Admit it. There’s no shame, it’s a matter of self-preservation. You, like millions of others, have become numb — perhaps comfortably, perhaps not — to the fantasyland presidency, the vile bile from the vomitorium @realDonaldTrump, the daily barrage of lies, even the narcissist’s need to make it all, everything, about him.
Just a couple of years ago, you might recall some prescient pundits warning that the worst outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections may not be the fact of Trump’s presidency, but rather the “normalization” of its dangerous, fiction-fed irrationality.
Two-and-a-half years in, and Trump’s presidency remains abominably abnormal, but too many have been anesthetized by the incessant stream of self-aggrandizing puffery, dehumanizing vitriol, non-sensical ravings and a world view wrapped in and warped by an ignorance he calls instinct.
The mad imaginings of the conman-cum-commander-in-chief, while not entirely normalized, are now routine, common and as such they evoke less visceral responses than they deserve. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.
Since taking and dismissing the presidential oath of office — it is hard to protect and defend the constitution when you are its greatest domestic enemy — President Donald Trump has lied to the American people, and to those global citizens with the stomach to tune in, at an average clip of 12 times daily.
Last week, Trump and family were in the U.K. and France to visit the Queen and commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day. It wasn’t lost on all observers that Trump’s America First populist chant is the direct ideological descendant of those who would have let Britain fall to Hitler.
But, as is often the case, Trump was on his best behaviour at important affairs of state and solemn events to mark major milestones in the human journey. President Trump on script is innocuous; completely fraudulent, but at least benign.
But like most garish ghouls, the real Trump emerges after dark on his toxic Twitter feed, or in the interviews he grants with obsequious fools such as Piers Morgan and Laura Ingraham, where he’s invited to expound on his favourite subject — himself — and flaunt his fatally flawed fancies without regard for fact.
The European trip included the usual Twitter storms aimed at real or perceived enemies of Trump, from London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, whom Trump called a “stone cold loser,” to Bette Midler, described by the president of the United States as a “washed up psycho.”
Those tweets are normal, provided their source is an adolescent with wounded pride, lashing out in pubescent rage.
For all that, it was Trump’s take on climate change during the Morgan interview that crystalized the risks inherent in the presidential lack of character.
It starts with his total ignorance of the threat his own government ranks among the most serious to American and global security.
“I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways. Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because, with extreme weather, you can’t miss,” Trump said, responding to the scientifically settled question as to whether climate change is real.
His response was moronic.
School kids the world over could teach the American president that global warming is causing climate changes that result in extreme weather. Trump’s understanding of the crisis goes no deeper than the newspaper headlines he skims past to read stories about himself.
Then, as if to buttress himself against criticism of his administration’s environmental policies – which can be summed up as drill, dig, degrade and burn, baby, burn — he just makes stuff up.
“We have the cleanest air in the world, in the United States, and it’s gotten better since I’m president. We have the cleanest water; it’s crystal clean.”
The United States ranks 10th in the world for overall air quality, according to the Environmental Performance Index, but 88th in terms of airborne particulate matter and 29th for water quality and sanitation.
We may have grown numb to the relentless onslaught of lies and insults. But a president of the United States who is so completely untethered from reality is a danger that can’t be ignored.
“There are those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time, a more animated time,” than she had in the company of Trump, by his own account. Delusional? Absolutely.
