Alright, But How Much of This Is Real?
As Trump’s Presidency Enters Its Worst Week Yet, Numerous Scandals Loom Overhead
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s presidency has been flowered with scandal after scandal, and each new week brings an outrageous controversy — the likes of which have never before been seen by most existing generations. We’re left with questions, like:
Is Trump tethered from his most precious region to Russia?
How many members of his staff encouraged the invasion of Crimea?
How many protections — for civil rights, the environment, healthcare, facts…Democracy — can Trump undo?
Is he still playing golf?
We need answers!
America is in a strange situation right now, where we’re confronting the fact that our president might be the Manchurian candidate (or at least that half of his advisers might be fluent in Putin), and continually we’re forced to bear witness to gross attempts at the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
It’s weird, and all the while our President and his advisers spew out blatant lies and heated damnations against our most well-established institutions — even a 9 year-old [Latino] boy, in Los Angeles, took to damning the press this week. Really, David in Kindergarten, you can’t trust your weatherman? (Okay, maybe I get that a little bit).
But 206 holes later, we’re left wondering if this is all real. We’re left wondering if this level of incompetence and blatant disregard for America’s well being are actual happenings, or if we’re just a studio audience for Donald Trump’s terrible (let me tell you, folks, the MOST terrible) reality TV show.
Personally, I’m not sure. I’ve never held high hopes for this Presidency, but I was expecting so much winning that 2011's Charlie Sheen would lose his [expletive] again, or that the Patriots would be plotting to deflate the President’s microphones or something. But none of it has happened (and a nod to our democratic institutions here, if you will).
News alerts blow out our phones’ batteries, Trump says something ludicrous and somehow translates it into ink — it gets stricken down and then some otherwise obscure Republican suddenly becomes mainstream — and then, hit the breaks for two hours Saturday, we rinse and repeat.
The cycle has been so vicious and so obnoxious that America’s greatest export is now cynicism (and maybe a little bit bullshit). No, things aren’t as terrible now as many worried they’d be, but they aren’t great and they’re only looking to get worse. Who will step up, slap America across the face, and state that, “This is real and I’m doing something about it!” (Come on, Paul Ryan, you’re better than this).
Protests only get us so far, our phone calls begin to court echoes, and surprised gasps become the common tongue of half of America.
Seriously…I’m almost at the point where I can’t regale any development with the terror that I should; I’m dismissive, I laugh, I mock, I read, I shake my head, I set my phone down and hope that the next CNN news-alert is about a panda learning sign-language (or at least not Dick Cheney boarding the “What the F***??!?!” train).
Whatever is in store for us in the coming weeks, I hope that we can all maintain our motivation to be active and to ensure that “casual” doesn’t come to describe our political discourse.
Is any of this real? Well, yeah…sadly. And how much of it is real? Well, all of it (don’t ask the President, though).
No matter what, at least Breitbart isn’t being treated as a legitimate news outlet…
