constant encomiums from all the heads of states of the rest of the world. His golf card was adjusted by his caddie to assure him scores in the high 60s. Even his shaving mirror was tinted a nice shade of sepia.

With him safely taken out of the action, the normal workings of government were quickly re-established, and the country, which had been teetering on the brink of crisis in the lack of ability to make any coherent future plans or commitments, began to recover. It took months to convince other governments that the new regime was solid and its promises reliable, and to restore the faith and confidence that the world had formerly granted its leadership, but by the time he figured out what was happening it was too late — for him. He raved and ranted but to no avail. The voters overwhelmingly backed the new regime, and the Republic was saved.

Since then we have devised a number of constitutional amendments to prevent backsliding, and we have established a national day of celebration on the anniversary of his abdication : Potemkin Day.

How come I didn’t already know that story? My teacher never mentioned it.

Because the story no longer matters. What counts now is that you get a day off from school and Hallmark gets another special day to celebrate — although with Internet cards, they say the business is nowhere near as lucrative as it used to be.

I’m ready.

Then let’s go.

Where’s your backpack? Have you combed your hair? We have ten minutes to catch the bus.

Why is there no school today, Mommy?

Because it’s Potemkin Day. National holiday. Everything closed to honor the Lord’s commandment about an occasional day of rest. Except, of course, the stores, the theaters, the supermarkets, and the restaurants. Major shopping day. We need lots of stuff.

What’s that : Potemkin Day?

Long story, littlegirl. Sure you want to hear it?

I always want to hear your stories, you know that. Even when I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Sometimes neither do I. All right. Many years ago — 232 years ago, to be exact — the Russian Empress Catherine II decided to take a boat ride from Moscow to the Crimea to check on the condition of her back country. Which at the time was not particularly good. Famine, disease, poverty, rampant corruption. Her entourage included a number of ambassadors from countries equally eager to assess the same thing for their own employers. One of her ministers, Grigory Potemkin, who also had an after-hours job as her lover, helped her devise a scheme to persuade them that everything was fine.

A fake village, of freshly-constructed building façades, like Disney World, and populated by actors was assembled every morning of the cruise on the riverbank for them to inspect, then as darkness came, it was replaced by strategically placed torches and candles to simulate illuminated windows while the buildings were disassembled and shipped ahead to be re-erected along the next day’s route so the dignitaries could see for themselves how prosperous Russia was — filled with bustling activity and happy citizens.

Pretty far out if you ask me.

Yes. But it’s amazing how many such deceptions can be perpetrated by really determined sycophants determined to defend their protected positions. And not all historians are convinced. But the designation ‘Potemkin Village’ has been used ever since to denote a fake papering over of a rotten situation.

And we celebrate that in this country? Why? What has all that got to do with us?All those people are dead and gone.

Well, 200 years on, a situation came up in which our home-grown version of Catherine, a guy named Trump, found a need to use a similar strategy, but this time, so desperate was he for the love and adulation of his subjects that he turned the game totally around, revising it to deceive not others but himself. He portrayed the country as a wild success story for his ‘gut’ theories of government and established a propaganda empire to support his view. Anything tending to contradict his portrait he simply labeled ‘fake news’ and ignored. For a while it worked reasonably well : after all the grandchildren from whom he was stealing the money to create his Potemkin village hadn’t yet been born, so they were in no position to complain, and those in power were too preoccupied with the details of redecorating their homes and offices with de rigueur gold trimmings that they had no time to assess what collateral damage they might be causing to the basic structure. But eventually his various ministers and technical experts realized that only disaster could lie at the end of that road. His spur-of-the-moment firings of people he had just hired meant that there was no security in their own positions. His deliberate destruction of the formal institutions of government meant that they couldn’t even be sure of exactly what it was they were aspiring to. Even the corruption became unpredictable. They could no longer be guaranteed delivery on their earmarks and loopholes and rackets..

What to do?

They finally decided they would have to turn his own tactic against him. His insatiable thirst for praise (always claiming to be a genius, with the ‘biggest’ crowds at his rallies, his ‘highest ratings’ of any president in history, being everyone’s ‘favorite president’) fell apart at the seams of its own own accord until finally he and a couple of close allies were his only remaining fans. But he was also in fact still the President, and therefore in control of many of the levers of power. After much discussion a secret cabal was formed to enable the real work of government to be performed without his participation, leaving him under the impression that it was still he who was in charge. The Potemkin village was constructed around him, not by him, to wall him off from the real world in a cocoon of fake news. The windows of the White House and Air Force One were doctored to show adoring crowds no matter where he looked, and the sounds of cheering and Hail to the Chief were piped into every room he entered. Special editions of the newspapers were published showing that his every plan was a roaring success. His cell phone was monitored to bring him only good news, including constant encomiums from all the heads of states of the rest of the world. His golf card was adjusted by his caddie to assure him scores in the high 60s. Even his shaving mirror was tinted a nice shade of sepia.

With him safely taken out of the action, the normal workings of government were quickly re-established, and the country, which had been teetering on the brink of crisis in the lack of ability to make any coherent future plans or commitments, began to recover. It took months to convince other governments that the new regime was solid and its promises reliable, and to restore the faith and confidence that the world had formerly granted its leadership, but by the time he figured out what was happening it was too late — for him. He raved and ranted but to no avail. The voters overwhelmingly backed the new regime, and the Republic was saved.

Since then we have devised a number of constitutional amendments to prevent backsliding, and we have established a national day of celebration on the anniversary of his abdication : Potemkin Day.

How come I didn’t already know that story? My teacher never mentioned it.

Because the story no longer matters. What counts now is that you get a day off from school and Hallmark gets another special day to celebrate — although with Internet cards, they say the business is nowhere near as lucrative as it used to be.

I’m ready.

Then let’s go.

Could the Blockchain save us from ourselves?

The arrival of budget-making time in Washington brings out all the best qualities in our lawmakers — obfuscating, bullshitting, prevarication, storytelling (both optimistic and pessimistic), and just plain blatant thievery. It is based on a principle that would have seemed unthinkable to the Founders — namely, that each Senator, Representative, official, and Cabinet Member has as his primary mission the looting of money from the national Treasury money to the benefit of the locality political machine that sent him/her there. Elections are fought on the issues of who gets more and who gets less, not on where it might do the most good for the greatest number of folks.

If you don’t believe me, try a thought experiment : Imagine FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING! instead of BUILD THAT WALL! in the bullhorns of the red-hatted cheerleaders at one of Trump’s just inaugurated taxpayer-financed campaign rallies in undereducated blue-collar land where he can draw cheers just by claiming that people who criticize him should ‘go back home’ even if they’ve never been anywhere else in the first place . Imagine the relative decibels. Draw your own conclusions.

In our current reality-show version of reality one of the tools employed by the cheerleaders is the woeful inefficiency of our present method of evaluating one political options against each other — their costs. Promises, totals, predictions, post-dating, spin, and just plain lying make dollar-total promises ideal weapons for scammers. Costs, especially ones safely relegated to ex post facto accounting, can be misrepresented in so many ways that it might almost be said they are never much more than convenient fiction. And politicians are happy to take full advantage of that.

Campaign slogan: “A chicken in every pot.”

Underlying assumption: “I can make pots faster than you can”

This is all based on the notion that there are a fixed number of dollars to be fought for, and that they have fixed values. What if we ditched that idea? First of all it isn’t true — the ins can always just crank up the printing presses and transfer the final accounting to their (our) more and more distant great grandchildren.

The Winklevoss twins shook the foundations with their claim that a variably-valued currency (Bitcoin) could function perfectly well, if its denomination at any given moment could be speeded up. A blockchain-based system could eliminate the skullduggery associated with the phony bookkeeping. (Blockchain accounting assigns a published and unchangeable public history to every transaction — no matter how big or how small — enabling any interested party to examine it. No fudging or Mulligans. If it happened, it’s on the public record. Simplest concept since Nixon killed the gold standard.) This revelation has been greeted with something less than enthusiasm by the Timothy Geithners and IMF and central bank chieftains who feel that the survival of their personal fiefdoms is more important than the life or death of any starving Greek or Salvadoran family they can imagine. After all, their imaginations of starvation or oppression are somewhat limited by the scant personal opportunities they have had to meet ruined Greek small businessmen or starving Salvadoran refugee families in the dining halls of Yale and Harvard.

The basic idea is ridiculously simple — if the value of every dollar and ruble and yen in which national budgets are written (for convenience call them all BB’s — Budget Bitcoins) is instantaneously recalibrated to the value of all the other dollars and rubles and yen out there then we now have a means of evaluating every transaction — including the mortgage values of castles in the air — and the bullshit factor disappears.

Currency, in fact, would just be the percentage value we have assigned to it relative to whatever is the current total value of all the goods currently out there — its BB. Not ‘six hundred and forty billion dollars’ but ‘eighty-seven times what we allot to refugee relief’. We can no longer argue about how much of an effect a change in the military budget will have or won’t have on our conceptions of the proportion we have thoughtfully assigned to it in legislative deliberation. If that allocation changes we will be able to see it immediately; it won’t be hidden under a foot of paper in the annual budget bill, tucked into the spending bill in a midnight foray by a real estate developer’s paid legislator (no names, please) interested in getting a larger tax abatement for his 99 million dollar ‘slum clearance’ tower apartment that can be shopped to the newest New Delhi billionaire eager to show his bank account’s superior robustness over last month’s newest billionaire. The change will be not only obvious in the tax-abatement bill; it will simultaneously show up in the adjusted military budget as well. If we reduce the amount available for school hot meals to pay for more ICE agents, that news will instantly be available to monitoring apps at both educational and immigration agencies and — most importantly — reporters.

Call this Budget by Blockchain. Call it Honesty by Sunshine. Call it Get Your Hand out of My Pocket. Call it anything you like, but put it up there at the top of your requirements of your favorite presidential nominee.

Think about it. I’m serious. “BB” fits nicely on a square piece of Amazon cardboard.

If you look around the table and you don’t spot the sucker in the first half hour — it’s you.

The Donald seems to be deaf to that bit of poker wisdom, offered by a list of hard-bitten movie and detective story heroes. (As are Eric and Jared and Ivanka.) This would be a consoling thought on which I could fall back during sleepless nights, if the ultimate cost weren’t likely to be so high. But unfortunately, because of our electoral negligence, Mr. Trump finds himself in a position to make us pay a huge price for whatever satisfaction we may eventually reap from the dénouement to come.

Our blessed country has spent only a quarter of a millennium in trying to find solutions for the problems that have bedeviled us ever since the Founders first took them on. The scholars who have been studying the Koran and Mohammad’s Hadiths have already been at it twice that long. The sages who have grappled with the Torah’s conundrums have put in far more time on it than either of them — all of them puzzling over ways to keep men from each other’s throats.

Newcomers that we were at the international table, we Americans spent our first ‘half hour’ enjoying our initial easy successes and testing our strategies. We had some successes, bluffs we lost through optimism, pots we won, partly through the luck of the draw and partly through the fantastic good fortune of finding two opponents (Indians and blacks) from whom we could steal without much worry about retaliation since they were even more inexperienced than we were, and armed only with bows and arrows and gospel songs. Progress was painfully slow, but it was undeniable. Domestically, the slaves did get freed. The boundaries of legally established reservations were drawn up, even sometimes honored. Internationally, we did oversee the establishment of a number of tribal councils to introduce rules that would govern all countries equally and we began to set the standards for fairness in multinational negotiations. We slowly began to be recognized as the major force for sensible government among the world’s 193 nations. There seemed to be an excuse for cautious celebration.

Then the Bomb came along and screwed everything up. For the modest price of starving a few of their own citizens (some of them people the leaders didn’t especially value having in the first place) some players discovered that they could scrape together enough money and expertise and chutzpah to make potentially civilization-ending weapons of their own. With these they could terrorize their ‘peace-loving’ colleagues, holding their aspirations hostage. In self-defense the more sane nations tried to resist with ‘binding’ treaties and agreements. That gave Messrs. Putin, Jinping, Jong-un, Erdoğan, and their ilk greater presence at the table, which they didn’t hesitate to exploit.

But America remained a formidable obstacle. Certainly the most powerful obstacle to anyone with dictatorial ambitions. We were unlikely to give up our hegemony without a struggle. Unless … the Trumps, having gained power largely through an unforeseen upset, and inexperienced in dealing with old hands at diplomatic booby traps, could perhaps be suckered through their naive enjoyment of their new positions, their love of pomp and ceremony, and their narcissism — their susceptibility to any form of flattery, no matter how obvious. They could be tagged by winks and nods as the big sucker and unseated by a group attack. No sooner said than agreed to — under the table.

Now we are faced with the ludicrous spectacle of Jared — sweet well-meaning child — offering to settle thousand-year-old religious disputes with a Queens air-rights-type agreement, Ivanka planning for a smooth introduction of Holocaust-themed luxury handbags for her brand, and Donald — aah, irrepressible Donald — grinning atop a 60-ton tank whose treads will have chewed up the pavement of Pennsylvania Avenue and the grass of the Mall in an infrastructure insult that will cost the taxpayers over a million dollars in repairs when he tires of waving and smiling for the red hats and calling for Hillary to be locked up for losing the election

And a whole new group of players have been allowed to edge up to the table — the plunderers are back : the passenger-pigeon-killers. the beaver-slaughterers, the oil-drillers and the coal miners and the lumber-lovers who have been slavering at the mouth through all these Roosevelt (Theodore) regulatory years waiting for just such a patsy to be enthroned. It’s feasting time at the trough, guys. Get it while the getting’s good!

How will all this play out as an older, angrier generation fades from the scene and a younger more reality-based bunch starts to see the power of their votes, we cannot now know, except that it seems unlikely to slip by without confrontation of a kind we haven’t seen since the Great Depression and apples were being sold on street-corners of Wall Street for nickels by men in threadbare Savoy suits. How will Trump react to being dumped? Where will his sycophantic thugs find a new political home, encircled by gerrymander fences strong enough to protect their predatory-payday-lender ideal form of government? What cracks will they crawl into when cornered? When will Jared and Ivanka go back to the social whirl and give up the notion that a ‘deal’ is the obvious solution to thousand-year old stalemate? When will Donald himself finally realize that grabbing pussies is not really a worthy style of life for a grown man?

If you’re young enough, dig in and wait and see. I’m probably not going to make the curtain call. Maybe that’s a consolation prize for being old.