Coins of the Realm

Like everything else, American coins are in decline, a sad shadow of their former value. Cash was then; electronic transfer is now. The last time I had a coin in my pocket was when gas was under three dollars a gallon. I can hardly remember those good old days, before Trump ruined human life as we knew it.

But even the coins look like they’ve been messed with by morons, with more to come thanks to our hollowed-out Treasury Department. The penny is slowly disappearing from the coin-o-sphere, a victim of the cost it takes to produce them. I think that means we’re in another period of inflation, like the fact that Tillamook ice cream is now selling for $10 a quart. Forget housing prices and gas; we’re talking about Cookies-and-Cream.

Meanwhile, take a look at the new “Emerging Liberty” dimes. The eagle on the Roosevelt version used to hold arrows and an olive branch. Now, the only thing left is the arrows. By summer, the eagle will clutch a canister of uranium, to remind us of our successful war against Iran. I heard it during a press conference with Peter Hegseth, Secretary of Slaughter and Other Unhealthy Things.

Worst of all is a pair of new coins now in the process of official review. The first is a commemorative gold coin for the country’s birthday. It will feature a bitchy portrait of Dear Leader and be hard to derail because it will be made (big surprise!) of gold. Apparently, there are rules that make it less pervious to protest.

The second will feature a bitchy portrait of Dear Leader and serve as a dollar’s worth of legal tender. Both coins are essentially unprecedented in American history because they will mark the tenure of a sitting president. In other words, they will represent the traditional values of obsequious deference, ass-licking psycho-phancy, and oily fawning.

But the worst thing of all is the slide into authoritarianism. The great hallmark of fascism is the ubiquity of Dear Leader, who is made to seem everywhere at once. His face looks out at us from newsreels and street posters, and now, in our time, from screens and social media. We can no longer see our own faces in the world, but only the snarling visage of the president, draped over federal buildings in Washington and stamped onto the jingling coins in our pockets. Every image of him erases one of us, crowding citizens to the edge of the picture.

Is there anyone who thinks that this displacement is healthy, that it furthers the cause of freedom and democracy? I want Donald Drumpf out of my sightlines, replaced by images of political and moral health.