The most dangerous aspect of the Trump Presidency is its relentless inanity. Every day the nation is treated to something that doesn’t seem to matter past its exemplification as an outrageous and inappropriate offshoot of our goofball-in-chief’s vapidity. Enough time passes and we completely forget last month’s insult because several new indiscretions now occupy our attention.
Yet and still, the US Presidency is nothing if not a cumulative affair. The parts always add up to a sum that impacts the nation’s present and future. What we forget when our attention turns to something else is nonetheless what we will have to deal with. It’s not simply coincidence that the US Government through the decades has leaned heavily on continuity and established best practices; radical change throws things askew, beauracracies are not nimble creatures. Just because a bloc of US voters have convinced themselves of government’s futility doesn’t mean they don’t rely on it as much as the rest of us. Today we are seeing the damage of a thousand cuts, presented daily as nothing more than another example of Trump’s ineptitude. Ruin isn’t always a tsunami.
Two years ago Trump visited the CIA and mused about looting Iraqi oil. Afterward, CNN’s panelists were visibly shaken, needing a few minutes to collect their thoughts in order to do their jobs, such was the dichotomy between what the just inaugurated President was spewing and the public demeanor of all of his predecessors. More than 7000 outright lies later similar rants now produce yawns and shoulder shrugs, maybe a joke or two. What’s new and alarming eventually becomes worn and boring. How can the damage be crystalized any clearer than the simple proposition that virtually every day this President says or tweets something that, until his inauguration, would have mired a predecessor in debilitating controversy and scandal?
There has never been satisfaction accrued chronicling authoritarians. History always shows them to be inept, their whims mostly trite, usually laughable if not so destructive; they are jokes until they start hurting people. Any loyal Colbert viewer surely knows this to be true with Trump. In fact, we can all go to bed most every night and thank the Lord he remains way too lazy and uninspired to be much of anything effective, including an autocrat. But withstanding his endlessly inept malfeascence is still going to leave scars, not to mention the imminent danger his wretched core will quickly coalesce behind an heir to his disdain for pluralism. After all, Fox/AM isn’t going anywhere.
Both China and Russia have been strengthened substantially in the last two years, each moving to fill vacuums Trump’s reckless retreat from world leadership has provided. Worse, regardless how devoted a new Administration may be in repairing the damage, many of the bridges will be burned, at least for the time being, and we will be on the sidelines. Somebody leases a copier from you for 20 years, but then goes with a competitor because you ignored them or left the scene for awhile, even if they are willing to give you their business again, it’s going to have to wait until they need another copier. Two or four, or God help us, eight years of demeaning and alienating our customer base will have consequences a change in attitude/policy will be inadequate to quickly fix.
American soybean farmers are already getting punched in the nose by that reality. Ditto construction interests, as well as transportation concerns. As of August “Tariff Man’s” visceral trade impulses impacted 1097 products across a vital cross section of American business. In markets where the line between profitability and red ink was already mere percentage points, 15-25 % cost increases are unsustainable. The case load at Commerce for exemptions is now overwhelming and growing. Where is the tipping point that will signal an economy in crisis? All agree it’s close and quickly getting closer.
Which brings us to tonight’s 7-minute nationally televised distraction. Figuring out Trump’s purposes is like understanding my grandmother during her addled final couple of years. Residing with my parents in Maine, she kept reminding me on the hour whenever we visited that she would be accompanying us back to Virginia to again take up residence in the home she had sold more than 10 years before. The facts have nothing to do with it.
There is no crisis at our southern border; that’s a fact… like the sun rising in the east. Most undocumented residents simply overstay their visas. Most drugs come in through established checkpoints or through the air. Zero terrorists have been apprehended at the southern border. Central American immigrants come here seeking asylum at recognized points of entry. What we are bound to hear this evening is just another plethora of falsehoods this Administration has fully based its agenda on since it came into office, the Fox/AM narrative its wretched core expects it to adhere to, consummated nightly by its prime time line up. It’s Hannity inanity, manufactured chaos for addled minds wishing to return home to the America they glimpsed as kids, before failures they blame on everybody else.
Of course the world is watching. And while we may exude an uncanny willingness to digest and then forget every senseless indignity or counterproductive policy edict foisted by a President less concerned with the national interest than his hour-to-hour enemies list, our adversaries take notes, and the results do not simply evaporate. As tiresome as the record has become, as stifling the ennui of calling this spade a spade now feels, that doesn’t augment the damage we are absorbing. Frogs basking in a gradually warming pot and all that. As ever in the Trump era, the real crisis comes from the White House and a President not to be trusted, whose word is synonymous with deceit…. and derrières inhabiting flyover state recliners, who will furiously nod in agreement when regular programming is interrupted. BC