Elder Advice

Thinking Inside the Box - 171 - You Better Watch Out

This December 24, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, marked 70 years of “tracking Santa’s sleigh”. Elder Advice remembers Christmas Eve 1960, when he was still in short pants. NORAD reported it was stalking the flight of “S. Claus” when some undefined reindeer injury caused the sleigh to make an emergency landing on the ice in Hudson’s Bay. RCAF Sabre jets provided overwatch as the jolly old elf, who apparently has some qualifications as a vet, bandaged up Blitzen. Crisis averted. Elder Advice uses the term “crisis” advisedly. That was the year he was dead set on a Radio Flyer wagon.

It has been perhaps the most harmless, and certainly the most charming, community outreach undertaking of North America’s military - deftly showing a human face to delighted children and parents around the world.

“We track Santa. We want to make sure that Santa is being good. We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.” That was this Christmas Eve’s contribution to the NORAD anniversary from the illiterate toddler in the White House.

Is there any circumstance in which Trump does not demonstrate that he is unfit to be in the company of decent people? Any moment that he does not provide irrefutable evidence that he has, and is, a colossal ass?

Elder Advice is just asking questions.

After the events of this year, that Trump would use Santa as a cautionary tale about immigration is barely newsworthy. But: “We want to make sure that Santa is being good”? Really? Usurping the task of deciding who is naughty or nice?

Surely that will be the last straw for the lethargic American public. Surely now we will witness the inexplicably delayed mass uprising, with tens of millions of kids in girl and boy land pouring into America’s snowy streets. After all, it is one thing for Trump to know when they’ve been sleeping and know when they’re awake. The microchips in the vaccines give him that information. But the right to make lists must surely remain with someone who can be relied on to check them twice.

And who knows the basic difference between bad and good. For goodness sake.