Four-dimensional chess

Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS), praising the current occupant: “And you talk about sharp! He’s playing three-, four-dimensional chess, with time being that fourth dimension.”

Three-dimensional chess is a real game, well beyond the current occupant’s abilities. But if you’re playing four-dimensional chess, you are playing a game that doesn’t exist, against an imaginary opponent. You may be playing dementia chess.

Or: if time is the fourth dimension of the game, perhaps we should think of the current occupant’s efforts to rewrite history, recent and not so recent, and return our culture to some previous imaginary greatness — his favored “again.” Polio, straight white men in charge, the oppression of women, of people of color, of LGBTQ persons: the fabulous fifties.