Fingers are a funny appendage. They pretty much dominate one entire human sense, our sense of touch. They have to be very sensitive and tactile while being very rugged and durable since they are used every day for multiple chores. For instance, tomorrow morning I can think of three distinct things I will use my fingers for. The obvious one is that they are my preferred mechanism for inputting my thoughts into stories via keyboarding. I occasionally dictate stories (though even those need fingers for editing), but I prefer the pacing of keyboarding and there seems a consistency between my speed of thought and my speed of fingers. The second use will be to play with and feed Buddy. Buddy needs his rough play time to start his day. That can involve a spirited game of fetch or just a hand-to-pup couch battle where my fingers are critical antagonists to whatever warfare he is imagining. Our breakfast of English muffin with peanut butter would be much harder if not for the delicate use of my fingers getting sticky with peanut butter in order to minimize the bread to butter ratio. And then lastly, I will be spreading 5 large bags of bark mulch over my garage side garden and that takes tough hands and strong fingers to rip open the plastic bags. All of these activities would be harder or impossible but for the flexibility and reliability of my fingers.
But fingers get labeled as sticky for many less positive reasons. The first allusion attributed to a sticky finger is larceny. We pick things up that don’t belong to us and the act of not letting go until the item is in our pocket is a very sticky situation indeed. There is less a planned and devious intent with sticky fingers and more a case of weak moral character which impulsively grasps something and choosing to not let it go when one should. A recent large scale example of a case of sticky fingers is the proposed gift from Qatar to President Trump of a $400 million Boeing 747 to be his personal Air Force One…one which he gets to keep in his pocket long after he leaves the White House. The collusive nature of this arrangement Is astounding, not to mention a direct assault on the emoluments clause of the constitution. The Emoluments Clause refers to provisions in the United States Constitution that prohibit federal officeholders from receiving gifts, payments, or anything of value from foreign states without congressional approval. The Constitution contains two main emoluments clauses. There is the Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8), which states that no person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States shall, without the consent of Congress, accept any present, emolument, office, or title from any foreign state. And then there is the Domestic Emoluments Clause (Article II, Section 1, Clause 7), which specifically addresses the President, stating that the President shall receive compensation for services but shall not receive any other emolument from the United States or any individual state during their term. These clauses were included by the Framers as anti-corruption measures to prevent foreign influence and conflicts of interest in the U.S. government. The emoluments clauses are presidential sticky finger clauses.
To conjure up the idea of such a gift as the Qatari 747 requires a train of thought that starts from privileged desire and runs straight through a transactional approach to governance that has no trouble ignoring the semblance of impropriety but actually flaunts the power associated with doing whatever the hell you want. But the second part of the arrangement is pure evil genius. I can just imagine a meeting in the White House where the discussion was about how can we keep this sticky fingered gift to America and take it with them when they leave (that alone is a good thought given all the talk of a third term) so no one else can ever use it? The rationalizations and creative grifting going around that table must have been a sight to see. It is said that Trump’s sticky fingers had him pocketing $250,000 of national treasures after his first tour in the White House. This transaction would multiply that by 1,600X for round two. Of course, part of the Trump sticky finger playbook is to float such outrageous ideas publicly to test their reaction. That allows him the flexibility to say he was just kidding or that he knew nothing about it if the reaction is too bad, and still the ability to carry through with the plan if the waters stay relatively calm. There is the added benefit of the public approach and that is to weaken the moral fabric to allow greater and greater sticky fingered pocketing of things available to be plundered.
The other thing that fingers get sticky over involves pointing at problems that stack up like excrement on the buck-stopping station. Once the fingers determine that it feels like, smells like and even tastes like shit, they can quickly move to a pointing position with stickiness still in hand. The Trump administration has taken an age-old political act of blame shedding and elevated it to a new sticky finger art form. I see that in addition to every single economic woe and speed bump in the road being Joe Biden’s fault, Sean Duffy, who seems somewhat more competent than other Trump cabinet members (despite starting life as a reality TV star), is now pointing the sticky Newark FAA controllers debacle finger at the Biden Administration. Since we will be transiting through Newark on our way to Europe next week, I suppose I am expected to curse Joe Biden (and by extension, Hillary and Kamala….snd especially Pete Buttigieg) for any and all delays we encounter. At some point you gotta wonder if the Trumpsters realize that people grow skeptical of government blame shedding and start to provide dimishing relief from causation if the finger pointing goes on too long or occurs too often…or both in the case of the Biden/Trump play.
So sticky fingers seem to be all around us. As useful as fingers are to our every day existence, they seem even more important to life in the Trump lane, where they keep getting stickier and stickier, leaving fingerprints in places that would make the Framers of our Constitution blush.