So . . . Trump was sworn in on Monday, and I haven’t said a darn thing about it on the blog. Part of this is just due to exhaustion. I’m far from excited for what’s coming up, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the firehose of yuck coming out of DC. But some of it is also because I’m trying to change my approach over to something that might have a chance of working.
First off, an observation: Trump and his allies thrive on misdirection and pearl clutching. For the last several days, I’ve seen plenty of articles posted about Elon Musk’s Hitler salute, with debates about whether it was or wasn’t. And every one of those articles is just one less article that could have been written about the actual policies and actions the Trump administration is taking. Likewise, you have people calling the Episcopalian Bishop out for daring to speak up for the downtrodden in the middle of the Trump inauguration. While I 100% respect and admire what she did, the Trumpists are just using it as an opportunity to shift the debate away from actual awful things and over to the much less central-to-their-mission issues like arguing over whether or not that was a “Christian” thing to do.
The list goes on and on. Mount McKinley. Gulf of America. Commemorative coins. Even the executive order he put out that inadvertently makes the official government position that every human being is a woman. All of it adds to the chaff he constantly churns out, where people deride him personally or discuss how idiotic his administration is. But he doesn’t care if people think he’s dense. He just cares about doing what he wants to do, whatever it is.
Does it matter whether Musk meant his salute as a Sieg Heil or not? (If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, looks like a duck . . . ) Don’t fall for the misdirection. Keep your eyes focused on the policies and decisions that are being made that are so much more impactful.
But even then, I don’t think anything Trump is doing at the moment is going to hurt him long term. (And I’m much more concerned about what the Republican party is doing as a whole than I am about Trump. He isn’t eternal. Sooner or later, those Big Macs are going to catch up with him. But even if he were to have to step down as President, if his policies prove successful or popular, then the Republican party will continue to move forward in the direction he has reshaped it.) No, long term, the only thing I see actually making an impact is for some of those policies to disastrously fail.
Right now, none of executive orders he’s signed are all that unpopular. Yes, there are some that get up into the 60% range for unpopularity, but those aren’t exactly numbers that are going to make him or other Republicans quake in their boots.
It seems to me the bulk of the American public are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt for now. He’s made a lot of promises and convinced a lot of people he’ll look out for them. Until and unless those same people begin to change their minds and stop believing him, he and the Republicans can and will continue to do just about anything they want.
I don’t believe any amount of telling the people who believe Trump is going to change anything. They need to see it first hand. Will that even work? No clue. But wasting a bunch of breath (digital or otherwise) trying to change the opinions of people who don’t want to listen is something I just don’t have the bandwidth for right now. Too many believe America is #1 across the board, despite the many (many) studies and facts to the contrary. Until their pocketbooks start hurting, apparently they’ll believe just about anything.
Even then, you can bet Trump and the Republicans will blame their failures on the Democrats and/or literally anyone else they can. If they continue to follow the tried and true Handbook for Fascists, they’ll say undocumented immigrants are foiling their efforts. That “those people” need to be booted from the country before America can flourish and thrive as it deserves. And so they’ll try to double down and then triple down on the policies that are keeping them in power.
When will the bulk of Americans stop believing it? I wish I knew.
And that’s all the energy I have to say about that today.