How close to a coup will we come with regards to the fate of Donald Trump?

One of my distant cousins felt compelled to express her disgust with President Donald J. Trump, taking to Facebook to let it be known she’s among the majority of our society wishing he could be removed from office.

TRUMP: How can we dump him from office?

Me, feeling the need to be a complete smart-aleck, responded by saying such talk amounted to a coup d’ tat and was un-American. Although I then added in full sincerity the part I really believe – that we’re stuck with the buffoon in the post of president and commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces and that we’re going to have to suffer a bit.

THAT IS OUR penalty for picking to be our president the rube who thinks all his money buys him sophistication and knowledge. We, the people, picked him, and now we’re going to pay for our moment of vacuousness.

Even though we had an election in which 54 percent of people who voted chose someone other than Trump, the rules under which our elections operate allowed Donald’s 46 percent support to be sufficient to give him an Electoral College majority.

And as various polls show, those who were among the 46 percent are largely satisfied – mainly because they enjoy the thought that Trump’s presence in the political post so offends the people they disagree with.

Considering that those same individuals are the ones who gave Republican interests their current control over Congress, there’s just no way that we get any serious effort toward impeachment.

THE PEOPLE WHO are in control would likely find themselves on the wrong end of the conservative right’s retribution if they were to do anything to harm Donald Trump. As for those who think their sense of shame would become too intense; well, that’s nonsense talk.

What's worse? Trump thinks this is still real? Or worth defending?

Many in government have no sense of shame. If they did, they probably wouldn’t have been able to bring themselves to run for office to begin with.

So for us in the real majority, we’re going to likely have to endure the nonsense of moments such as Trump’s public withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, where he said he did it to support people like those who live in Pittsburgh, rather than Paris or any other foreign place.

Of course, the mayor of Pittsburgh quickly came out and publicly criticized the president for undermining a measure that would go a long way toward making the Pennsylvania city a cleaner- and more-pleasant place to live.

GRIFFIN: Too absurd to take seriously

WHAT I SUSPECT Trump really means is that he did something to benefit those people of the rural parts of Pennsylvania who provided much of the voter support that caused such places as that state, along with Michigan and Ohio, to swing over to the Trump column last election night.

It’s not like Trump is the kind of guy who gets too wrapped up in comprehending the details of his actions – his real quarrel over the environmental agreement most likely is a bad meal he once had while at a French restaurant somewhere in Manhattan.

So what should we expect in the way in expressing opposition to this Age of Trump that we’re now in?

There are the protests such as the one scheduled for Saturday outside the Dirksen and Kluczynski federal complex in Chicago – along with various other cities across the nation. This particular event is going to focus on Trump and Russia and the notion that the president is in an unhealthy collusion with that nation.

WHICH WILL GIVE an outlet to express the frustrations of those of us ashamed to live in a nation with a sizable batch of knuckleheads who had no problem with the image of former President Barack Obama facing a lynch mob but now are grossly offended at the latest nonsensical ramblings and images of comedian Kathy Griffin.

For the key to comprehending Trump’s actions is to realize he’s not fully aware of the details of his trash-talk, which enables him to spew such nonsense. It often may be based on the stereotypes of the past – such as his Pittsburgh comment.

CAPONE: Does Trump think he's still real?

It makes me wonder if something similar is happening every time Trump engages in trash talk of Chicago and its crime rate. Perhaps he thinks Al Capone is still on the loose in the Second City and needs to be reigned in?

Which probably has Trump wondering why that damned G-man, Eliot Ness, isn’t responding to any of his phone calls to order up a federal raid or two on “Scarface’s” South Side operations! Or maybe he's so confused he thinks he's really calling actor Kevin Costner?!?

  -30-

D.C. building for Eliot Ness?

Let me state up front that I’m not fond of naming buildings or streets for people. There’s always the stink over whether someone’s achievements are really worth it.

And what happens decades from now when a future generation decides they’d rather honor someone else with a structure whose sole purpose is to provide work space for public officials and civil service workers?

WOULD WE BE better off if we thought of the Daley Center as merely the county courthouse? Probably. Erect a statue to Richard J. somewhere if you want to pay tribute.

Which might be the best way to honor the memory of Eliot Ness, who about 90 years ago was one of the Prohibition agents based in Chicago who was supposed to enforce the laws against alcohol that were put in place in this nation back in the 1920s.

Instead, they spurred the creation of Italian gangs into an organized crime entity that exists to this day.

We’re talking about the days of Al Capone, who of course we like to joke never got caught selling liquor or engaging in any violent crimes to enforce his liquor empire. He got caught by not reporting all the money he made on his income tax returns.

WHICH MEANS THE Internal Revenue Service busted him, then gave him over to the Justice Department for prosecution. Not the “mighty” Prohibition agents – whose men have morphed throughout the decades into the modern-day Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms unit (with most of their emphasis placed on the latter part of the title).

So why is it that there are government officials who want to name the building that houses the ATF division in Washington, D.C., as the “Eliot Ness ATF Building.” The Chicago Sun-Times reported that both of our senators – Richard Durbin and Mark Kirk – are eagerly trying to attach their names to the effort so they can get credit for it!

The REAL reason we remember Eliot Ness

One could make the argument that you’d be honoring a federal agent who couldn’t catch Capone in the commission of crimes that were done pretty much in the open in 1920s-era Chicago.

Although anyone who has ever read the Oscar Fraley (a United Press reporter-of-old in Chicago) book “The Untouchables” gets the impression that Ness viewed his job more or less as harassing the Capone organization until other federal agents could build up the criminal case that resulted in that 11-year federal prison sentence.

Should we remember Dan Aykroyd's Ness portrayal?

OF COURSE, I realize Ness gets some serious publicity points because – after all – he was portrayed in a 1950’s-era television program AND in a 1980s film. Who else can claim to have had both Robert Stack and Kevin Costner portray him?

Even if those portrayals are so far from the actual man that they can be called complete fiction.

You’d be better off hanging photographs of Stack and Costner inside the building, instead of one of the actual man (whom nobody these days would recognize).

There’s another point to argue. If you really were going to honor the memory of Ness, why do it in D.C.? I suspect the agents in the capital city back when Ness was active thought of him, if at all, as someone too incompetent to bring a conviction.

PERHAPS THEY COULD name the Chicago ATF office, in a suite at 525 W. Van Buren St., for the man whose book would have you think of him as an incredibly honest man who couldn’t be corrupted.

Although I’m not interested in getting into a debate over the “real” Ness – who I know had his own struggles during life and was far from heroic in any sense.

More dangerous than the Outfit?

Personally, the part of the Ness story that most amuses me is that after Prohibition, he eventually got transferred out of Chicago, and wound up being one of the “revenuers” in the mountains of Kentucky busting illegal stills – claiming that those ‘hillbillies’ with shotguns were just as dangerous as any of Capone’s men.

Does this mean that every one whose family contains a “colorful character” engaging in the production of “moonshine” will now crawl out of the woodworks to oppose this move?

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dan Aykroyd's portrayal of Eliot Ness in a Saturday Night Live sketch is less memorable than that of Desi Arnaz' portrayal of master criminal Frank Nitti -- whose plot to sell amphetamines to local teenagers is thwarted when wife "Lucy" brings him a "Tommy Gun" loaded with blanks!!!