Howl in the Dark Wilderness

Today is Wednesday.  Guess what that means? 

It's HUMP DAY! 

I want to take a moment to ponder Monday's blog post.  

It was a standard issue rant that Donald Trump is a lying, petulant, bullying, unintelligent, yadda yadda yadda piece of shit.

And I'm a bit disappointed in it.

Not because the feelings expressed are not valid or the facts addressed are in question.  

But I am disappointed in that this is not what I wanted for this blog and for the moments of my life I invest in it.

Just for the record, we are now about 12 entries away from BLOG POST 5000! That's a lot of posts and quite frankly it's a disappointment to me that so much of the space on this blog and in my head is occuppied by that lying, petulant, bullying, unintelligent, yadda yadda yadda piece of shit.

I think my main motivation is to make sure there's a record that in this awful time of division of hate and fear mongering, that a regular schmuck like myself could see what was really going on.

I have no power to affect change. I can only howl in the dark wilderness that in this time I can see the truth about Donald Trump and the gutless cowards who capitulated to his reign of corruption and contempt out of ignorance, hate and a desire for power.  

When this time is over and when (or if) we survive it, I have a record, however remote and unread it may be, that I saw the terrible truth of our world. 

And I did not care for it.

It's a pathetic motivation but damn, it's all I got.

Writing for The Hill, psychotherapist and author Jonathan Alpert postulated on the obsessions of Trump's critics.  

 Alpert wrote, "Many people who wish Trump would disappear from public life nevertheless follow him relentlessly. They monitor his speeches, dissect his social media posts and debate his every move." 

 

I must cop to that.  I frequently find myself distracted as I scan the headlines on my various news feeds anxious about what fucking dumbass thing this lying, petulant, bullying, unintelligent, yadda yadda yadda piece of shit has done now. 

Alpert continues, "Trump has supplied something modern politics rarely offers: genuine uncertainty about what comes next. Tomorrow may bring a policy announcement, a personnel decision, a courtroom development, an impromptu exchange with reporters or the renaming of some major body of water."  

 

In my years on this planet, there have been times I've almost forgotten who the President is. OK, not really "forgotten", but I can honestly say I never got up every morning wondering:Gee, what goddam thing is Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama going to fuck up today.  

I may not have always agreed with everything any given President did but I felt confident that whatever they did, I didn't have to hear that whatever they did was goddam fucking "unprecedented".  

Alpert describes the self-perpetuating cycle. 

• Trump says or does something unexpected. 
• News organizations rush to cover it. 
• Critics condemn it. 
• Supporters defend it. 
• Television panels debate it.

I would posit that "something unexpected" is a nicer way of expressing "something stupid or crooked" or some other 3rd thing.  

 

Alpert says, "Attention is not the same as approval."

Donald Trump is delusional in thinking he has the approval of the American people even as poll after poll shows a precipitously declining approval rating. 

But mostly, like the lying, petulant, bullying, unintelligent, yadda yadda yadda piece of shit he is, he mostly longs for the attention.

Trump lives by the adage "the only thing worse than bad publicity is NO publicity."  

There's a reason he ends his godforsaken posts with "Thank you for your attention to this matter."  He's literally just wants your attention.  

And as much as I hate the motherfucker, damn it, he has my attention. And he eats up space on this blog on Mondays.

And by the looks of it today, Wednesday too.

But this was supposed to be about me and what I write. 

I've seen my blog stats and I know I have no power and no influence.  I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You is little more than a journal of a barely interesting man who wants to share the TV shows and movies I watch and my comic book and sci-fi fandoms and whatever first world foible frustrated me lately.

As I approach the 5000th post, I am sorry that Donald Trump and his snivelling syncophants take up so much space on this blog and in my head. 

But when history looks back on this abyss in American and world history and wonders, did anyone not see what was happening, I want this on record: I did see it.

God help me I could not do anything about it but I will speak to history and say, at least I could see it.  

It's only a mournful howl in the dark wilderness. It's all I got but it's mine. 

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Tomorrow: comic books!  (YAY!)