It is, of course, a reminder that, in nine short days, Donald Trump is sworn-in as president of the goddamn United States. And, naturally, people are seriously losing their minds.
Today we saw a shit-show of a press conference in which Trump dismissed CNN as being "fake news." Now, CNN may not exactly be the revered institution it once was, but when Fox News's Shepard Smith is going to bat for you, and telling the world that he believed CNN was indeed following standard journalistic practices in its reporting, you know the world's gone crazy.
Did Trump hire Russian whores to do a golden shower show on the bed the Obamas slept in? I'm not sure. I would say there's a non-zero chance of that happening, though: we know Trump is a sexual predator, has probably committed statutory rape, and didn't flinch when Howard Stern described his daughter Ivanka as "a piece of ass." As someone posted on Facebook earlier today, and I'm paraphrasing, "It's like when we heard Rob Ford smoked crack, and we hadn't seen the video yet. We knew we'd see it sometime." And the way the Russians would bug a room if they knew someone like Trump was gonna be there, I'd say there's a more-than-halfway chance that it's gonna surface eventually.
I listen to Marc Maron's WTF podcast regularly, and in a recent episode he interviews Bruce Springsteen. They're talking about the election -- Bruce is a Democrat, natch -- and I think they sum it up pretty well.
Marc: I dunno, are you scared now?
Bruce: Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, how could you not be?
M: Right. Have you felt this fear before?
B: No. I've felt disgust before, but the never the kind of fear that you feel now. It's as simple as the fear of, is someone simply competent enough to do this particular job? Forget about where they are ideologically, do they simply have the pure competence to be put in a position of such responsibility?
M: When you've done the amount of self-work you've done, and you've grown up, and you know people, it's sort of like, they elected the most insecure, y'know... needy, volatile dude. And to do this job, that, somehow or other... I don't think it embodies strength to a lot of people, but it does embody "fuck you." It's just like, they voted for... "Who ya votin' for?" "The 'fuck you' guy."
B: (laughing) That happened.
M: (laughing) That happened!
It's a solid interview, and definitely worth a listen. And I think Marc hit the nail on the head. People are hurting, and someone very forceful comes along to tell them exactly what they want to hear.
That said... a lot of people, myself included, don't think that Trump's going to last four years in office. Something's going to bring him down -- personally, I think there'll be a conflict of interest scanadal which will force him to resign. Others have suggested a heart attack. One colleague even floated the idea of an assassination at his inauguration; I thought that was a serious chance for Obama, but hey, I guess anything is possible. My guess is that we'll be talking about President Pence (ew.) by the middle of 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment