The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant has been hither and yon of late, and we make the following observation: whether you support or loath our president, the incomprehensible nature of his behavior can no longer be processed, so something’s gotta give. Unlike most Americans, The Rant wanders extensively in both Trump camps. The haters keep claiming that at any moment his supporters will abandon him and he will face impeachment, while simultaneously having to acknowledge that moral Gumbys like Paul Ryan will go to any lengths to justify any behavior. The supporters vehemently claim that Trump, like peace, just needs a chance, while simultaneously having to acknowledge that Trump says idiotic things and should just be quiet.
But what most people fail to realize is Trump merely serves as the culmination and personification of all our cultural madness for the last twenty years. We have listened to a steady drone of leaders tell us that only fear and hatred can accomplish anything; we have been seduced into continually voting against our social and economic well-being by charlatans that wish only to enrich themselves; we have demanded that any issue be elevated to the level of hysteria and that our anger exists in a vacuum with no consequences; we have convinced ourselves that any image in society that does not mirror our precise identity must be labeled a dangerous Other; we have deluded ourselves that we can abandon any decency, any moral, any faith, and any principle in the name of the most narrow self-interest and still call ourselves honest human beings.
You might have noticed that the above could serve as Trump’s Wikipedia entry. We dove into the murky depths of the digital age and social media, fashioned the body politic from the ooze and threw the switch to give Trump life. We have to stop acting shocked by the monster running loose in the White House. We put him there. He can be replaced as soon as we choose to become something different than one of the many fragments that culminated in Trump, the amalgamation of all our worst impulses.
