A bar so low you can't see daylight under it in Deplorable thoughts

Honestly, before this particular election, as anyone who’s read me over these many years can attest, I never said word one about politics. I had faith that it would all work itself out and who was I to judge.
Well, it took this nuclear meltdown of an election to shake me out of my detachment
and I am very much not the happier for it.

So here’s my plan for this part of my PB.
Vent but limit. Obsession can be injurious to one’s calm.
Release a bit of mental pressure, no more than a point or two per day,
and then move on, just that point lighter.
There are too many things to say and no real need to say them, since it just doesn’t matter.
Limit and cut loose.

Folks, seriously.
Please ignore these essays if you disagree.
There is no debate possible on politics now.
I just have to say what I have to say.
Not trying to offend or convert.
Just spewing my personal disbelief in a place I should be allowed to do so.

He is starting out so badly that it would be laughable if it weren’t scary.
Day one - Available on QVC
The same day he’s making yet another speech in the combative mode of a man trying to get the job rather than the guy who got the job, the White House website was changed. Down came the unimportant page discussing global warning - because, I assume, it’s just not important, most probably a Chinese hoax (not Russian, nyet, perish the thought) - and up went other important things, including a bio on Melania that proudly pointed out that her jewelry line can be purchased on QVC.
So much for Trump not using the office for personal profit - on DAY ONE.

The plug was edited out, only after the backlash, but the point is, yet again, there shouldn’t have to be a backlash. The president should not have to be constantly reminded that there is such a thing as ethical conduct. Character does matter.
Except, it obviously doesn’t.

Day two - ‘Alternative Facts’

Again obviously, the inauguration day, specifically the difficulty with the less than stellar guest list and the lack of the record breaking crowds he needed to prove out his vision of himself as having won by a landslide, well, things just didn’t go as he envisioned them. It had to have hurt his ego.
He seems to be so very fragile there.
He wants to be loved.
He needs approval, quite desperately it seems.
But he doesn’t seem to know, beyond his innate hucksterism, how to win people over.
If a person cannot be won over by appealing to emotional ploys, if a personal engages his intellect instead of his feeling, requires facts instead of empty rhetoric, the man simply cannot deal. He’s willing to simply discard the facts if the facts do not conform to his needs and the entire thinking populace if they will not swallow his bizarre relationship to reality.
Again, it would be funny if it weren’t so damn serious.

The size of the crowd at the inauguration is really unimportant, except as an indicator (that he could actually use) of how his presidency is being viewed and how much power he can actually claim from the “people” that he claims to love so much. The fact that the protest marches (in the capital and at many other sites globally) the day after the inauguration appear to have been larger than the inauguration crowd, well, you might think he’d notice that and use the knowledge.

Instead, in his now predictable style:
He lashed out at the media, again. Yawn.
The media reported the facts, with verifiable photographs.
How evil and petty of them!
They’re lying!

He derided the women protesters. “Why didn’t they vote?”
They did. They were in the majority.
Please, throw away an opportunity to talk to them instead of about them.
Completely ignore the fact that they are the “people” too.

His staff went to work defending the indefensible.

His press secretary, in his maiden voyage of fronting
for the world’s most difficult boss to support with a straight face,
stated that the inauguration crowd numbers
were falsely reported by the media and that it was
the largest audience to witness an inauguration “PERIOD!”
He cited no facts (actual or otherwise).
No source for his statement.
Just that emphatic PERIOD,
as though his stating a thing, in the face of verifiable contradictory evidence,
makes it so.
Oh yes, he’s a chip off the old snake oil salesman himself.

His head spin doctor then went forth to assure everyone
that what he said was perfectly right, reasonable and acceptable.
He was simply using “alternative facts.”
Say what?
I do believe that you’re using alternative vocabulary for the word LIES.

The major problem here is that even when caught in an out and out verifiable lie,
our new president and his followers do not back down.
They simply do not care.
Facts that don’t agree with the agenda aren’t even inconvenient.
They can simply deny and obfuscate and reiterate righteously the “alternative facts.”
The plan is to replace reality with their own version of reality.
Except reality doesn’t have versions.
What is, simply is.
Saying it is not does not change reality.

I am not arguing the political agenda. That is not the point here.
I’m not going to like his political agenda. It isn’t mine. Whatever.
That’s what politics is about. Someone wins and they get power. Okay.
I’m talking about my own deep seated desire, nay, need, to have faith in the motives of my president. I can have respect for a president I do not agree with as long as I believe he is doing what he thinks is right for the country and can be trusted to see the facts and work with them for his vision of the greatest good.

That is not what we have here.

For the president to lie constantly as he does about verifiable facts, great and trivial,
is just plain frightening.
It says his judgment and motives cannot be trusted.
What hope is there for his judgment in the truly important matters?

I’ve run out of the ability to continue rationally.
Yet again. His tactics are winning.

Last updated January 28, 2017