I had a great opportunity to get satirical: the Trumpster is scheduled to make an 8 minute announcement tonight.
I wanted to write a funny post. I couldn’t. I tried but nitwits have worn my heart thin. After 8 minutes this evening, everyone will act stupid. Some will froth at the mouth in opposition “Orange Man Bad” and others will bitch that Trump didn’t personally bludgeon Nancy Pelosi to death with a mallet. These crazy reactions are already baked into the cake. It doesn’t matter what Trump says. He could announce he’s cured cancer, funded free college for hippies, will personally deliver pizza for every good kid on their 10th birthday, and talk about his new fuzzy puppy named “Cuddles”; it wouldn’t help.
A sizable portion of the populace will see him on the screen and lose it. They’ll act like Satan just took a shit on their cat. They need to overreact. Hate for the Orange nitwit is part of their self image. If they said “the dude had some cogent points” a whole pent up landslide of cognitive dissonance would pummel their soul. So they double down… over and over again. And this doesn’t excuse the other side. Nancy Pelosi will be there and we’ll recoil in horror like she’s about to grab Toto the dog and stuff it in a blender.
Too many of us have lost the ability to simply change our minds. Can’t we perhaps decide one or another political thing is just not that mind blowing? We’re acting like cult members in the presence of normal society. We see the larger world and recoil from its indifference to our perceived self importance.
It’s drifting from funny to pathetic. The election was two years ago and that’s plenty of time to get used to a president you hate. For fuck sake, there are Vikings fans who watched their team tank last weekend and there were Cubs fans that went a century without a win. Yet folks just can’t fuckin’ deal with a couple years. Two years isn’t even that long in dog years. There are goldfish older than two years. It’s nothing! It’s simply a truth of the universe that no team wins every game. I see silver linings that are ignored. Remember when people said “your vote doesn’t matter”? Well, 63 million votes for Trump and suddenly the sun cannot rise in the east without it being proof that the voters were wrong. For two years.
Lack of perspective worries me. What happened to citizens in a Republic as opposed to petty rulers in a fiefdom? Are we to never have peace until the ones that want to rule… rule? And if those that want to rule crave the sweet nectar of power this desperately, what kind of revenge will they unleash when their time comes? Aside from better coffee and grunge music, what’s the difference and tipping point between Rwanda and Portland?
Ideas that were totally unremarkable a few years ago are now (in the immortal words of Vizzini) inconceivable. Lacking a deeper world view, everyone continually flips on their head; dogs meow, cats bark, up is down, light is dark, and I wonder where all the adults went. Both parties reverse themselves in their heightened panic: Republicans want to “reform” socialized medical care for which not one of them voted. Why reform that which you didn’t want? Democrats bitch that we’re not continuing a minor war in Syria. Since when are peaceniks upset about ending a war?
Through it all, molehills start as mountains and become cognitive blocks. Keep in mind that 99.875% of the budget is not the wall. It’s not sane to lose one’s shit over 0.125% of a budget request meant to do something that was literally Federal law 12 years ago.
Self inflicted trauma makes it hard to write jokes. We need to quit taking shit so seriously because it’s fucking up humor!
A.C.
P.S. I came up with 0.125% by dividing 5 billion (with a B) by 4 trillion (with a T). Point is, this is a hissy fit that’s not about money.
Well said, AC.
Take heart: some places, typing “Satan just took a shit on their cat” would probably get you stoned. And not in a good way. Me, I’m lucky I was between swigs of gin because it woulda been messy. I never liked Toto anyways.
Don’t confuse hating Trump with hating the things he says and does. Top of that list: Lying
That 0.125% could be much better spent than on a wall that won’t keep terrorism out. Terrorism tends to arrive via air – and they’re defunding the ability to keep our planes and airways safe.
Let Trump fund the wall, he’ll get kickbacks from the construction companies he owns.
Or better still, hold him to the promise that Mexico will pay for it, instead of hitting up Americans for something that won’t work anyway.
I believe that it is no longer about the specific item; It is about “Winning” or “Losing”. It is about the perception that you caved to someone else’s demands, and being unable to do so.
For years, now, our political environment has been such that no one can ever be wrong. Being wrong is political suicide. You can no longer even flip-flop and say, “I made that call, it seemed like the right call at the time, but in retrospect, it was wrong, so I’m changing direction.” No, if you made the wrong call, even if you know it was the wrong call, you have to double-down and triple-down until it becomes “right”.
When did people start expecting leaders to transcend humanity? When did we expect them to never lose, to never make a mistake? I think people have just become addicted to outrage and umbrage.
It’s all so… so….
In-covfefe-able.
Good point, the emphasis on “being right” has completely eclipsed the small matter of “will it work”. Often, “will it work” is irrelevant provided your team gets the power of implementing the idea. Thus, nobody in politics can reflect “I tried that and it didn’t work so I have new opinions now”. They may refine tactics but never improve core knowledge.
As a counterpoint, I can find statements of politicians “changing their mind” but it’s almost always a matter of going further left. An Overton window thing. They had the most left opinion allowed at the time but now time has passed and the Overton window has gone closer to pure idealized Communism. So they can be more left and they do so with apparent joy. At this point, some of them would make Trotsky blush.
This is how “tolerance for all” turned into “bake me a cake bitch”. There are videos and quotes of Obama or Hillary Clinton clearly and vocally opposing gay marriage. Only a few years later, it they implied it was unthinkable to have anything but deep support for every non-straight situation imaginable; including 57 different sexes on the same football team. Regardless of the merits of such social policy, it plays out like “go as far left as you can without getting laughed off the stage, get elected, and then keep going further left as you get more ability to do so”.
Other examples, during the big shutdown in Obama’s regime folks unearthed videos of Obama in Congress saying a shutdown under Bush Jr. would be abhorrent. It wasn’t abhorrent to Obama when he was in power and wanted socialized medicine, it was only abhorrent when Chimpy McHitler was threatening to do it. (I think Clinton and Obama had shutdowns but not George W?) There are similar things for other politicians. (Not sure if Trump weighed in about non-Trump shutdowns but I assume so. I also get the idea Trump only went this far when he got himself cornered. He’ll either build a wall or be a one termer and this is the moment when that question will be resolved. That’s why 5 billion is enough to grind the system to a halt.) Heck, it even happened with border walls. You can find videos of half the current crop of Congress saying walls are all peachy keen when they were approved in 2006 (including Chuck Schumer). For the oldsters you can probably find evidence of them promising to “do something” about immigration back when Reagan backed down and compromised in the 1980’s (“look Reagan, if you compromise now we’ll “fix” immigration real soon… we pinky swear”).
Whether that’s gaining a more nuanced understanding or just the mask coming off is hard to say. Maybe a little of each. Though I’ve almost never heard anyone say “we tried it and it didn’t work so that’s why I changed to this new opinion”. Personally I can think of dozens of times when I had a fine idea on paper and learned it didn’t work in the real world, but I’m not a politician either.
[When did people start expecting leaders to transcend humanity?]
It happened gradually as Americans expected government to be a bigger part of their lives. A sizable portion of Americans actually fear freedom. Self responsibility is a tough burden to shoulder and each generation seems less disposed to take it on. Dependency builds up in society and in each person. The less personal responsibility a citizen manages the worse they get at handling it. With time, folks have grown to want to be “managed” (or “led” depending on how you phrase it). You can make it sound cuddly or awful. “Cradle to grave security” and “serfdom” can both describe the same thing.
Every time DC takes a burden from your shoulders it becomes a bigger part of your life. You’re now beholden to and dependent on them making wise decisions that favor you personally. Yet, by definition, nobody can make better decisions for you than… you. So now you’re in fear of a bad leader when before he/she would be mostly irrelevant. That’s why folks freak out about Obama or Trump but not the mayor of Milwaukee. You don’t live in Milwaukee so who gives a shit if he sucks? DC has now aggregated so much power we’re desperately craving “leaders” that perform the superhuman task of controlling our lives as well as we should.
Here’s a story about that. Buying lightbulbs is now a Federal act (considering my choices are limited by Federal regulation). This means I need Trump to have an informed opinion about lighting that comports with my needs in a frigid rural chicken coop. If Trump really knew the best form of lighting for livestock at -20 degrees he’d be superhuman. He might as well wear a damn cape and call himself Superman. As it is, he hasn’t a clue about LEDs reaction to chicken shit in a drafty barn. Who would? When Obama’s flying monkeys made it hard to get incandescent bulbs it jacked up my life and some chickens froze to death. I was pissed. It doesn’t have to be that way. Nobody cared what Dwight Eisenhower thought about chicken coop lights because DC wasn’t micromanaging fucking lightbulbs. We can tolerate more humanity in an elected official if he’s not a God in our world.
All this is another way to say “covfefe”!
Perspective is important. It is impolite to ponder this openly, but let’s look at the 911 attacks in perspective. We lost two buildings and about 3000 people. That is a tragedy, granted, and I lost a few friends that day so I’m not saying it’s immaterial or of no consequence. But… Pearl Harbor we lost 2300, and another 1100 wounded, plus some ships. That’s less. During the invasion of Normandy we lost over 3500 dead or missing (which means we couldn’t find enough parts to ID them, they sure as hell didn’t swim back to London and spend the rest of the war in a pub). There were another 6000 wounded. Let’s put that in perspective.
The Russians lost about 27 million soldiers during World War 2. Ponder that. That’s one out of every ten people in America today. Gone. Look around your classroom, your office, your neighborhood, and ponder 1 in 10 no longer there.
A single bombing raid on Berlin, 22 November 1943, killed 2,000 Berliners and rendered 175,000 homeless. The very next day another 1000 were killed and and another 100,000 rendered homeless. If a thousand bombers are flying over your city day after day and night after night your real estate values, not to mention your life expectancy, are going to be in the crapper. Berlin was but rubble after those raids.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 killed 675000 Americans, about 500 million people worldwide. That includes the Russians who managed to have the 27 million above still available.
Smallpox killed between 300 million and 500 million people during the 20th century.
If the measure of concern is the number of deaths then Pearl Harbor is a beer-fart in a whirl-wind. If the number of civilian deaths is the measure then 911 is roughly 16 hours worth of what folks in Berlin survived for most of a year. If the measure of concern is human life no matter the circumstances then vaccinations have saved more lives than any other measure in human endeavor and we should be placing monuments to researchers rather than politicians and generals.
Finally, a bit more perspective. I’m 51. 2000 years ago a Roman Centurion might live to an age of 40, he having spent his life marching and digging and being well-fed. Today I’m merely considered middle-aged.
Life in this country is good. My life is pretty darned exceptional in comparison to what my ancestors went through. You want perspective? Live beyond 40 and look at history.
– Max
[You want perspective? Live beyond 40 and look at history.]
Good points all. As politics went from weird to totally unhinged in the mid 2000’s (the ‘oughts?) I started studying up on history. The first thing you learn is “this thing people are freaking out over today has happened over and over again in the past”.
I also agree that the terrible loss of 3000 +/- people to terrorism caused us to lose our shit in a way that’s vastly out of scale to the situation. In particular, we lost our shit and turned it against ourselves. I have no idea why. An external player sucker punched the nation and we responded by taking a sledge to our own balls. I’ve pondered this so many times and never figured it out. Then again history tells us great masses of people in many situations have stepped over simple, obvious solutions in the pursuit of unworkable ones. Perhaps it’s just the state of homo sapien’s minds?
Also, it’s nice to not die at 40. Enjoy every day!
March 10th, 1945. The first B29 raid over Tokyo using incendiary bombs. 15 square miles of city are reduced to ashes. 84000 people killed. One million, with an “M”, are homeless. That would be considerably more than were affected in Berlin.
Remember those Russians I mentioned? The Siege of Leningrad is a story to make you quake.
They used sawdust to make bread. They licked wallpaper paste for calories. And they never, ever, stopped the arms factories in that city.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2032706/BEYOND-HORROR-They-ate-cats-sawdust-wallpaper-paste–babies-Leningrads-agony-Nazis-tried-starve-submission-LENINGRAD-TRAGEDY-OF-A-CITY-UNDER-SIEGE-1941-44-BY-ANNA-REID.html
Every morning I wake up and thank God I live when and where I do.
– Max