The dawn of 24 hour newscasts and ‘breaking news’ has birthed a constituency that needs the adrenaline rush of scandal. Who better to supply that drug than an administration that has engaged in activities barely contemplated much less attempted in America’s history and whose titular leader has demonstrably and unabashedly lied more than any other president in American history.
Trump has become the archetypal pusher man, drug dealer….arrogant, shameless, hypocritical beyond any measure, willing to embody and act on the ambitions of centuries of American narcissism, racism and unbridled capitalism. He and the Party he represents are the drug. We, the consuming public, can smoke it, snort it, inject it, apply it topically, whatever we need to do to get it in our system. For this Party and this circus barker called Trump, the supply is endless.
Like the drug addict who needs that high to remain barely functional, the American body politic needs Trump’s drug to oil its newsrooms, sharpen its constitutional lawyers to be on the lookout for and prevent future snake oil salesmen like him from succeeding where he didn’t. Law enforcement agencies need the chaos Trumpism brought to develop policies to deal with insurrectionists like those of January 6, and on and on and on. From fake electors to election fraud to federal agencies blatantly disobeying, disregarding policies each scandal has to be bigger and more outrageous than its predecessor in order to fulfill those needs, to keep the body barely alive and functioning.
American media is the drug delivery system. It brings Trump’s scandals to us in every conceievable way. Television, radio (what’s that you ask), internet, cell phones and every other device spew out the latest news about what Trump has said or done or will be done to him and his supporters. We injest that information, sit back and enjoy the rush, high, it gives us. We savory its every ramification….roll it around on our social media and other social outlets like someone who submerses themselves in the drug they’ve just taken before we get up and stumble aimlessly around in our drug induced stupor. Worst of all, like every other drug addict we are neither well nor working and we’re the last to realize that dysfunction exists in us.
The best part is like every other drug addict there is a cure for Trump’s drug. It means going cold turkey……depriving ourselves of Trump nonsense…….shivering through our withdrawal while going through it and forever being vigilante about being intoxicated by it or the likes of it again. The first step lies in putting in motion the principles we often talk about but have neither fully embraced. Let’s start with the one that says no person is above the law. To get there we have to discard our narcissism and work on our collective recovery. Doing so means we admit there is a problem and outline what must be done to collectively solve it. America can do it, can recover. This country has done things no other has done in human history. It has also done things that in our life times were once thought inconceivable. On the other hand the Country has seen things in our lives that have paralleled the worst of American history. We have to choose which direction we’re willing to take. It’s up to you America……what’s it gonna’ be? More drugs or the cure?
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