I'm committing this here, just because when something niggles at my brain, I have to blog about it to get it out of my system because otherwise no further blogging will ensue. There is an air of tragedy about being buried behind the first tee at one's second husband's favorite self-owned golf course. The site is but the first of what is intended as a family plot, graced with a low-profile and simple stone--far simpler than what I imagine Ivana Trump would have wanted for herself and lacking even the least personalization--only her name and dates of birth and death. Not "beloved mother and grandmother". Just the absolute starkness of her having existed.
I can shudder at the likelihood that this is her final resting place because her second husband gets a tax break from his Bedminster property being a cemetery as well as a working farm (it has goats!) (I'm not joking about the tax break--the property is also proofed against tax sales in the event of bankruptcy.) And I still can't cast the idea (described as #staircasecancer on Twitter) of something dodgy about her death having taken place, out of my mind.
Imagine her friends or non-Trump family who want to pay their respects having to go through Trump's business to visit her grave? I imagine it. It's hard to think of Trump joining her there, although I balk at the idea of this country letting the president of the insurrectionists rest at Arlington. I find it too easy to see him, also, at Bedminster--but in something much more elaborate. Subordinating her in death by having a nice mausoleum erected.
This is the same property where Trump welcomed the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, to the dismay of 9/11 survivor families and colleagues of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi alike. Suddenly Trump, who once was certain that KSA was responsible for 9/11, insists that no one ever really "got to the bottom" of that tragedy. We most certainly have gotten to the bottom of that one, but has anyone ever gotten to the bottom of Trump's greed, or is it bottomless?
I thought we were never supposed to forget what happened there, although Trump's memory has often been selective.
The result being that the tickets were on sale for $1-3 on StubHub as crowds stayed away in droves. That's sad, especially since Trump graced this even with the prestige of the presidential seal, which the former president is still using despite having no authority to do so. As if putting the US government's seal of approval over the sports-washing of a murderous regime.
It's unsavory, unethical, illegal, and to the world outside of Trump World, it looks bad--although it does seem par for the course.
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There's a story line I don't want to divulge too much of as it is just sneaking its way however distasteful I might find it into popular culture, of a "rancher" who buried is life-long top-hand out in the yard. Turned out they'd been involved in some illegal uranium mining, and he needed to bury the evidence. Call me jaded but that was my first thought: burying the evidence.
I'm probably granting the whole family more grace than they deserve, but - I'm hoping Ivana had (for a consideration) consented to this burial, if it does indeed convey some sort of tax advantage to Trump Inc. It's more bearable to think about than the whole family being glad she died at the exact right moment to let them delay depositions, then disposing of her body in what looks like a fairly tacky if not grifty way. But given this timeline, probably Ivana didn't want this, the whole world learns she was publicly disrespected by her kids for a grift, and in the end the local authorities fight back and eliminate the payoff.
Trump divorced her a good 30 years ago, and I have no idea who she appointed executor of her estate. Her adult children are her ex-husband's loyal followers. If she consented, I guess it is what it is. But that lonely grave with the pitiful little unpersonalized slab just doesn't seem like it could be it. Her mama Marie Zelnickova is still alive. She had other family. It disturbs me that Ivana's final resting place feels like proof of Donald's triumph over her in death.
I am agnostic and empiricist by nature but could easily hope for a poltergeist.
This episode is a wonderful illustration of the key to Trump's political success. What burying your ex-wife on your golf course for a tax break tells us good and just people about him is that he is classless grifter whose only talent is working a corrupt system. What it tells so many of the victims of the corrupt system is that Trump is the only politicians around willing to abandon all pretense of piety and taste in order to grift a corrupt system.
Politicians and commentators on our side may talk a good game about reforming the system to make it less corrupt and bring relief to its worst victims, but the voters have heard that talk for decades with little obvious action on those professed beliefs, and with this tell -- that folks who talk this talk of reform, for all they decry the corrupt system, carefully respect its pieties and hypocrisies and the powers those hypocrisies protect. Trump is not going to do squat either about making things better for anyone but himself, but at least he is both upfront about that, and he offers the immediate emotional satisfaction of a middle finger extended towards the corrupt system. The less malignant idiots on our side urge restraint, good taste, and following all the rules and norms.
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