Wednesday, January 11, 2017 8:51 AM
I’m waiting for the day when we can all look back and agree that making Hillary Clinton’s email-server a big issue was purely political—and that any sensible person would have said ‘so what?’ rather than passing her over for the craven citrus cretin. Unfortunately, he now has four whole years in which to perform feats which disgust and appall. Long after he’s given us more-than-enough cause to rue our dismissal of Hil, he’ll be piling further misogynous misstatement upon further malfeasance.
Why do I so confidently expect Trump to do wrong? Because I’m a student—I’ve always been a student. I’ve studied Trump. His past shows him to be a cheat in business, a bald-faced, shameless liar, a disrespecter (and accoster) of women, and a stone-cold racist and Islamophobe. And the campaign revealed (to those of us paying attention) that he doesn’t have clue one about American history, particularly in the area of civil rights—a stranger can tweet out any propagandist nonsense and Trump will re-tweet it, as if quoting Barbara Tuchman or Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Someone with his business history does have a familiarity with the law—but it is an adversarial knowledge, things he learned in the course of avoiding jail-time—that’s a different knowledge base than, say, a constitutional scholar, like Obama.
There’s a fascination factor, yes—people are mesmerized by his comfortable embrace of all things sleaze, the confidence with which he can insist that up is down. But lots of dangerous creatures are fascinating to look at—that doesn’t mean you let them out of their terrariums.
There’s only one real question about Trump’s upcoming presidency. During the campaign, he and his shills managed to spin the truth into a psychedelic hallucination—and get their lies reported as ‘real news’ by certain biased outlets (one cannot call them journalists). So, while Trump is doing the ignorant thing, the unethical thing, and the egotistical thing, he will be breaking rule upon rule—but whether or not the American public will hear it reported, and whether or not they will understand or believe what they hear, is (in light of the election’s shenanigans) an open question. I can assure you he will do wrong—I can’t say with certainty whether we’ll hear of it, or believe it, when he does.
Most people are struggling with the problem of whether or not to pay attention to a narcissist for four years. There’s talk of boycotting his inauguration (a no-brainer from my point of view—bad enough he’s being given the oath—don’t make me watch). On the one hand, the worst thing we can do is reward this pig with the attention he so desperately craves—on the other hand, he’s going to be in the White House—so if we pay attention, it shouldn’t be long before we have grounds for impeachment. He’s like a TV commercial—you want to ignore it completely, but you’re waiting for the show to come back on, so you don’t want to miss that the commercial has ended. We want to give Trump only enough attention so that we notice when he acts in an impeachable manner—it’s a conundrum.
President Obama’s Farewell Address last night was very emotional—he did his best to inspire hope for change, to remind people that Trump is a downward jag in an ongoing story, not the end of it. But I still struggle with despair—Trump alone I could handle (Bush was no prize) but the delusional electorate that allowed itself to be so easily manipulated by hate-sponsored interests—that is a monster that banishes both sleep and hope. Meanwhile, the actual work of government lies gathering dust in some forgotten closet.
