Once in the long-ago of my misspent youth I one evening sallied forth despite having a terrible cold. Before the night was done I'd met up with an irresponsible bartender who was happy to over serve me. Next day, I was miserable, but by around supper time the poison had seeped out of my tissues and I was then distressed to remember that I still had a bad cold.
And that's what the Trump presidency seems like to me. The ill health of today extinguishes the symptoms of the last uncured sickness. On Twitter today, David Frum, who worked in the last Republican administration, noted that it hasn't been three weeks yet since Trump urged cops to crack the heads of people they were arresting on the hoods of their cop cars when helping them into the back seat. Chiefs of police from California to the New York Island felt obliged to put out statements saying, No, no, no, no, no. Who remembers now? Since that happened, our president has been similarly rebuked by titans of American business and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his generous take on violent, racist punks. Many fine people on both sides, says he. Plainly angry about the way some people are so quick to condemn. Don't have the facts.
Let's see. Law enforcement. Corporate America. The military. Is there a Republican-leaning group, excepting bigots, whose leaders haven't felt compelled to run from Trump? Yes, evangelical Christians! What are they waiting for? A tape recording of Trump bragging about how he grabs women by the pussy?
The clouding effect of Trump's sensational badness isn't always temporal. Sometimes, within the same general event, small details are obscured by the exploding rubble. For example, as he walked away from the podium at his recent presser, a reporter shouted, "Are you going to go to Charlottesville?" It's safe to assume that this journalist had in mind the possibility that Trump might think it would be salutary to travel to the scene and, in the manner of a president, "bind up the nation's wounds." Trump replied by talking about the beautiful winery he owns in Charlottesville. He went on about it for a minute or so. One of the biggest wineries in the country and he owns it. No plans to visit his beautiful winery in the immediate future, however.
He can't succeed as a president. His failure as a human being is thoroughgoing.
Comments