Frankly, there’s not a lot that any civilized person can say in any sort of civil manner about this juvenile (some might say ‘infantile’) viciousness.

Love the subtle racism, as well. Get it?  “vanilla with vanilla frosting.”

Not that that’s “code” in any cultural sense. Oh wait “Vanilla Ice.”

Ha ha.

But let’s lay aside the increasingly naked racism of the Republicans’ rhetoric. Let’s look at what’s actually supposedly being said:

“You didn’t bake this” is self-evidently TRUE.

And, taking the nonsense out of the idiotic allegation, let’s look at how many people would have been involved, HAD the President (oddly) actually baked his own birthday cake.

OK: Frosting.

You didn’t print this, Mr. Trump

Let’s assume (incorrectly) that the icing was made with actual sugar (and not fructose from corn):

It either came from sugar beets (most likely) or cane sugar (less likely).

In either case, how many people did it take to plant that field?

“One,” if you only look superficially, but SOMEBODY made that cultivator. Someone machined the parts, someone dug the ore for the metal. Someone manufactured the plastics (probably oil-derived, see below) and then somebody fabricated or extruded them. And someone made all the machinery that performed those tasks.

Someone drilled the oil that fueled the cultivator, someone manufactured the machinery to DRILL that oil, then to cap the well, pump the oil, through pipelines also manufactured, etc. Someone had to transport that oil (probably by supertanker) then refine that oil (and then all those who built the refinery) then TRUCK the oil to a place where it could be pumped into the cultivator.

Ditto the harvester. Add the trucking that brought the oil, that transported the beets or cane to a processing plant (and let’s just leave the trains out of it for simplicity); someone had to build the roads. Someone had to refine the sugar from the cane or beets, more trucking, and someone had to either buy the sugar for the White House Kitchen or else process it into ready-made frosting for the cake.

Then there are all those who had to manufacture the utensils, the icing tube, etc.

Are you keeping up on your calculator? We’re easily up to four figures now, and most probably five.

That’s 10,000 people who had a hand in making the frosting.

Collectivist political parties!

Let’s skip over the cake itself, because we don’t have the TIME to delineate all those who delivered the materials and machinery to create it without creating a War & Peace-length tome. You can do the math yourself, but you won’t get any extra credit.

In fact, if the usual is the case, you won’t get ANY credit.

But the Democrats sent the cake back.  [ibid]

The great problem in our greed-driven society is that those who benefit the most are the least likely to ever acknowledge the machinery of civilization that allowed them to “create” their wealth, to have their success, and to enjoy the fruits of their “labors.”

Thus the insane Ayn Rand philosophy that “I created my success without any help.”  (Except for welfare and food stamps, as Craig T. Nelson famously madlibbed.)

You didn’t print this stamp, RNC

And that anyone who I see who I don’t IMMEDIATELY see as a contributor to my Superman society is a “looter.”

Adam Smith thought this notion was crazy. Most thinkers throughout human history thought so, too.

Extra credit assignment: Name five economists/philosophers who pointed out the necessarily social nature of humankind. But you can’t start with Hobbes’ Leviathan, because I already said so.

You have to NOT think very deeply to come up with the notion that “you didn’t bake this” is an insult.

The person who has to bake their own birthday cake alone is either a pathetic, friendless schmuck, a baker without baking friends, or else a Republican (one would assume).

So, ridiculous, racist and not able to stand a moment’s rational scrutiny.

Sent as a political INSULT for the President’s birthday.

It used to be that certain things were out of bounds in American political discourse. Birthdays. Christmas, religious holidays and, unless egregious in their behavior, First Ladies’ noncontroversial appearances and “pet projects.” Nobody except extremists ever decided that Lady Bird Johnson’s “Keep America Beautiful” campaign was a collectivist plot to plunge America into a Lovecraftian nightmare of fascism and the ritual eating of human flesh.

Etcetera.

We hear a lot about “civility” in political discourse, and certainly the second that any non-Republican is uncivil in any wise, we hear about it a LOT.

But crapping on someone’s birthday with a racist cake?

Why not just burn a cross on the White House lawn, Republicans?

Oh wait. They’d have to have help to get the wood and the gasoline and the matches. (See “frosting” above).

Idaho KKK cross-burning 2012

You didn’t burn this cross, Mr. Priebus.

The RNC also marked the occasion of Obama’s birthday with faux e-birthday cards mocking gaffes by the administration. [ibid]

Courage.

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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, an honorary Texan, Clown (ditto) and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog