We could all breathe a sigh of relief if Donald Trump had fired Kristi Noem for the right reasons. If, for example, Trump had determined that a Cabinet member who accused two American citizens of engaging in "domestic terrorism"—after they’d been shot at point-blank range by masked agents under her charge—had crossed a bright moral line, rendering said Cabinet member an unsalvageable liability, then we could all sleep a little easier.

But that’s what would happen on Earth 1. On the Earth 2 of Trump 2.0, Noem was fired—of course—for upstaging the boss and shifting blame for one of her errors onto him. The error was the $220 million ad campaign that featured images of Noem on horseback, sporting requisite high-end hat and jodhpurs, out where the buffalo once roamed, banging on about "freedom." Under questioning from GOP Senator John Kennedy, she made the fateful mistake of saying that Trump had approved the ads. And that was all she wrote.

Well, as Johnny Rotten said when Elvis kicked it (quite unfairly, in that case), "Good riddance to bad rubbish." Outside of Stephen Miller, Noem is probably the purest fascist among Trump’s second-term frontline appointees. I say this because she understands spectacle, which is such a key element of the fascist worldview. The visual humiliation of those deemed to be human vermin by the regime in power sits at the heart of the historical fascist project. Those photos of her standing in front of the nearly naked prisoners of CECOT with her Rolex prominently displayed might constitute the single most indelibly fascist image of this presidency.

So that’s the first piece of bad news about Noem’s departure: It happened for the wrong reasons. The second piece of bad news is that it’s unlikely to produce much substantive change. Markwayne Mullin, whom Trump has nominated for the job, and whom we must assume will be confirmed by his fellow senators, doesn’t seem like someone whose ideas about the world are terribly different from Noem’s.

He will probably be smart enough to be less ostentatiously reactionary in front of the cameras. Although—maybe not. Have a look at this clip of his appearance on CNN after the execution of Renee Good. "Police officers are doing their job, and she was interfering in their job," he said. "If you don’t wanna be in harm’s way, don’t get in the way of police officers who are doing their job." Aside from the fact that ICE agents are not "police officers"—and that Good was getting herself out of the way at the time of this fatal confrontation—there’s Mullins’s clear and sick implication that Good deserved to be shot. Not arrested. Shot.

Combine that outlook with the fact that Stephen Miller will still be the one really calling the shots, and reasons for hope hang by a very slender thread. Indeed, there’s a lot of speculation out there that this was all orchestrated by Miller, and that Mullin is his man. Certainly, someone with less hunger for media attention can get away with more.

However, there is one piece of good news in Noem’s exit. Assaulting Trump’s fragile ego may have been the backbreaking straw here. But before that, she started to become a bigger problem than she was worth. And that happened not because of Trump or Miller or her ads or her Rolex. That happened because of you.

There’s no question that a year ago, Trump, Miller, and Noem assumed they had carte blanche to do as they wished with respect to undocumented immigrants. Why shouldn’t they have? Trump won on immigration, in significant part. He made no secret on the campaign trail of wanting to round up millions and either detain them or ship them off. And the people elected him.

But then a funny thing happened. The collective conscience of many millions of Americans was pricked. And the people rose up and said no, most notably in Chicago and Minneapolis. But really, people all over the country stood up. In late January, a nationwide anti-ICE walkout protest boasted more than 300 locations around the country, with at least one in nearly every state. Many of these protests have been organized by churches, which makes it a little harder for Trump to dismiss the "troublemakers" as Marxist lunatics.

There’s no question that all this highly visible agitation made the ice, so to speak, on which Noem was skating considerably thinner than it might have been. And immigration as an issue has been transformed from a notable Trump strength into one of his most glaring weaknesses. We’ve learned that most Americans value what immigrants—even those who arrived illegally, provided they’ve lived productive lives since—bring to this country. It’s been heartening to see.

That’s democracy in action. Trump and his people hate it. But the key point is this: They are not above it. Even they have to respond, to some extent, to the will of the people. They are supported at this point by a zealous minority that thinks it’s a majority. It is not. The percentage that strongly approves of Trump is generally somewhere in the low to mid-20s. In this late February CNN poll, it’s 19 percent.

Strongly disapprove, by contrast? That was 48 percent. Practically a majority. That’s you (I presume), and that’s me, and that’s millions of good Americans who understand what democracy and freedom actually mean. And we need to keep in mind the real lesson of Noem’s demise: No matter what the Democrats in Washington do or don’t do, we still have power in our hands. Let’s keep using it.

Last week’s quiz: "It’s a world of laughter …": A quiz about children’s songs.

1. "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" originated in what year and country, and as what type of work, composed by one Thomas d’Urfey?

A. 1706, England, opera

B. 1744, Scotland, light opera

C. 1790, Italy, teatro musicale

D. 1808, United States, folk song

Answer: A, a 1706 English opera. Says Wiki: "The earliest variant of the song is ‘In the Fields in Frost and Snow’ from a 1706 opera called The Kingdom of the Birds or Wonders of the Sun." 

2. An early Welsh version of this song was known by the name "Jack Jintle."

A. "The Muffin Man"

B. "Go Tell Aunt Rhody"

C. "This Old Man"

D. "Farmer in the Dell"

Answer: C, "This Old Man." Here’s a good history. But I searched in vain for an explanation of where "knick knack paddywhack" comes from and what it means. The answer could just be that the composer thought they were fun syllables that fit, and it means nothing at all, as is often the case with such lyrics in pop and rock songs.

3. Miss Memory Shelton of North Carolina sang a version of this song to folklorists Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles in 1916, which they transcribed. Years later, the song would be a hit for The Weavers, Percy Faith and Burl Ives, Perry Como, Dave Van Ronk, and 1960s–70s TV game show host Jack Narz.

A. "I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad"

B. "On Top of Old Smoky"

C. "There Was a Crooked Man"

D. "Eensy Weensy Spider"

Answer: B, "On Top of Old Smoky." Here’s the story. Many such songs were captured by folklorists traveling Appalachia in the early 1900s, just as Alan Lomax went down to Mississippi to find old blues songs.

4. The lyric that opens this quiz ("It’s a world of laughter") is the opening line of one of the world’s most famous children’s songs. It was written by what songwriting team, who penned innumerable Disney classics?

A. The Sherman brothers

B. The Mills brothers

C. Leigh Harline and Ned Washington

D. Alan Menken and Howard Ashman

Answer: A, the inimitable Sherman brothers. Geniuses. The Mary Poppins soundtrack is an all-time gem, especially "Feed the Birds." Harline and Washington wrote the great "When You Wish Upon a Star," and of course Menken and Ashman have co-written a lot of the more recent Disney hits.

5. Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem are the Muppets’ house rock and roll band. What was the first rock-era song they ever performed on The Muppet Show, and with which artist?

A. "Crocodile Rock," with Elton John

B. "Octopus’s Garden," with Ringo Starr

C. "Brand New Key," with Melanie

D. "Loves Me Like a Rock," with Paul Simon

Answer: It’s, to me, the least likely of the four—D, "Loves Me Like a Rock," in 1981. The Muppets famously performed a version of "Octopus’s Garden" on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1970, on a special Beatles tribute show that also featured Peggy Lee doing "Maxwell’s Silver Hammer" and "Something." But that wasn’t Dr. Teeth. 

6. This song, widely considered the most popular children’s song of the 2010s, is commonly performed along with a series of hand gestures and has gone viral not only in pop culture but in sports, media, and even politics.

A. "Let It Go," by Idina Menzel

B. "Happy," by Pharrell Williams

C. "Baby Shark," by Pinkfong

D. "No Cops at Pride," by Postpostpunk

Answer: C, "Baby Shark." Want to know how viral? In late 2020, The Guardian reported, the 2016 video became the most-viewed YouTube video of all time, topping seven billion views. 

This week’s quiz: "Black gold … Texas tea." A timely quiz about oil.

1. The old wives’ tale about oil coming from the decomposed bodies of dinosaurs is just that—it isn’t true. So where does oil come from?

A. The bodies of early mammals like mastodons and such

B. The flora of prehistoric forests

C. The remains of microscopic marine organisms that settled on the ocean floor

D. The cocktail of gases that existed in prehistoric oceans

2. The ancient Chinese used oil for lamps and other purposes, but where and when did humans first broadly start using oil as an energy source?

A. In Persia in the 1500s

B. In England in the 1600s

C. In France in the 1700s

D. In the United States and Canada in the 1800s

3. The birth of the modern petroleum industry is generally agreed to have happened with the discovery of a huge oil reserve at a place called Spindletop in Texas. What year was this?

A. 1882

B. 1893

C. 1901

D. 1912

4. When was oil first struck in Saudi Arabia?

A. 1922

B. 1930

C. 1938

D. 1949

5. During the OPEC oil crisis of 1973–74, how much did the price of a gallon of gas rise in the United States?

A. From 39 cents to 53 cents

B. From 27 cents to 49 cents

C. From 51 cents to 77 cents

D. From 56 cents to 62 cents

6. Based on current consumption rates and known reserves, how long from now will the world run out of oil?

A. About 30 years

B. About 50 years

C. About 100 years

D. About 220 years

Bonus question: Some of you may recognize "black gold, Texas tea" as being a lyric from the theme song to The Beverly Hillbillies. In the setup to that show, how much oil was discovered on Jed Clampett’s Tennessee property? Actually, I don’t know, but the OK Oil Company paid Jed $25 million (in 1962: $271 million today). By show’s end a decade later, Clampett was worth $95 million; shrewd investor! Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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