This is firmly anti-Trump so if you're going to get mad and call me names, I suggest you depart before going any further. Save your indignation...I've heard it all already. We can agree to disagree but my newsfeed runneth over and I need to respond. It needs to be said.
I know that a frightening number of people are all-in with the way this president is running the show and are pretty vocal about it. That's ok but I reserve the right to respond. There's an old line that reads 'Silence is Complicity.'
I may be more silent than I should be but I've never been very good at complicity so I'm going to say my say.
And let me remind you that it's your privilege to back whomever you wish and your reasons for doing so are yours. That's the real American way unless that's become 'socialist' too. I also understand it's unlikely that anything I can say will change your outlook (although I can hope). It's gotten to the point that all we're doing is yelling at each other and nobody is listening anyway. But here's the thing...I truly do not understand anyone's dedication to this man.
I've been around a long time and remember hearing about Trump way back when he was just another tabloid headline under the 'Alien Landings Reported In New Jersey' breaking story...long before he came on the national scene. Before he ever made it to what is now referred to derisively as 'The Mainstream Media' or for the more outspoken...'Fake News' and 'Enemy of the People'.
I know that a frightening number of people are all-in with the way this president is running the show and are pretty vocal about it. That's ok but I reserve the right to respond. There's an old line that reads 'Silence is Complicity.'
I may be more silent than I should be but I've never been very good at complicity so I'm going to say my say.
And let me remind you that it's your privilege to back whomever you wish and your reasons for doing so are yours. That's the real American way unless that's become 'socialist' too. I also understand it's unlikely that anything I can say will change your outlook (although I can hope). It's gotten to the point that all we're doing is yelling at each other and nobody is listening anyway. But here's the thing...I truly do not understand anyone's dedication to this man.
I've been around a long time and remember hearing about Trump way back when he was just another tabloid headline under the 'Alien Landings Reported In New Jersey' breaking story...long before he came on the national scene. Before he ever made it to what is now referred to derisively as 'The Mainstream Media' or for the more outspoken...'Fake News' and 'Enemy of the People'.
In a checkout-line kind of way I watched him bounce from wife to wife to scandal to birther to TV personality. He's always been what he still is. You may only believe your chosen outlet but what he is has been there from the beginning. He relished that tabloid life of unfaithfulness to his wives, the headlines of his financial failures, interviews full of patently horrifying opinions...until it suited the narrative for all that to be conveniently untrue.
It's all recorded. All the history, all the interviews, even the video of him doing things and saying things he and his followers now deny ever happened. You may think that everything is 'Deep State' unless it agrees with your guy but it's not. It just plain isn't. Fox can spin it and edit it and shout it down but one thing about our world these days...almost everything is recorded and stored in raw form if you care to look for it.
Then I saw the hate in his eyes when he got roasted at the White House Correspondent's Dinner...a dinner he was only attending because it validated his self-esteem as one of the cool kids. I've watched that hate bear fruit in the undoing of every possible Obama program that he can get his hands on. His absolute, all encompassing need for revenge has consumed an administration. It has wasted time, lives, treasure, trust, respect and worse...any sense that we are a people together. And somehow...a whole swath of America got caught up in it. Somehow...they became him.
I cannot fathom it. We're supposed to be better than this. I'm not talking about just the politics. I'm talking about Trumps utter lack of human empathy, concern or regard for anyone not him. I won't even recite yet again the list.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the suddenly-regular-news briefings that were neither news nor brief only reinforced what I already knew. He just can't manage to stop talking about himself. Even with his constituency getting sicker by the day and dying by the thousands...231,000 gone at the last edit of this writing...he can't make it about anyone but himself. He takes the stage at rallies for hours and spouts ridiculous self-praise, unseemly attacks on (insert name of current target here) and dangerously foolish medical advice so fast that it makes my head spin. He's not being 'sarcastic'...he's just lying and making up nonsense out of thin air. Spouting QAnon conspiracy and tweeting and re-tweeting fabrications that are verifiably untrue then saying he's "just throwing it out there" is un-Presidential at best...immoral and dangerous at worst. If none of this bothers you or you laugh it off or worse...cheer him on and truly believe the absurdity...we've really lost ourselves.
What I truly can't get by is why so many otherwise decent and intelligent people continue to give him a pass to be a catastrophic failure as a human being. Why don't you demand more of him? Why does he own your loyalty so cheaply? What do you see in him that resonates in your world? Why is a MAGA hat more meaningful than a soul?
You're not stupid. You know what he is. You know what he says. Apparently you don't care.
I care. He lies...continuously. He lies so much he's lying about the lies. A fact-checking industry has sprung up around his administration. Added to that...he is vindictive...what else could you call it? He is manipulative, functionally illiterate, childish, unprofessional, proudly uneducated, abusive, greedy, narcissistic, smilingly racist, intolerant, narrow minded, frightened by everything...and on and on. He's a terrible example of pretty much everything but particularly the presidency. He's a petty tyrant who got his hands on power and isn't about to let it go. He is using his authority to get richer at our expense. He's made the office of President into a cheap, glitzy, phony TV series. The man has denied responsibility for every failure of his administration and claimed personal credit for everything he calls a win.
He's what I would hold up to my kids and say, "Don't ever be that."
And yet...he has a following that approaches cult status. His base believes with the fervor of the faithful and will attack without restraint if they think someone has impugned their idol. It absolutely baffles me. His should be the voice of conciliation and reason, not accusation. And he's blowing it. Over and over again.
Even formal religions queue up to pile support on a man who is absolutely antithetical to everything they supposedly stand for. Remember tolerance? Mercy? Caring? Remember anything about love at all? It doesn't seem so. It's all gone in tax-exempt status and prosperity gospel.
For no one less than the ever-judging Evangelicals, he's the anti-abortion be-all and end-all. Regardless of the fact that he has no noticeable ethical standards that could be even remotely called Christian. They will break bread with Pilate and wash their hands in the same basin to get what they want. They auctioned their piety and sold their souls to a false idol as a means to an end.
Wall Street is in love with him and corporations can't get enough of him. He's appointed industry insiders to regulate the industries they came from...my own included. His policies are drowning us in debt in total disregard for anything the Republican Party ever stood for while wiping out decades of work to improve the environment, our health, our workplaces and our retirements. But hey...the next quarter might be great so it's all good. For a depressingly large number of people.
How is this possible? The news is there and when so many different sources corroborate basically the same stories over and over again...you either have to accept that they're probably true or just ignore them all and have a Covid party. You can't ignore everything that you don't agree with and call yourself American. Just because Mr. Trump stands yet again in front of a helicopter or leans over the podium and calls it all fake doesn't mean it is.
As he so frequently points out, he won the election. He owns the bully pulpit. The 'libbies', 'snowflakes' and 'cucks' are not currently in power. Trump and his allies are. The buck stops here. All references to what anyone else would/did do are therefore irrelevant, especially after four years...two of which were notable for Republican control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Don't tell me the left is just as bad...they aren't running the country. Don't tell me it was worse under Obama...it wasn't.
What I truly can't get by is why so many otherwise decent and intelligent people continue to give him a pass to be a catastrophic failure as a human being. Why don't you demand more of him? Why does he own your loyalty so cheaply? What do you see in him that resonates in your world? Why is a MAGA hat more meaningful than a soul?
You're not stupid. You know what he is. You know what he says. Apparently you don't care.
I care. He lies...continuously. He lies so much he's lying about the lies. A fact-checking industry has sprung up around his administration. Added to that...he is vindictive...what else could you call it? He is manipulative, functionally illiterate, childish, unprofessional, proudly uneducated, abusive, greedy, narcissistic, smilingly racist, intolerant, narrow minded, frightened by everything...and on and on. He's a terrible example of pretty much everything but particularly the presidency. He's a petty tyrant who got his hands on power and isn't about to let it go. He is using his authority to get richer at our expense. He's made the office of President into a cheap, glitzy, phony TV series. The man has denied responsibility for every failure of his administration and claimed personal credit for everything he calls a win.
He's what I would hold up to my kids and say, "Don't ever be that."
And yet...he has a following that approaches cult status. His base believes with the fervor of the faithful and will attack without restraint if they think someone has impugned their idol. It absolutely baffles me. His should be the voice of conciliation and reason, not accusation. And he's blowing it. Over and over again.
Even formal religions queue up to pile support on a man who is absolutely antithetical to everything they supposedly stand for. Remember tolerance? Mercy? Caring? Remember anything about love at all? It doesn't seem so. It's all gone in tax-exempt status and prosperity gospel.
For no one less than the ever-judging Evangelicals, he's the anti-abortion be-all and end-all. Regardless of the fact that he has no noticeable ethical standards that could be even remotely called Christian. They will break bread with Pilate and wash their hands in the same basin to get what they want. They auctioned their piety and sold their souls to a false idol as a means to an end.
Wall Street is in love with him and corporations can't get enough of him. He's appointed industry insiders to regulate the industries they came from...my own included. His policies are drowning us in debt in total disregard for anything the Republican Party ever stood for while wiping out decades of work to improve the environment, our health, our workplaces and our retirements. But hey...the next quarter might be great so it's all good. For a depressingly large number of people.
How is this possible? The news is there and when so many different sources corroborate basically the same stories over and over again...you either have to accept that they're probably true or just ignore them all and have a Covid party. You can't ignore everything that you don't agree with and call yourself American. Just because Mr. Trump stands yet again in front of a helicopter or leans over the podium and calls it all fake doesn't mean it is.
As he so frequently points out, he won the election. He owns the bully pulpit. The 'libbies', 'snowflakes' and 'cucks' are not currently in power. Trump and his allies are. The buck stops here. All references to what anyone else would/did do are therefore irrelevant, especially after four years...two of which were notable for Republican control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Don't tell me the left is just as bad...they aren't running the country. Don't tell me it was worse under Obama...it wasn't.
Don't deflect. Don't tell me it's Trump being Trump. It's not locker room talk. Adolescent teenagers do locker room talk, not the head of the Executive Branch. Don't defend the indefensible. Since when does anyone have to "...say nice things." about the President to be eligible for disaster relief? Why is 'triggering the lefties' now a presidential imperative? He's supposed to represent those who didn't vote for him as well as his zealous followers. That's a part of the job. He's supposed to be an example to everyone...not only the faithful. And he's a failure at that too.
So much of what he says is just mean and inhuman and somehow, an awful lot of people developed a willingness to overlook and excuse his every awful example of what decent people are not. There's actually a pretty good article relating to this here.
I guess I'm just ranting because it seems that nothing he can do or say will sway the MAGA faithful. They will vote against their own self-interest yet again because he still isn't Hillary. He's isn't Obama. He's not Biden. He's become a mirror to so many. He's the echo box that says what they want to say without consequence. He's a champion of everything ugly and wrong and cheap and shady.
So much of what he says is just mean and inhuman and somehow, an awful lot of people developed a willingness to overlook and excuse his every awful example of what decent people are not. There's actually a pretty good article relating to this here.
I guess I'm just ranting because it seems that nothing he can do or say will sway the MAGA faithful. They will vote against their own self-interest yet again because he still isn't Hillary. He's isn't Obama. He's not Biden. He's become a mirror to so many. He's the echo box that says what they want to say without consequence. He's a champion of everything ugly and wrong and cheap and shady.
It's a sad fact that he's trying to win again one way or another. I'm horrified that there just might be enough support goose-stepping behind his fairy tales to overwhelm the Democrats...too many of whom are apt to once again wring their hands, wish for purity and vote 3rd party. Term 2 would be Term 1 on steroids. He's had four years and done nothing except undo the work of others and I have serious doubts that he'll go quietly even when his time is up. He's blown up every other shred of normalcy and stability...why not call it an emergency and just stay in power until it's solved...someday?
Would that be ok with you too? How much is too much? When he denies you your right to vote after eight years, will that finally change your mind? When it's too late?
I wonder...Where is the line my friends? When has he gone too far? What does it take to say enough? Our kids will want to know.
