The Opinion Pieces are an eclectic bunch on current affairs & history often with a human interest aspect. The Movie/DVDs reviews are mainly on documentaries with a smattering of movie reviews.
Initially Port Elizabeth had only been earmarked as a landing place for the British Settlers and not as their destination. Yet in the thirty years from 1820 to 1850, contrary to expectations, it experienced a tremendous growth spurt, so prodigious in fact was its expansion that it even overtook Cape Town in terms of the volume of exports. This is the story of the people and events that form the basis of this incredible journey.
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Volume 2: Uncharted Territory
After a rambunctious start in which business was the dominating ethos, would the nascent town successfully make the transition from an scruffy unkempt hamlet into a vibrant well managed town. It was an exciting time. Standard Bank was launched, the Prince Alfred’s Guards was formed and the first breakwater was built.
Trump’s Presidential campaign strongly hinged on his insult, Sleepy Joe (Biden), when in fact Biden was never seen to sleep in public. The irony is now Trump can be truly called Dozy Donny as he regularly catches up on his nap time during White House pressers when he is not the centre of attention. Of course, he claims he is just thinking.
Monty Python’s The Lumberjack Song has been popular since it appeared in their 1971 film, And Now for Something Completely Different. As it is now old and dilapidated, just like the East Wing, Kennedy Centre, Reflecting Pool and the East Potomac Golf Course, it needs renovating and updating under Trump’s roving eye and expert feel.
TRUMP I’m a slumberjack and I’m OK. I text all night, I sleep all day.
CABINET and FOX CHOIR He’s a slumberjack and he’s OK. He texts all night and sleeps all day.
TRUMP I pardon thee, I lie a bunch. I change the lavatory. On Wednesdays I go golfing, And have Diet Coke for tea.
CABINET and FOX CHOIR He pardons thee, he lies a bunch. He changes the lavatory. On Wednesdays he goes golfing, And has Diet Coke for tea.
He’s a slumberjack and he’s OK. He texts all night and sleeps all day.
TRUMP I cut down trees, I jig and dance. I like to wield my powers. I put on bronze tanning, And migrants behind bars.
CABINET and FOX CHOIR He cuts down trees, he jigs and dances. He likes to wield his powers. He puts on bronze tanning, And migrants behind bars.
He’s a slumberjack and he’s OK. He texts all night and sleeps all day.
TRUMP I don’t waste time, catch a feel, When they visit me. I wish I was good looking Just like my friend Jeffery.
CABINET and FOX CHOIR Hey bro, WTF? . . . We’re outa here
Apart from his name and a few other biographical details, there was a paucity of information regarding Howard Mapplebeck (1847-1909)and his stay in Port Elizabeth. Despite appearances that he was a prosperous individual, I was unable to establish much apart from the fact that he lived in a plush house on Emerald Hill. Having uncovered numerous photos of a Mr Howard Mapplebeck on Flickr, I was intrigued as they cast a light on an elegant milieu and a graceful lifestyle.
Main picture: Howard Mapplebeck (1847-1909) with family and friends, at Emerald Hill, Port Elizabeth, in 1886. Howard is in white with pith helmet. Seated in front of him are his children Sybil Mapplebeck (1875-1955) and Sydney Mapplebeck (1877-1904). Nanny Marie stands to the side. Photo taken in 1886 at the age of 39.
Apart from those threadbare facts, the one of the two other mentions that I was can uncover about the mystery man is an entry in Margaret Harradine’s excellent tome: Port Elizabeth – a Social Chronicle to the end of 1945. The entry is dated January 1883 in which Margaret recounts that “The South African Kennel Club was formed. For many years dog shows were held at the Show Ground as part of the annual Agricultural Show. The first show was held on 14 and 16 March 1883 with about 200 entries. The judge was H Mapplebeck. Breeds represented were pointers, setters, retrievers, greyhounds, foxhounds, harriers, beagles, spaniels, sheepdogs, newfoundlands, bull dogs, bull terriers, rough-haired terriers, pugs, toy terriers, Pomeranians, mastiffs and boar hounds.
Above: Howard Mapplebeck in 1886 in his Emerald Hill home with an unknown person. Typically he is dressed in white with a pith helmet
Howard was born 1847 in Aston, Warwickshire. On the 13th May 1874 he married the 19 year old Mary Wilkes who was born in 1855. They had two children Sybil and Sydney. In 1881 they were still residing in England except that it was now in Worcestershire. Howard separated from Mary prior to 26th May 1882 when he departed from Dartmouth bound for Cape Town. Howard’s ultimate destination was Port Elizabeth. Family records suggest that Howard came to the Cape as an entree to the gold rush of the 1880s in the Boer Republic. This suppositionn is butressed by newspaper articles and share certificates which later confirm his commercial interests in mining properties especially in the Barberton area. His wife was only to pass away many years later in 1914 at Villa Paul in Hyeres, France dying 5 years after Howard who passed away in 1909. The probate record indicates that she left her estate to their daughter, Sybil.
What I have been able to establish is that by the age of 22 in 1867, Howard was a partner with a certain Mr Samuael John Claye in a Leather Manufacturing Company based at Number 44 Bradford Street, Birmingham. Howard must have been involved in the leather business from this point onwards as an advertisement in the New Zealand Evening Post of 1881 refers to saddlery of a Mr. H. Mapplebeck.
Rekindled interest Mapplebeck’s interest in dog breeding must have developed during the period prior to his arrival in Port Elizabeth in 1881 as a number of books of the period make mention of various of his dogs especially his New Foundland. Many of these animals have been painted for posterity and are still being sold. It appears that Howard had taken an interest in dogs prior to living in Port Elizabeth. Howard rekindled his interest by attending a dog show at the Show Ground in North End. In the early years of the town, only dogs which possessed some utilitarian value were favoured. In this regard, the most prominent role that they played was as hunting dogs with the most prominent such event being the almost week long hunt at Wycome Vale by the Easter Hunt Club. This was no more than a carnival of slaughter in which hundreds of animals were killed in an orgy of death.
Kennel Club As dogs were increasing acquired for their aesthetics for breeding purposes rather than their utilitarian value, members of the Easter Hunt Club founded the South African Kennel Club [SAKC] in Port Elizabeth in February 1883 imitating the British model. The club defined its intended audience through an annual subscription of £1 1s and garnered no fewer than 158 members among Port Elizabeth’s middle class within just a few months. This cash infusion and fraternal ties with the PEAS enabled the SAKC to mount the colony’s first dog show as part of the town’s annual agricultural show in March 1883 in a purpose-built shed in the show yard. The response exceeded all expectations, attracting more than 200 entries and 900 visitors in the two weekdays that it was open and the more than £300 invested by the Club in buildings and prizes was amply recouped by the windfall from entrance fees, gate money and catalogue, ensuring that the dog show became a permanent imperium in imperio in the town’s annual agricultural show.
A founding member of the SAKC, William Armstrong, put up a £5 5s prize for the best “bush dog”, which was awarded to a “half-breed Foxhound” in accordance with the prevailing consensus among the town’s hunting squirearchy. The decision was rudely and publicly rejected by another competitor
At the risk of being hoist by their own petard, the SAKC quietly dropped the “bush dog” category from future shows and relied upon committeeman Howard Mappleback who had “considerable experience in such Shows in England” to save them from any future embarrassment caused by unwittingly putting their backveld mongrel preferences on public display.
What this does indicate to me is that life in Port Elizabeth in 1883 was no longer in survival mode. Instead there was time to embrace the finer, more cultured things in life.
Offspring Prior to their separation Mary had already conceived two children, Sybil and Sydney. Like her mother Sybil had been unsuccessful in marriagemarrying twice, firstly to Charles Stephenson in 1895 who died in 1907 following divorce proceedings and then in 1910 she married Thomas Burbidge. Sybil had one child, Marie Gertrude Stephenson de Souviron in 1908. Sybil died in 1963 in Slough, Berkshire. Sadly Sydney died in his twenties in Singapore in 1901.
Howard Mapplebeck, Birmingham, circa 1865
In all of the photos in this collection taken at Emerald Hill, were taken in 1886, Howard is dressed in white with a pith helmet. Furthermore his children are also often included being his son Sydney Mapplebeck (1877-1904) and his daughter Sybil Mapplebeck (1875-1955). Their nanny Marie is also often shown. His wife Mary is not shown in any of these photographs as she had separated from Howard prior for his departure for the southern shores.
Above: Emerald Hill 1886. Howard in the background on a pony
As far as I can ascertain, Howard Mapplebeck was born in Birmingham in 1847. One of the photos of Howard as a young man is taken in 1865 at 18 years of age in Birmingham.
Dog breeding Whilst still residing in Birmingham, Howard had developed a passion for dog breeding. Howard had many of his prize breeds painted in water colour and these paintings are still extant. In fact he was extremely well known as a breeder of note even today.
Howard with friends, children & their nanny, MariaA water colour painting of a Gordon Setter called “Blossom” belonging to Howard MapplebeckHoward with friends in Port Elizabeth in 1886Howard with friend in 1886
Without any additional information, it is possible that Howard only resided in Port Elizabeth for a short period and, as a minimum it must have been from March 1882 when he departed from Dartmouth bound for Cape Town and perhaps was a judge in a dog show until sometime in 1886 when all the other photos of Howard in Port Elizabeth were taken.
Howard with friends at Emerald Hill in Port Elizabeth in 1886
In 1891 Howard is recorded as attending the Shire Horse Show on 26th February 1891. Hence closest date of departure from Port Elizabeth and relocation back to England is between 1886 and 26th February 1891.
In his excellent book Port Elizabeth in Bygone Days, Redgrave makes mention of a Mr Maplebeck [sic] who occupied a famous farm on Emerald Hill. Presumably, Maplebeck and Mapplebeck are one and the same person. Redgrave records that a hotel licence was granted to Mr. Mapplebeck. In his article on Emerald Hill in the 2007 edition of Looking Back, Richard Tomlinson refers to the Emerald Hill Hotel which a Mr. Eduard Steinmann opened in April 1883. He then goes on to state that Mr. Steinmann was succeeded by a Mr. Howard Mapplebeck as proprietor. Apparently eventually Mr. Mapplebeck’s extensive house became the property of the Dominican Sisters who rebuilt it in order to run it as the St. Dominic’s Priory. The photo used in the blog from the Bensted Collection showing this house, confirms it size.
The Emerald Hill Hotel tea gardens in 1898Howard Mapplebeck (1847-1909) by O. Bättenhaussen, Port Elizabeth, c. 1890
Panoramic view From the Emerald hill homestead, one is afforded a panoramic view of the entire coast line around Cape Recife and the Bushy Park Estate which stretches for miles along the coast towards Cape St. Francis. Whether Howard ever experienced the warm-hearted hospitality of Bushy Park’s first owner, Charles Lovemore, one can only speculate. The chances are good that these two neighbours did indeed socialise. Maybe Howard did not share Charles’ passion for game hunting.
Above: Hunting at Wycombe Vale
Whoever Howard Mapplebeck was, he was certainly affluent and enjoyed the finer things in life.
Howard with friends in 1886A water colour painting of a Newfoundland dog named ‘Leo’ owned by Howard MapplebeckEvening Post New Zealand 1881Committee of the South African Kennel Club 1883 & 1893
Information supplied by Richard Day Out of the blue, I received an email from Richard Day informing me that Howard Mapplebeck was his great grandfather and then proceeded to supply me with a significant volume of information regarding Howard Mapplebeck and his family. All of this information related to his life in England whereas the information that I had uncovered related to his life in Port Elizabeth. Hence I now have a fuller picture of the man.
What is important to note is that Howard Mapplebeck, after his South African odyssey, came back to England and started a relationship with Mary Ann Masters (1860-1951). They had four children together:
Charles Samson Wutheimer Masters (1892-1912) Evelyn May Masters (1896-1990) Muriel Mary Masters Matthews (1901-1970) George Howard Matthews (1902-1974
Howard Mapplebeck is indeed listed as a boarder at 61 Redcliffe Road in 1901. But this does not reflect the reality that he and Mary Ann lived together for about 18 years and he was the father of her four children.
Concerning Howard’s earlier life, he appears to be the youngest of five children to William Batty Mapplebeck (1807-1893) and Martha Harrison (1808-1891). His father was an ironmonger, merchant and factor originally from Rotherham in Yorkshire, who came to Birmingham as the industrial revolution gathered pace through the 19th century.
The siblings appear to be as follows:
Sarah Nancy Mapplebeck (1839-1930)
John Edward Mapplebeck (1842-1925)
William Batty Mapplebeck (1843-1926)
Edward Mapplebeck (1845-1937)
Howard Mapplebeck (1847-1909)
.
For Howard there are census records, directory entries, newspaper articles and other documentation to support the following timeline:
1851 First census record, age 4, in Aston, Warwickshire. 1865 At age 18, first record in newspaper of prize awarded for showing of poultry. Many more would follow in the 1860s and early 1870s. 1871 At age 24, he is working as a saddler’s clerk in Birmingham. 1872 23rd March Howard acquires the saddlery and harness manufacturer of Horton and Grundy. 1872 Mapplebeck & Co Saddlery and Harness maker advertised. 1874 Advertising shows Howard’s business as “inventors and makers of the African hunting saddle” . 1874 Marriage to Mary Wilkes 1875 Birth of daughter Sybil 1878 Birth of son Sydney 1881 Census return shows Howard at age 34, a manufacturer, at Knowle, Solihull, with wife Mary and their two children. 1882 14th April Notice of dissolution of partnership in saddlery company. 1886 Photo album shows Howard, his children, a nanny and friends at the Emerald Hill estate, Port Elizabeth. Notes accompanying the images confirm the date. 1891 26th February Howard is recorded at The Shire Horse Show in Islington, returned from a “long sojourn in South Africa” 1892 Howard fathers Charles Masters, son of Mary Ann Masters (1860-1951). 1893 Record of an Ordinary General Meeting of the New Eberhardt Company, in which Howard reports on the Thistle Reef gold mining property. 1895 Share capital raised for the Woodstock Transvaal Gold Mine Ltd, of which Howard is a director. 1896 Howard’s second child with Mary Ann is born Evelyn May Masters. 1901 Howard is shown at Mary Ann’s property in South Kensington as a boarder and financial agent. 1901 Their third child is born Muriel Mary Masters Matthews. 1902 Mary Ann gives birth to their fourth child, George Howard Matthews. 1909 Howard’s death at age 62 in South Kensington.
Sources Newspaper images courtesy of Findmaypast WoodstockTransvaal Gold Mine Ltd share certificate courtesy Scriptoworld Port Elizabeth: A Social Chronicle to the End of 1945 by Margaret Harradine Port Elizabeth of Bygone Days by JJ Redgrave Photos from the Bensted Collection on Flickr Emerald Hill: The Farm, the Hotel and St. Dominic’s Priory by Richard Tomlinson in Looking Back 2007 Class and Canicide in Little Bess: The 1893 Port Elizabeth Rabies Epidemic by Lance van Sittert https://www.flickr.com/photos/bensted/15397206386/in/photostream/
Richard Day provided the majority of images which were used in my initial blog. They were sourced from Richard Day’s Bensted Collection on Flickr. Selected data from his family history research on Howard and his family are now included in this updated version of the blog.
After nearly two years of Trump’s narcissistic, bully boy and chaotic Presidency, most Democrats and sane people in the rest of the world were anticipating a correction to normalcy (to use an American term). Some optimistic commentators were even talking about a blue wave. (Isn’t it delicious irony that the Republicans hate all things Socialist or Communist, except for Trump’s admiration of Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, while their party’s colour is red, the signature colour of all of those despised movements?)
Most right-thinking, or is it left-thinking, people thought that the Dems should take the House but were unsure of the Senate. That’s always a tough ask as the smaller conservative Midwest states are allowed 2 Senators each, the same as, say, California with 39m people. Well on 3 November it wasn’t a blue wave but a tsunami of The Great Wave off Kanagawa proportions.
By beddy-bye time on 5 November the Dems were leading the House 253-157 with 25 still to be called and the Senate 54-44 with 2 to be called. In American political terms, this is a righteous twocking in a similar vein to that epic scene in Pulp Fiction of Samuel E Jackson (mis)quoting Ezekiel 25:17 –
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities Of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
. . .
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger Those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
For the remaining two years of his term Donald will be a lame Duck à l’orange. There will be reckoning for him and his sphincter polishing lackeys, just not of Pulp Fiction proportions. But, as the incoming House Oversight chair advised the Republicans: “Lawyer up!”
SMAC has chosen not to illustrate this piece with a dramatic cartoon of The Great Wave, or something reflecting Samuel E Jackson’s speech, but something less dramatic but more quietly snarky.
Shrek might be an ogre, but a lovable one. Trump is an ogre and an obnoxious one, in vowel and bowel.
Trump is not only a serial assaulter as Jean E Carroll found out, but a serial insulter as many people all the way up to leaders of countries, which have long been allies of America, have discovered. In his second term he has taken it further and has not let any opportunity pass to insult someone or some country. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, he has not insulted Putin, Xi Jinping or Kin Jung Un in his second term.
Reporters and journalists have increasingly found themselves the focus of his ire. Perhaps, it’s because he knows most of his policies are indefensible, and/or he finds it increasingly difficult to argue coherently in his dotage so that unfriendly questions are immediately deflected by asking what network or newspaper they represent and then proceeds to knock their low ratings and accuse them of peddling fake news and being “terrible” people.
If the journalist is a woman, the misogynistic bully in him doesn’t stop there. After all we know his attitude to women and their kitty cats, and since he cannot stick it to them physically anymore, he sticks it to them verbally.
When Katie Rodgers wrote an article about his health and age, he described her as “a third-rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.” After Megyn Kelly was critical of him, he accused her of having “blood coming out of her wherever.” There are many others to quote but the subject of the cartoon was when Catherine Lucey pushed him about the release of the Epstein files, he snapped at her, “Quiet! Quiet piggy!)
Kak! This is a short, pithy and to the point word that Afrikaners gifted to the world.
It doesn’t roll off the tongue glibly, but violently when used as a one-word response to certain situations or stupid statements in an argument. “KAK! (pronounced KUK)” It can also be expressed slightly softer as in, “SMAC, jy praat kak!” (SMAC, you are speaking shit!), but it is still short and pithy. Most times kak can replace shit in South African English, but there is no direct translation for “Jy is kak sleg!” except by saying rather mildly “you are very bad/inept.” Pieter Dirk Uys in his hilarious anti-Apartheid shows in the 1980s coined the abbreviation, KAK, to demean staunch Afrikaner institutions like the BB (Broederbond or Brotherhood) or the NGK (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk or Dutch Reformed Church). He said it stood for Kaapse Akteur se Kultuurbond (Cape Actors’ Cultural Guild) which allowed him to use it without theoretically invoking the dire ire of the deeply conservative state.
Unbeknowst to the Greeks that Afrikaners had reserved the word for use two and a half millennia later to describe bad situations, they invented a rather longer and more erudite word. Along with a lot of Greek achievements, it died along with much of Greek learning and was only kept alive by some arcane scholars in Oxford and Cambridge. That is until Trump came along and it is now being used in mainstream media. The word is KAKISTOCRACY, which means to be governed by the least capable or inept people. That perfectly describes the Trump administration to a man without exception.
SMAC got to know the word when the odd clever commentator started using it because of the ANC shitshow that has prevailed in SA for 32 years. When the SMAC series started, the word was featured in #54 back in 2023 because, like the Trump regime, in the ANC (Almost No Commonsense) people were appointed because of their usefulness to the man in power and not because of their ability. Luckily for SA, the Department of Finance has been led, except for a very brief period under the useless Lucy Gigaba, by men who knew what they were doing and did it properly. Also, by and large the Justice Department has functioned well, particularly at the Supreme Court level.
Not so for America. Their incontinent[1] Commander-in-Thief has ensured that there is not a single Department that is competently run. It is as if he abhors competence because they will show him up. Whatever the reason, he is busy destroying every State Department.
Of all the areas comprising Port Elizabeth, none has experienced such a demographic upheaval over 350 years as this locality. Arising not from some colonial diktat but for the most part these movements comprise the almost voluntary but clumsy rotation and migration of population groups each seeking their own futures. These clans comprised three disparate population groups; the khoikhoi the original inhabitants of this area, secondly the trekboere seeking their independence from the chokehold of the VOC and lastly came the English settlers.
This blog will briefly touch on the first two groups; the khoikhoi and the proto Afrikaner in the disguise of a Trekboer. Then the spotlight will be shone on the third and final cohort of residents of Buffelsfontein and the Clark family in particular.
Main picture: View of Buffelsfontein from the main house
First They Came was a powerful confessional prose piece by the German Pastor Martin Niemöller in 1946 that condemned the complicity of German intellectuals and clergy who had facilitated the Nazis’ rise to power. It has since served as a warning to free democracies of the dangers of totalitarianism.
Over the past few centuries, mathematicians have cloistered in an arcane world where they have deeply contemplated the mysteries of numbers, functions, conjectures, theorems and the like that, on the face of it, have little or no practical use. The brilliant ones know they can live a life of gentle contemplation in their monastic ivory towers and the chosen few might even solve a 200-year-old theorem to (mathematical) world-wide acclaim. Their serene existence would be punctuated by publishing papers, attending conferences and even delivering the odd paper at one or two. Their existence would be justified if they got a polite applause.
Unfortunately, their Elysian world was recently shattered and they have to now contemplate their raison d’être. Quoting from Steven Boykey Sidley article in the Daily Maverick: On the night of 6 October, OpenAI released a dump of 722 AI-generated mathematics papers, representing somewhere north of 372 proofs (or partial proofs) of unsolved and open maths problems (about 300 of them have been formally verified).
The proofs wiped out decades (and more) of ongoing human enquiry in several mathematical subfields. And each proof took a mere three hours of compute time. Thousands of careers will lose their fuel and their joy, maths PhD programmes will be decimated, university students will flee to other subjects, and some maths departments might disappear in the wake of student exits.
AI, if mismanaged as it’s likely to be, is humanity’s biggest existential threat, far more immediate and unstoppable than climate change.
Trump just missed his Nobel Prize. No, not the Peace Prize, but the prize in Physiology or Medicine. Instead, he let a bunch of flaky European low-lives trump him as he didn’t realise that he was on the cusp of a breakthrough. Perhaps he was distracted by all the wars and geopolitical spats he had created or by his latest squeeze, his first aide, Natalie Harp. Sure, he has not got a great physiology and just thinking about medical complexities gives him a headache. He can’t even take Tylenol for it because RFKjr says it might give him autism, but all the elements were there for the breakthrough.
The prize winners, Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel, wanted to understand how a tiny, single-celled alga called Chlamydomonas senses light. While they were beavering away, Trump, who is an expert on beavering away and chlamydia, made the three scientists green with envy because he had just created the world’s largest algae petri dish in Washington. It did more than just sense light. It attracted TV cameras and even found a way to cause a tear, not only in itself, but also in the reality matrix surrounding his administration. Trump had been busy on this research since 2016, although he did take a four-year sabbatical when he was stiffed out of his job by a walking stiff. During his times in office, he experimented by surrounding himself with pond life who were brain dead but nevertheless joined his choir visible in parroting his talking points*.
Trump’s pond life – #2026 version
This was just preliminary research to see how far he could stretch reality before it tore. This research led to his tour de farce, his pool, that changed from a blue to a green hue and cry while he reflected on it. Unfortunately, like a light that attracts moths, this algae seemed to attract thousands of thugs who vandalised his experiment with knives. He tried to fix things by gently stirring in nano-bubbles of ozone, but it was too late. The result and the prize had been snatched from his grubby mitts just like the last election and he was green with envy. In a fit of pique, and many tantrums later, he drained his swamp so that his precious algae would never see the light again.
* For the younger generation, Monty Python produced a sketch called The Dead Parrot in which a client complained that he had been sold a dead parrot which had joined the choir invisible amongst a bunch of similar cliches.
Disclaimer: It is not right to make fun of old people but as a sufferer of early onset rigor mortis, SMAC has a certain amount of licence in this regard. But when it comes to Trump with all his AI slop that he propagates portraying himself as an heroic character straight out of Marvel Comics, it’s open season.
Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, is a famous operatic work written by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns in 1874. The origins of the opus lie in the 14th century artistic genre of allegory on the universality of death where the devil, or a personification of death, summons representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave. This has many parallels with Trump who has visited much death directly on Iran, provided uncritical support for Israel’s overreaction to Hamas and ultimately has got Putin’s back in Ukraine. It also references his trademark YMCA dance shuffle. And of course, the Dunce in the title obviously refers to all the stupid things he’s said and pulled. But this QuickSMAC is not about death nor his bizarre dance, nor his stupidity. It’s about his legs.
While Trump suffers from congenital vainous abundance, he also suffers from chronic veinous insufficiency leading to swollen ankles which some people believe causes his strange gait sometimes. Also, his flatulence during White House pressers judging by the reactions of people around him combined with a strange backside bulge has led people to wonder if he wears adult diapers. One picture, though, worried SMAC because it didn’t show the conformal padding of a diaper but rather a sudden step above the butt cheek area – strange. That was until a rumour went about of Trump having suffered a stroke at some point. Later there was a video that showed his left hand in a splayed configuration which he quickly hid as he used his other hand to control it.
It suddenly all made sense. He probably did suffer at least a mini-stroke and he’s wearing an exoskeleton attached to his hips and legs.
To paraphrase W.B. Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Let’s hope this White Death Plague ends soon.
