Inauguration Day Minus Five

As I was driving my sons home from school today, they told me that this month in music class they’re studying the work of John Kander, who, along with his songwriting partner, Fred Ebb, wrote the songs for Cabaret and Chicago, as well as “New York, New York.”

As I was driving my sons home from school today, they told me that this month in music class they’re studying the work of John Kander, who, along with his songwriting partner, Fred Ebb, wrote the songs for Cabaret and Chicago, as well as “New York, New York.” They had learned a new song that day, they exclaimed, and immediately launched into “Razzle Dazzle,” a tune from Chicago sung by the shyster lawyer Billy Flynn. (You can find Richard Gere, who played Flynn in the movie version of the show, performing it on YouTube.)

“Give ’em the old razzle dazzle, razzle dazzle ’em,” the boys sang. “Give ’em an act with lots of flash in it, and the reaction will be passionate. Give ’em the old hocus-pocus. Bead and feather ’em. How can they see with sequins in their eyes? Razzle dazzle ’em and they’ll never catch wise.”

I clapped and said, “Who does that song remind you of?”

Without hesitation, the six-year-old said, “Donald Trump!”

Correct. As Inauguration Day approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about Trump and his presidency, and how he has managed to fool so many people for so long. And I keep coming back to that song.

Trump is the ultimate razzle-dazzler. He knows how to put on a show, and he knows how to distract people from what’s really going on. He’s a master of smoke and mirrors, and he uses them to great effect.

Just look at the way he handled the COVID-19 pandemic. He downplayed the virus from the beginning, and he refused to take any meaningful action to stop its spread. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly.

But Trump didn’t want people to focus on that. He wanted them to focus on his great economy, or his tough stance on immigration, or his anything-but-boring personality. And he used his razzle-dazzle to keep people’s attention away from the things that really mattered.

It worked for a while. But eventually, even Trump’s razzle-dazzle couldn’t save him. He lost the election in 2020, and he was forced to leave office on January 20, 2021.

But Trump’s legacy will live on. He showed us the power of razzle-dazzle, and he taught us a valuable lesson about the importance of being skeptical.

So the next time you see someone trying to razzle-dazzle you, be careful. They may not be who they seem. And they may not have your best interests at heart.