No More Sparkles

[poliphilo]

Once upon a time - actually not so long ago- there were people called spin-doctors who interposed themselves between the powerful and the powerless and farted clouds of lovely pink mist with sparkles in it. Then along came Trump and said, "Sod you, I can do my own farting," and proceeded to do so- only what he produced was rather less pink and sparkly 

It's not that Trump is wickeder or grosser or less competent than other presidents (that's up for debate) but that he's more clearly visible. It's something to do with him being a reality TV star and something to do with his access to Twitter and something to do with not his understanding the game he's in (and allowing Michael Woolf to sit on a couch in the West Wing for months) but there's never been a president who was less of a mystery. And by demystifying himself he has demystified government.

I had a look at Jarry's Ubu Roi yesterday because I thought it might be helpful to compare and contrast. And it is. Ubu is everything that is ghastly in humanity rolled up into a ball of grease that pinballs around the stage doing appalling things- and there's a scene where he has invited a bunch of power-brokers to dinner and they're all troughing away and he comes in and throws a filthy toilet brush onto the table. And, yes, that's government as we've always known it to be but have never seen so clearly- on a day to day basis- as we do now with the Trump administration.

I find it hard to imagine what politics will be like in the post-Trump era. But I don't see how we can revert to the pink mist and sparkles and pretend we never glimpsed the void. If Trump prompts a rethink and reform of the way we do politics he'll have served his turn. 

Comments

[cmcmck]

I think people will be busy doing the damage limitation and repair work rather than worrying about the way politics gets done and that's a pity in some ways.

[poliphilo]

Who knows.

It's my contention that the system was already utterly corrupt and dysfunctional and what Trump has done is reveal just how bad things are.

Put it this way- a system that allows someone like Trump to become President is clearly broken and in urgent need of fixing.

[sovay]

Put it this way- a system that allows someone like Trump to become President is clearly broken and in urgent need of fixing.

I agree entirely with this statement, but disagree very strongly with the idea that Trump is just like every U.S. President before him, only with the pomp-and-circumstance filter off; he has precedents that greased the path for his acceptance, most influentially W. Bush, Reagan, and Nixon, but the fact that he's a logical end point of corporate lobbying, Republican-weaponized racism, and the Christian Right doesn't mean he doesn't also mark a dangerous shift, and to say that things have always been this way and the only difference was we didn't know it risks further normalizing him: well, we got through it before, we'll get through it again. I don't know if we're going to get through it. He and the administration that promotes and enables him have already caused damage, in which category I include laws, economy, and people's lives. I had a friend who died because of his election. Even if we know where he came from, and I believe it is always better to know, I would rather have him seen as so anomalous and so horrifying that we have to overhaul our entire principles of government to make sure we never end up with anything like him—or the party that welcomed and ran him, because he didn't happen in a void—again.

I would not feel better about Trump if he were enacting his ghastly policies with the most smooth and subdued of demeanors. I might even consider him more dangerous; his transparency is the only silver lining in this whole garbage fire and even then it's pretty tarnished, because it turned out to make so much less of a difference than everyone had hoped. Embarrassment isn't the issue here. The fact that he and his government are hurting so many people, for such gleeful, petty, and unnecessary reasons, is.

[poliphilo]

I've been wanting to write something about Trump for weeks and this is what finally emerged. It's obviously inadequate. Language fails, satire falls short. Trump is so frightful its hard to believe that he's actually happening.

I'm an optimist. I hope what follows will be a cleansing of the Augean stables.

[chochiyo_sama]

This. All this.

tRump is a disgrace. As a citizen of the United States, I am utterly horrified and embarrassed that this cretin is in control of my nation.