If they made a sitcom out of the Trump presidency, would they call it ‘Get Stupid’?

The iconic spy spoof “Get Smart” began as a sitcom in 1965, then was made into a movie in 2008. The sitcom featured the bumbling American spy Maxwell Smart, aka Agent 86, and his chic sidekick, Agent 99. Smart and his partner “99” worked for an American spy agency called CONTROL. Their nemesis was the evil international spy outfit known as KAOS. It was the height of the Cold War, and I always assumed KAOS represented Russia’s KGB.

Remarkably, CONTROL and KAOS remained relevant as metaphor for the battle between the United States/Western democracy and the dark forces of communism, tyranny and global disruption for 50 years.

But now, in up-side-down Trump World, we have a president who is some weird conflation of Maxwell Smart buffoon and Russian double agent. America seems pitted against its allies, allied with an oppressive Russian dictator — and virtually at war with itself.

With a complicit, corrupted GOP-led Congress and a largely powerless Democratic Party, the very future of American democracy rests in the hands of voters and one courageous, steadfast patriot named Robert Mueller.

The State publishes a cross section of the letters we receive from South Carolinians in order to provide a forum for our community and also to allow our community to get a good look at itself, for good or bad. The letters represent the views of the letter writers, not necessarily of The State.