You may have heard Trump’s braggadocious announcement the other day about the White House’s new fleet of 250 Cadillac Escalades for the the presidential motorcade. “Our guys are very spoiled. They like the Escalade. So do I,” said Trump. “We look sharp in those Escalades.”
That’s a lot of “we.” 
The Escalade is a super-size SUV with three rows of seats; 7-8 people can ride in one. That might be a little coach class for our Dear Leader class, so let’s assume just four (plus the driver) in two executive class rows. That would be seats for 1,000 apparatchiks. Cut that in half and it’s still 500. Did Louis XVI – who later on lost his head – have an entourage this extensive? This expensive? The base price of a civilian Escalade is $91,100. Trump and his entourage are also civilians, of course – excepting the handful of OKW types that follow him around – but the Escalades they ride in are surely upgraded to suit the eminence of officialdom. Maybe Trump worked a “deal” with government motors.
What’s most interesting about this is the imperial garishness of it. More finely, as the American empire disintegrates, its garishness waxes. There is some sort of weird congruency there. Forty-something years ago, Reagan was driven around in Nixon’s old Lincoln limousine, which was a ’72 model. Later, Reagan upgraded to an ’83 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. Singular. As in just the one. This was at the height of the American empire, mind. Fast-forward to the present. America is a kind of louche empire on the wane, led by a strangely gesticulating vulgarian who “tweets.” Say what you will about Reagan. To imagine him “tweeting” is right up there with imagining his wife, Nancy, doing a striptease. This is not to praise the Reagans. It is simply to make a point about the changes. 
The decorum that once existed no longer does. It has been replaced by an extravagance on par with what you’d expect from a mafia don. The funeral procession for Don Corleone comes to mind. Dozens of shiny black limos, each containing a mobster come to pay his respects. These are preceded by a plethora of flower cars. To his credit, the late Don paid for it all.
America’s Don – who is a billionaire – isn’t paying for any of it. How much is it? Estimates range from $22.5 million to about $75 million, depending on the extent of the modifications to each of the 250 Escalades. Probably these will be considerable since an as-it-comes Escalade is much too common for our Don. It is not improbable that he will order gilded trim, as he has done all over the White House (which is now his house, as he sees it).
There is also the gas. An Escalade has a 24 gallon tank and its standard 6.2 liter V8 wants premium unleaded, currently well over $5 per gallon nationally. So each fill-up costs (us, the taxpayers) about $120 and the Escalade needs filling up often since it averages 17 MPG. It is interesting to note that the same government that hectors Americans about “gas hogs” loves to buy them in bulk, for its own use. 
Some more rough math: Filling up 250 Escalades means us paying for 6,000 gallons of premium unleaded. Assuming $5 per gallon, that comes to $30,000 to gas them all up – once. The entourage of the Don does not have to sweat that, of course – because they can put the charges on our card.
It’s a really bad look, but the Don not only doesn’t care – he flaunts it, like John Gotti used to – and he does it at the same moment in time when ordinary Americans are struggling to put regular in the Kias they paid for with their own money, with whatever was left of it after they got tax-fleeced to pay for all the nice things the Don thinks are befitting the magnificence and generosity of the regime.
“We look sharp in those Escalades. Our guys are very spoiled. They’re very spoiled,” says the Don.
Indeed they are.
. . .
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Personally I would like to see how they justify this purchase. Was like there 250 old vehicles requiring replacement or is it more of a matter that they should all match one another like houses in a HOA development?
A hundred years ago, President Calvin Coolidge regularly took walks outside the White House through the streets of Washington, D.C. on his own, though his Secret Service detail usually followed behind him.
Today it’s unthinkable. This is the price of empire: enemies round the world, including in the imperial capital. And a perceived need for vast cavalcades of flunkies in big black SUVs, to impress the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Nobody voted for this. It derives from a government no longer accountable to the people, pursuing its own objectives.
During his long term in office (1933-1945), Frank Roosevelt drastically expanded the size of government, first with the welfare state and then with world war. Inevitably, the simple days when the president was just another citizen ended. Now the little people bark in dismay, but the great cavalcade of black SUVs rolls on, in its blind imperial obliviousness.
“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.”
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Donald TrumpRonald ReaganAaah, the irony. The Feds have expensive taste, and are “allowed” to have vehicles the rest of us cannot have/purchase, but pay for. So that the “…some who are more equal than others” can obtain.
Were I Rep. Thomas Massie, I would introduce a bill limiting the engine displacement of government vehicles for personal transport to a 2-liter four.
We’re all in this together! 🙂