In the forever search for what makes the president do the things he does, the “Art of the Deal” ghostwriter has a lengthy piece on his take > https://t.co/IFkq0d1tAZ— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 28, 2020
Despite the dismissive wrapper, the article enclosed is worth reading. Sure, there's a "forever search for what makes the president do the things he does." Equally, there should be a forever search for what makes the media cover such an abnormal and aberrant President the way it does. The blind spot is pretty apparent here:
Limbaugh showing he understands what makes Trump tick better than about 90 percent of analysis out there > https://t.co/JgURwjROhv— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 28, 2020
What Limbaugh is describing is Heath Ledger's "Joker" from "The Dark Knight," except this isn't a fictional character in a scripted movie where the good guy wins, this is the sitting POTUS. Ledger's Joker is described by Michael Caine's Alfred as someone who "just wants to watch the world burn."*
And that's nothing more than a better analysis of "about 90 percent of analysis out there"? Especially if it is, I call it scary as hell. And Limbaugh's evident delight in his analysis and his cleverness makes him a monster.
But hey, the "forever search for what makes the president do the things he does" goes on, n'est pas?
*I saw Rick's comment, below, after I posted this, but I still want to give him credit. Great minds thinking alike, and all that.
I will take a moment to combine this with another regular theme here. Trump wants to watch the world burn, and we have met the enemy and he is us. A surprising amount of our society would like to see it burn, and the corollary of it being less important if I am going up and more important that you are going down. It is to our own peril that we ignore the streak of malice and sadism in our culture and in the human heart.
ReplyDeleteEven after three and half years, I regularly get FB postings about how both sides are completely corrupt, a pox on both houses, there's not a dimes width of difference between the parties. Conversations yield up a lot of underlying anger and a sense of powerlessness that manifests as burn it down, I want my revolution, tear it down and start all over. When this is coming out of the mouths of your middle class and upper middle class suburban neighbors, it gets to be a bit scary.
I think a key factor is a severe erosion of trust in institutions and our fellow citizens. Our governments, religious institutions and companies have too often failed us, justifying at least a high level of skepticism, but this has all been supercharged by a organizations that find it beneficial (particularly right wing media) to stoke this lack of trust into outright paranoia. Lack of trust in anything forces us to fall back to only ourselves, atomized and powerless in our inability to trust anyone or anything and thereby exercise communal action.
In the last two weeks I have listened to college friends with medical practices describing anti-vaxxers that paranoid about the 5G and Bill Gates, they won't vaccinate their kids and certainly won't be getting any COVID vaccine should it arrive. Patients won't believe a coronavirus diagnosis, the doctor is lying to them, the test is wrong, it's all about money for the hospital and to take down the president. This is happening in navy blue states. Neighbors that in conversations start to relate conspiracy theories about the source of COVID from Chinese labs (it's possible they say!!), mentions of conspiracies by Hillary, Flynn, Comey, it makes the head spin. A 100,000 deaths are politicized and it feels as if it is only getting worse.
Hopefully the symptom of Trump is defeated this fall (I am now registered to vote in a purple state, I am doing my part!), but this disease of the body politic is metastasizing and even a new president is unlikely to bring even remission. We really need to figure out how to start rebuilding some basic trust in each other and our basic systems. We are failing, and failing badly.