Today’s words of wisdom were brought to my attention by a frog. No, it wasn’t Kermit, but an unidentified person in a pink frog suit, standing peacefully by the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., carrying a sign that — in one brief, paraphrased sentence — warned of the deeper significance of the latest idiotic blunder by the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Donald Trump assumed the frog was a man, so let’s call it “he” for simplicity’s sake.

As a self-described member of a non-existent organization now known as “Amphifa” (Amphibians Against Fascism), he was most likely “hopping mad” over Trump’s having sent the Park Police to arrest a man for touching a piece of the blue paint that had peeled off of the bottom of the pool and floated to the top when Trump’s supposed pool experts poured hydrogen peroxide into the water to combat the algae that had quickly formed because the stupid blue paint was so dark it warmed the water to the point where algae began to form immediately upon the pool’s being refilled before the paint had sufficiently dried and . . .

Well, you know the story by now. It was a total bollocks, another massive screw-up by a person who identifies as a “stable genius” but in reality knows practically nothing about anything, and pays his loyal “toadies” (get it?) — most of whom are equally clueless — millions (or sometimes billions) of taxpayer dollars to undertake tasks for which they are completely unqualified.

But the deeper meaning — the one the frog brilliantly pointed out — had to do with a poem written by German clergyman Martin Niemoller after surviving Hitler’s concentration camps during World War II. It speaks of the insidious progression of fascism, and the way in which we (the people) allow it to take hold by turning a blind eye to the warning signs until it is too late.

This is an engraving of Pastor Niemoller’s poem located at the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts:

Read it, read it again, and really think about it. Think about the legal immigrants, the journalists, the educators, the proponents of civil rights . . . and the man who was merely curious to feel the texture of the peeling blue paint.

Then tell me the frog wasn’t right.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/24/26