Well this place is pretty dead since people started complaining about my daily Trump updates (they continue to amaze, by the way, even if nobody wants to hear it anymore), but here's something a bit more meta for us to ponder... Ever since the Great Tweetstorm of '16 began, I detected a slant that I couldn't quite put my finger on, but one thing that stuck out more than anything else was the Orange Man complaining about the South China Sea. It's not the China-specific part that concerns me (although that *does* concern me, believe me I'm living much too close for comfort!), but the fact that idiot-man actually mentions the South China Sea at all. This is a guy so disengaged in world affairs that he rejects security briefings, and yet THAT'S the region he has actually chosen to pay attention to? No, that's the region the Orange-Whisperer Putin has TOLD him to pay attention to imo. On that note, I found this intriguing diary on a fake news site (aren't they *all* these days? lol). All Trumps's Tweets Lead to the South China Sea Anyway, that's the angle I've been looking into lately. And I'd love to hear some conjecture, although it seems to me that W.E. has been officially put to rest with this recent turn of electoral events (and general disinterest).
I think it will come back. Perhaps a general sense of numbness/residual shock has combined with holiday busyness/desire for temporary denial. Lord knows it will be anything but a scandal-free administration. Should lead to lots of posts I'm thinking.
My take: Trump is an irrational narcissistic lunatic, incapable of even forming a policy outside of "trust my infallible instincts and everything will be fine", and what happens now is going to be based entirely on how well he's being manipulated by the various deplorables he's surrounded with. It's well-documented that he likes for his underlings to bicker, so he's signing up weasels with a lot of different agendas to slug it out. And before you spend so much time going down the list and tsk tsking, keep in mind that one of the things he's most famous for is firing people. See: "The Apprentice", also his campaign. While all this stuff is scary as hell, there is just too much coming at us right now, and a high percentage of it is going to turn out to be either irrelevant or outright horse-pucky. See: that whole Executive Producer thing on "Celebrity Apprentice." Trump is absolutely right - EPs don't actually do anything. It's an honorary credit, no doubt contractually obligated in this case. The most amusing thing about it is watching Newt Gingrich and Kellyanne Conway frantically defending Trump in interviews without actually knowing this. "He can do it in his spare time!" And the worst thing is that so many in the news media didn't think to ask "what does an EP actually do?" either. What the hell have the journalism schools been teaching these dummies for the last 20 years? So ennyhoo, while I am following the events to a certain extent, I realize that everything is still in flux, and there's nothing I can do about any of it until the hearings start. Besides, I've got Christmas to see to, and I'm dang well seeing to it. But meanwhile, Republicans gonna Republican. The day the first slashed Social Security checks arrive in the mail, courtesy of our pal Speaker Ryan ... That's going to be an exciting day in Trump-world.
For the record, I did not complain about daily Trump updates. I pointed out that each thing didn't need it's own thread. And I expressed concern that everything was going to lead to Trump outrage burnout before we get to Inauguration Day. And here we are with serious things to consider, and most places I read it gets hardly a mention because people are sick of Trump outrage. When things do get posted, things like more stupid "Trump's weenieness concerning SNL" and possible Russian election tampering and the issues surrounding the National Security related Cabinet positions are voiced and dismissed as if they were on the same level.
Trump's genius is that he figured out that the 24-hour-starving-for-news-media will turn everything he said and did into a story. On CNN, they often teed it up with a "Breaking News" intro, which only added weight to it. For the past 18 months, we have been bombarded with so much Trump stuff (tweets, offensive comments, absurd statements, Trump U, Melania's plagiarism, molestings, etc.) that people have become numb to it all. And that's where the danger lies. There are really disturbing things happening but no one is really paying attention to them because there is just so much noise coming from him and the news media about him. It's like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" except the boy in this case is on the wolves' (pluralized on purpose) side and he's letting them in.
