Talk about the fear of “normalizing” is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
All across the USA, from coast to coast, the same people who said that Trump would never win the republican nomination or the presidency are busy assuring us that he will not possibly be an effective president. Noted.
The way that the Huffpo crowd is reacting to Trump’s victory is fascinating. Rather than doing any sort of self reflection about the possibility that they may be wrong about some issues, and that they may be out of touch, the election is causing them to double down on their own superiority. They were certain that they were smarter and more moral than average before, and now they think the election somehow proves that they are even more exceptional.
They are just so damn certain of themselves, with a worldview that seems to lack any sort of falsifiability.
So that lead me to ask of those of you that are certain that Trump’s election is and will be a disaster for this country: what are some things that could happen that would cause you to realize that you were mistaken? I am not talking about snarky over the top examples. Give us some of things that you consider most likely to happen, the minimum that would falsify your assessment of Trump as president.
For me, as far as foreign policy goes, Mattis is the canary. If he Trump keeps him around it will be proof that most of the hysterical assessments of Trump as commander in chief were baseless. If he gets dismissed from the administration for challenging Trump that will be a sign that those concerns may be valid.
I’m fairly certain Trump will frequently snow us with BS because he lies so much and distract us from the reality (as he did with the Carrier deal) and cause various screwups in foreign policy (as he just did with China/Taiwan). I expect those kinds of things to keep happening. So I feel I’ll only know that I might have been mistaken when we get to the end of his first term and evaluate then and see if he only normally effed up like all presidents or if he uniquely FUBARed a lot of things.
One of these days, Kelly Conway (interesting suggestion of her profession of the surname, I just noticed) is going to be asked a pointed question by a newsperson and after a few seconds, her head is going to explode.
When you have to go before the public and try to justify and explain the statements and actions of Trump, a man who cannot state any sort of proposal or observation without straightout lying a measured 80% of the time…when you are paid to do that, your own mind is bound to start playing tricks on itself, and before long, you don’t know truth from lie, fact from fiction, even right from wrong.
Does she know that now? How will we notice any such change?
You mean, so long as he does any* one* thing right, that proves him competent and wise? A daunting challenge, to be sure.
That’s true. Can you imagine if the Obama’s paraded out 5 children from 3 different marriages? Double standards anyone?
ThelmaLou,
I appreciate your sincerity and the calm, reasoned approach I usually see you take here. You’re one of the good posters that makes me want to keep coming back to this place. I thought you deserved a more serious response than my somewhat-off-hand remark earlier, so, apologies for the length, but here are my reasons for thinking it’s stupid to “refuse to ‘normalize’ Trump”:
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Do you want more President Trump? Because that’s how you get more President Trump. I know it’s a silly Archer meme, but your refusal to “normalize” Trump has actually helped him. And if you keep doing it, I think it’s going to keep helping him. One of they key aspects of Trump’s appeal to voters was that he wasn’t just another Washington politician. Out in the Districts (Hunger Games reference), the Capital is basically despised. People hate Washington DC. By reminding everyone that Trump is not “normal”, you might as well be running campaign spots for him that end with the tag line “Donald Trump - not just another Washington politician”. BTW, this isn’t my original idea (I read about the concept on Vox) but I do think it’s an accurate one.
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Everyone from the HRC campaign to the mainstream media and liberal pundits were practically salivating while watching Trump wreck the GOP field in the primaries. You guys were more than happy to “normalize” him then. Only when it bit you in the ass did it finally become a problem. It’s a little late now. You’re like the last line of Martin Niemöller’s famous “first they came for …” peom.
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“What difference, at this point, does it make?” Is there something you hope to accomplish by reminding yourselves that Trump isn’t “normal”? Because reminding the rest of us just helps him (see #1). I really can’t see the upside / benefit / objective of it. Do you have some end-state or goal in mind when you write that “He’s not normal and we can’t forget that”? Something you see being accomplished by us remembering that? It seems like just a silly idea cooked up by places like Salon, Slate, and the New Yorker that you got roped into because your thought leaders suggeseted it.
By all means, keep criticizing Trump when he does things you disagree with, but I’d encourage you to pick a more precise line of critique than just “he’s not normal”.
HD, thanks for the inquiry, for your kind comments, and for the opportunity to explain.
When I say we can’t normalize DT’s behavior, I mean something way beyond “he is not a normal Washington politician.” Way beyond. I don’t mean that he “thinks outside the box,” or “he marches to the beat of a different drummer.” And I also don’t mean simply that I disagree with his politics, the way I disagree with, say, Ryan, Pence, or Price. Those three ARE what I would call normal human beings who hold opinions and beliefs that I disagree with. Trump is different.
Let me insert an illustrative anecdote. I started dating a guy in 2002 who was an active alcoholic. I’d never been around alcoholics and I went through a period in my early years when I drank quite a bit, so when he would consume two six-packs or two bottles of wine in every evening without exception, I made excuses in my mind. He wasn’t a pleasant drunk; he became rude and argumentative, but it was my first serious relationship two years after my husband died and I couldn’t put myself through another loss.
So to myself, when I thought endlessly about it, I “normalized” his behavior. I mean, I told myself it was normal to drink 18 or 36 beers during one weekend (he called the 18-pack a “suitcase of beer”). Like the frog in the pot of water, I got used to it. I told myself it was normal, and I was just being controlling, overly sensitive, whatever. My last straw was when I came down with shingles on my face and almost lost the sight in one eye-- that was the week he drank his way through a gallon of scotch-- in one week. My doctor said I was under tremendous stress and that triggered the shingles. I pressured my BF into AA, I went to alanon, but eventually we broke up. As far as I know he’s still sober.
So by normalizing I mean sliding into a kind of relativity WRT things that, at first, were screaming red flags, but have become “oh, that’s just the way things are now.” After a while, if my BF only drank one six-pack in an evening, I felt disproportionately and inappropriately elated. If he went two nights in a row without getting drunk, I was on Cloud Nine. I was lying to myself. I had defined a new set of “normal” (i.e., acceptable) behaviors and told myself it was all okay.
When some things first came out about DT, people were shocked and outraged – the video about pussy-grabbing, saying he’d sleep with his daughter if she weren’t his daughter, stories about stiffing people he owed money to, breaking with the custom of releasing his tax returns (and lying over and over about why he couldn’t/wouldn’t-- the bogus audit excuse), his utter inconsistency-- saying whatever a given crowd wanted to hear-- his stupidity-- admitting he never reads, the weird business with the word “cyber.” I’m not pointing necessarily to any one of these things, but to the aggregation of them and the yuuuuge number of gaffes, missteps, malapropisms, and garden variety lies.
Those things are now forgotten, accepted, and normalized. That’s just Donald being Donald. He’s sumpin’, ain’t he? As if he were some harmless, quirky Uncle who puts a lightbulb in his mouth and amuses the grandkids with his imitation of a lighthouse. This is the man with his finger on the nuclear button. He’s not harmless.
Getting tweets from the P-E in the middle of the night–lying tweets, at that, about millions of fraudulent votes-- now that’s old news, too. That has now become the normal way the President will henceforth communicate with the American people and the world-- a President who has proven he has NO governor on his tongue or his tiny hands. :smack: Are you okay with this being “business as usual”?
And the man is acting like he’s already President! Talking to the Taiwanese President without informing the White House?? WTF?? Did this show good judgment? Did it show any respect for the Office of President, even if you don’t like the current President? (But Donald said he did like Obama, so why spit in his eye like this?)
For some reason, it’s very important to me that people not lose sight of who the man is. That they not make excuses for him. He is an embarrassment, a Trump Tower of Jell-o. A man with no moral center, no core values, except self-serving ones. Do you recall that his ghostwriter came out during the campaign and said publicly: “I know Donald Trump. Do not make him the President of the United States.” Maybe you can tell me who I’m hung up on this.
I think the media and, well, everyone, should still critique and analyze his policies (if he ever comes up with any), his public actions, spoken words, and yes, his tweets. :rolleyes: They should likewise not forget about the vast, almost endless potential for conflicts of interest between running his businesses and running the country. However, those things, in my mind, are separate and apart from my crusade to Never Forget that as a person, he is a clown and a buffoon. I don’t think reminding people of this helps him. It may not hurt him either. I just think it’s important to keep the truth about him front and center. Important not to drink the kool-ade.
Paradoxically, I’m not passionately hoping he’ll fail as President, and he might possibly accomplish something. We have to watch him and speak out when he ventures off into the woods. I don’t want Trump to go down in flames, but more than that, I don’t want the country to go up in flames.
The thing about trying to avoid normalizing behavior and keeping the outrage cranked up perpetually is that when in the future something else truly egregious does happen the outrage will sound much the same as it has always sounded. There’s value in keeping your powder dry.
Unfortunately I think this happens over a lot of issues - accusations of bad behavior at the slightest hint of provocation train listeners to ignore or doubt these accusations as the default. That is being normalized as well.
So, if he suddenly stops doing crazy ass shit, we shouldn’t start making stuff up? Well, OK, then.
It was all fun and games for many on the left and in the mainstream media. Until Trump won. Monkeying around in primaries and perhaps a billion in free press?
Giving a nod to Thelma Lou’s assertion that Trump is Not Normal, let me take a swing at this.
-American GDP growth hitting 4% by the end of Trump’s 1st term would count as a campaign promise kept, to me.
-Continued reversal of the trend of unemployment. Manufacturing jobs have left, while some urban centers never had especially good employment to begin with. The return of manufacturing jobs to either, or preferably both demographics, would count as a campaign promise kept, to me. Persuading either or both groups to accept some alternative form of employment, and providing it, would also count. Show me that American income inequality is trending towards equality.
-Following on the last point, reversal of American ghetto trends in general, rural and/or urban. Better health and well-being: less drug abuse, rising literacy rates, less delapidation of the built environment over time, decreasing poverty rates over time, decreasing crime and suicide rates over time.
-Replacement of the ACA with something that is better. Simply kicking poor people out of insurance doesn’t count- I want to see more people covered, with better health outcomes, with lower costs. Do that and I’ll gladly call it Trumpcare.
-Trump’s friendly relationship with Putin resulting in greater peace and harmony in global affairs. If USA + Russia together can pressure problem regimes to straighten up without resorting to war, great. If USA + Philippines, or USA + ??? = greater global stability, then that’s great.
-War veterans getting the care they deserve. Raise my taxes, or repatriate money, or _____. I don’t care. Do Not leave veterans of prior/current wars hanging, contemplating suicide &etc.
-Reduce the national debt. If Reaganomics can actually work and was just poorly executed the first time, fine. Don’t take us from 20T to 30T in 4 years though. 20T to 18T in 4 years counts as success to me. I’d take 20T to 19.75T and call it good.
The part of your post I emboldened is all but impossible im afraid. The debt is here to stay. To me it is fairly obvious that American Presidents now run deficits in order to gain re-election(it may or may not also be good economics). US federal debt is about to balloon no matter who is President. The big unknown is whether this ballooning debt is sustainable.
I do agree that keeping *outrage *cranked up is counterproductive for the reason you mention, and frankly, no one can keep outrage cranked up indefinitely (even for four–God forbid, eight–years) to the level where I and others have it right now. Although I’m counting on Paul Krugman to keep the embers glowing even as the flames ebb and flow. Give us a break–the election was only a month ago and the man is pulling all this shit before he is even sworn [del]at[/del] in. We’re all of us (both sides) trying to ascertain where his boundaries are. So far, no luck.
But over the course of his Presidency, we must continue to point out when he goes off the rails. Not with the level of outrage of today, but we can’t just let it slide.
I’ve already read on this board stuff like, “Why are you surprised that he <did whatever>?”
Well, even if we cease to be surprised, we should still call it out. The media should still call it out. This is a guy who loves to create surprises, so I imagine he will continue to outdo himself.
It’s like the first few times Uncle Waldo came to Christmas Dinner with his underpants on his head, people were shocked, amused, maybe a little outraged. Now they’re so used to it that they take it in stride, because it’s now normal for him. “Oh, that’s just Uncle Waldo, ignore his antics. He’s harmless.” They’ve gotten so used to his wacky behavior that they don’t even notice that he’s eating the napkins instead of the turkey dinner and talking to his water glass and listening for a response.
Funny, because I’ve been fascinated by the way the FoxBart crowd, who heard the same alternately repulsive and absurd garbage come out of Trump’s mouth, and who presumably have at least a passing familiarity with his lengthy, extremely public reputation as an impetuous egomaniac, a serial liar, a proudly uneducated know-nothing, a failed entrepreneur and an honest-to-God swindler, are busy imploring us to give him a chance, as though the moment he trods across the threshold of the Oval Office he’s going to transform into a wise, thoughtful, ethical, effective leader. With a goatee, maybe.
This was probably our last presidential election. This may also be out last Xmas/New Year.
Don’t panic when there’s someone unexpected at your door, I’ve sent the Emergency Eeyore Squad.
I would ad his pro-life stand when his cry is 'Bomb the Hell out of them" Lots of innocenr born and unborn lives included in that statement.
It is already starting to look unsustainable. If the criticism of DeVos is correct and the plan is to slash public education, that could be viewed as a way of making room in the budget for growing interest payments. It is not as if there is a plan for increasing revenue.
Continue that trend with other programs and pretty soon all we have left is a military and interest payments. How is that going to work out?