My blogging buddy and “Wry Wing” creator/officer of protocol Joe Loveland read my feeble mind with his latest post, “Mainstream My Ass.” Word for word, I couldn’t agree more. The fact that a couple military professionals like (the latest) National Security Advisor, Gen. H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis were the last people in the room to “advise” Donald Trump’s response to the Syrian sarin gas attack does not mean Trump overnight has become FDR or Dwight Eisenhower.

Joe’s excerpt from David Frum is spot on. Punditry, whether from Joe Scarborough or David Ignatius of The Washington Post abhors monotony. Show biz requires regular shifts of tone and mood. All commercial artists understand the necessity of inserting a moment of drama into a comedy, or breaking tension with a joke.

Which is what the new “normal” Donald Trump is. A laughable assertion.

What’s more, and here’s where the left-wing nuttery kicks in, Trump’s fundamental abnormality is what makes the most “outlandish” theories about him and what’s really going on seem so plausible.

The plausibility issue was/is a topic when the famous Christopher Steele dossier was released. Traditionalists huffed and puffed about the “unconfirmed” nature of the thing, which of course included the notorious spectacle of Donald and x-number of Russian hookers “micturating” on the bed Barack Obama had slept in when he visited Moscow. (That bed really tied the room together.)

The well-groomed and well-mannered of our media aristocracy were titillated but disdainful. Such unseemly things are simply beneath the dignity of Americans of high standing. (You never hear much detail about Jack Kennedy’s carnal escapades.) There’s a resistance to openly considering the notion with Trump even if at the time of the alleged micturation he was nothing but a misogynistic, pussy-chasing casino operator/reality TV star.

But here’s the thing. It’s plausible. Trump, without the Mrs. in Moscow not long after Obama humiliated him at that White House Correspondents’ dinner paying a bunch of up-for-anything Russian girls to trash a luxury hotel suite? I don’t have a hard time believing that. (Mike Pence? No. But Donald Trump? Easy. My image of Pence would be in a tub with an underage boy reading him the Bible.)

So then, as we consider what is and isn’t plausible … let’s look through a different lens at the fearsome, oceanliner-turning Syrian “strike.”

As I understand it, the base in question, while obviously on Syrian territory is functionally operated by the Russians. A lot of Russians. All over the place. Which means if the Syrians loaded up a jet with sarin gas — which would require an elaborate process of guys in HazMat suits gingerly trucking and loading hyper-lethal gas cannisters back and forth across the base — the Russians had to have known, if they weren’t the ones who bought in the gas in the first place and ran the operation the whole operation.

So yeah, that Russia didn’t know is …  not plausible. But that’s Putin. The guy Trump still won’t criticize directly.

Putin wants to see what he can get away with. Also, he’d like to create some kind of new narrative that would shift the thinking that Trump is his puppet. Because if everyone thinks Trump is his puppet Trump the blackmailed puppet is of no use to him at all.

So Trump watches “Fox & friends” and sees babies gassed to death, and boy is he pissed! We all are! By god, we’re going to do … something! Like … like … like … well, like blow some shit up, man!

McMaster and Mattis suggest a “limited strike” on the offending airfield. And Trump … notifies “Russian authorities” that retaliation is coming. (Remember when Trump the debater was appalled by the idea we’d tip our hand militarily? That too has changed. Sad! USA!)

The Russians, knowing the quality of US satellite surveillance, didn’t have to ask what the most likely targets would be. So they clear their personnel away from the strike zone, (have you seen a number of Russian personnel killed in the strike?) and Trump shoots off 59 Tomahawks. (Snopes.com confirms Trump has a modest stock holding in Raytheon, manufacturer of the Tomahawk). The game-changing strike destroys 20 jets, some which were out of commission.

Thus begins the kabuki performance.

The Russians are indignant! Trump frowns and says harsh things about the Russians, (although not Putin.) Tillerson goes to Moscow and has a “tense meeting.” Relations are at “an all-time low.” Clearly, if you’re half awake or a mainstream political pundit desperately seeking normalcy, everything has changed. Trump is no friend of Russia! He wouldn’t “strike” a friend! We’re back in a normal world!

Except that in reality almost nothing has changed. The airfield wasn’t hit hard enough to slow down takeoffs for even a day. Assad isn’t deterred in any way. The slaughter continues by conventional means.

What has modulated is the perception that Trump and Putin have canoodled at some point in the semi-recent past. Both now appear to be back in their historically acceptable roles of fierce, steely adversaries. Pundits breath a sigh of relief. Normalcy! It’s a return to the traditional game board of Xs and Os. No crazy Y-factors, like a U. S. President in office after colluding with Russians who have the sword of blackmail dangling over him.

Putin, we are to believe, is now genuinely worried about Trump. The orange comb over reality TV star has suddenly become a canny geo-political foe, a genuine threat to the strategies of a career spy/mafia don.

Sorry, the micturating hooker story is more plausible than that.