“Incompetence should not be rewarded with blind loyalty”
Lord Varys, Game Of Thrones
In January, under the title “Unthinkable” Jeffery Goldberg, Editor in Chief of the Atlantic Magazine gathered an array of authors to write short articles on what the magazine deemed “50 Moments That Define An Improbable Presidency”. From “Donald Trump touches the magic orb” by James Parker to “Children are taken from their parents and incarcerated” by Ashley Fetters, it is an altogether shocking and sometimes sad compendium of some of the most extraordinary events of the first two years of the Trump presidency. Nonetheless, while remarkable, this list pales in comparison to the dedicated ongoing research of Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind). On her website “TheList” Siskind provides a weekly journal of remarkable events during what has already become one of the most chaotic presidencies in American history. The rationale for this vast endeavor sits upon the masthead of each weekly list:
“Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.”
Siskind’s weekly journal makes for some rather interesting reading. And it is useful just to browse through previous weeks, if only to reacquaint yourself with the relentless roller-coaster ride of chaotic
behavior that has defined this president since day one. After one shocking event ends another equally shocking event often comes in its wake. A new low is exceeded by an even lower low during a number of weeks over the last two years that were often singled-out as the single worst week of Donald Trump’s presidency ---- only to be usurped by a week even more shocking and chaotic. Siskind’s research will be invaluable to future writers hoping to fix a gage on the mind-numbing currents of the Trump presidency. While reading through her weekly lists it doesn’t take long for one to realize that as far as presidencies go ---- this is a whole other level of crazy.
Yet, perhaps what we are witnessing is nothing more than a grand charade. Perhaps we are simply being hoodwinked and led astray over and over again. Perhaps the chaos is actually the point.
“Chaos is not an accident in this administration. It is an operational principle.”
Rep Lloyd Doggett D-TX (Brianna Keller CNN)
It didn’t take long for the American people to realize if Trump had a doctrine, gaslighting would be a large part of it. During his very first press conference, Press Secretary Sean Spicer made this clear, famously echoing one of the first of what the Washington Post fact checkers would ultimately record as an astonishing more than 8158 lies that Trump would tell during his first two years in office ---- “Donald Trump had the largest crowd to attend an inauguration ---- ever! Spicer lied, echoing the president. As with so many other bogus statements that were to come, there were images already in the public sphere that immediately told a different story. Yet, none of this would seem to matter. Just as the fish rots from the head, lying has grown like a cancer upon the Trump Administration. Early on, Senior Advisor Kelly-Ann Conway told the public that the administration would rely upon its own set of “alternative facts”. Later, former NY mayor Rudolf Giuliani made it plain: “Truth isn’t truth”, he declared. The lying has become shamefully caviler. In November of 2018, Chief of Staff General John Kelly concocted an extravagant blatant lie in order to defame a sitting congresswoman. Within hours, video of the incident in question exposed Kelly for the liar that he was. For him however, an apology to Congresswoman Fredricka Wilson (D-FL) was simply out of the question.
“The president likes to create these fights when he faces real problems he’s not competent to manage”
Zerlina Maxwell (The Alex Witt Show, MSNBC)
Gaslighting is a normal matter of course in this administration. “What you are seeing and what you are reading is not what is really happening/”, Trump said. This sense of utter contempt for the intelligence of the American people could not have been clearer than during the president’s Oval Office press conference one
day after his disastrous Helsinki meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Responding to the tremendous criticism in response to his embrace of the Russian leader over his own intelligence officials, Trump sought to gaslight the world. “Yesterday, I said I don’t see why it WOULD be the Russians [ who hacked the American election]. That statement he said, should have read: I don’t see why it WOULD’N’T be the Russians. This is the manner of leadership that we have elected to the highest office in the land. A president and an administration that seems to think the public that they have been sworn to serve is simply stupid.
Perhaps the idea is to keep us all unbalanced, like a magician or a grifter stealing our attention away from the obvious truth right before our eyes ---- a president who exhibits a dangerous rank incompetence or worst, the puppet of hostile foreign power actually fulfilling our enemy’s greatest desires at home and aboard. Or worst even still ---- both!
“He creates confusion and look what we are not talking about. About how bad of a negotiator he is. About how he is not the Art of the Deal.”
Karine Jean-Pierre (AM Joy)
Thus far, beyond rhetoric the Trump presidency has been little more than a lingering series of one hair-on-fire crisis after another, cloaking the reality of how the 45th president has actually failed to govern. For the most part, he has claimed a great deal of the enormous success of his predecessor as his own and showed an amazing lack of initiative on the job. Choosing instead to concentrate on running for a second term and tweeting like a 14 year old. It is almost surreal contrasting just how eagerly the word “incompetence” was poised to fall out of the mouths of some Americans to characterize the first black president at any given moment, even well into the second term of what was arguably a rather successful presidency (in spite of relentless Republican efforts to prevent him from governing) with the eerie sound of crickets in total disregard of the often-outrageous behavior of his successor. The hypocrisy would be laughable if it were not so perilous to our democracy.
As long as the elites who manufacture, process and frame the 24/7 news cycle (the Newsmakers) exist as useful idiots for an unstable leader who has simply commandeered their platforms ---- positioning himself as the nation’s de facto News Producer in Chief, in order to stage produce his presidency like an actual reality tv show, Trump will remain confident that he can control every single news cycle and like the alcoholic fool or the unruly child edged on by the enormous amount of attention given to their obnoxious behavior, the chaos will continue. For Trump, it is the ultimate season of Big Brother.
In this view, declaring a national emergency in order to fulfill a campaign promise to build a wall on the southern border, was not really about declaring an actual emergency at all. It was about declaring an emergency on tv. It was about guaranteeing the continuation of a crisis that does not exist as simply another plot twist in a never-ending saga. It was about making sure the chaotic vaudevillian drama continues, all the while his extraordinary incompetence continues to be ignored. Forever pining for any measure of controversial content, the useful idiots are all too happy to oblige.