It’s been, astonishingly, 27 days -not yet a month- since Donald Trump became president of the United States of America (Curious how long he’s been President? Click here).
Feels like a lifetime since then and certainly much longer than 27 days!
The news outlets like to show how the job of President “ages” the people on the job. Someone far wiser (and clever…wish I knew who!) than me noted that this time around, the country is going to age during his term.
Giving Mr. Trump some props, he decided yesterday to have a long (77 minutes, in the end) press conference and answer many, many questions from reporters.
Again, I have to give Mr. Trump some props for doing this. The administration has been in turmoil of late and for him to go out there and answer questions from reporters was, if nothing else, a brave thing to do.
However…
If the press conference was intended to show Mr. Trump in charge and ease any fears people have that his government is stable…he pretty much blew it.
One of the reactions, from Stephen Collinson from Mr. Trump’s hated CNN, offers this:
A few days back (Sunday, to be exact), Presidential Aide (I don’t know if she has any other formal title) Kellyanne Conway, while on Meet the Press and while being asked about, well, see for yourself:
And thus a line I’m certain Ms. Conway would desperately love to take back, “Alternative Facts”, was born and much ridicule was to be had with her Orwellian use of language.
Frankly, I don’t know what to make of Ms. Conway. Maybe I’m projecting my own feelings upon her but, at least to me, she seems like a fairly smart person yet there’s something so terribly, so clearly …wrong… inside her.
Perhaps she’s like a lawyer who’s assigned to defend a client they know is guilty as hell and a terrible person, to boot, yet value their job to the point where they will provide as strong a defense as possible. Perhaps I’m over-simplifying it, but it’s their job, not them.
Yet note the first things that come out of Ms. Conway’s mouth in the above extended clip, how she threatens the press right off the bat.
The ridicule heaped upon her and the administration for the things she said in the above interview, especially the “Alternative Facts” quote, is well deserved, again IMHO, yet I can’t help but feel a great unease. Are these people for real? Just how far are they willing to go to argue their view of reality, which, of course, simply isn’t?
Unlike the ridicule coming from the internet, George Orwell’s 1984 was far from a “comedy”. At its core it was a truly terrifying horror story. The idea of a dictatorial government taking total control of its citizens and, effectively, making them sheep should terrify everyone, and the idea they can create their own reality and force their people to accept it is perhaps the most frightening idea of them all.
Up is down. Black is white. Fighting for peace…
Alternative facts, indeed.
We’re not even a week into this new presidency. What exactly are we in for?
As many have noted, the crowds during Mr. Trump’s inauguration were significantly …less… than expected by the “big” man. He proclaimed beforehand the crowds at his event would break records (they did, I suppose, though not the way he expected).
This is a popular comparison picture…
And considering many of the crowds that did bother to come were protest crowds, then things look even more dire, attendance-wise for the Trumpster.
As for the protest crowds, Slate magazine offered some of what they considered the more amusing protest signs…
They were clever, funny, and sad…all at the same time. Among my SFW favorites…
Then there was this: White Nationalist Richard Spencer showed up at the inauguration and…
Sigh.
Look, I really don’t condone violence in any way, shape, or form and while one is tempted to applaud the fact that this man, who ultimately espouses hate, gets “what’s coming to him”, I can’t help but worry if this is a sign of things to come…and worry even more if we’re starting down a too-dangerous path here.
The blame, ultimately, comes right back to Mr. Trump. During the campaign he played fast and loose with some dangerous statements and personalities while engaging in all to obvious verbal “dog whistles”. While he was incredibly quick in recent days to condemn Representative (and Civil Rights Icon) John Lewis for publicly calling his presidency “Illegitimate”, try to find as strong a rejection of some of the white nationalists that have tried to cozy up to him.
It’s going to be a long four years…if the Trumpster makes it that far.
I’m deeply invested in politics as the people who will run our government represent the future of this country. Yet I also feel political opinions are too easily spread out there and it is best sometimes to listen rather than “talk”.
This is why I’m always hesitant to get into political topics here. Considering all the things I’ve expressed opinions on these last few years, I shouldn’t be, but political options, and politics in general, have a different impact than my opinion on, say, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Which isn’t to say I don’t dip my toe into this topic from time to time, which is what I intend to do now. So, if you’re not interested in “talking” politics, turn away. There’s plenty of other good stuff to read around these parts…
Anyway, yesterday the Vice Presidential candidates took to the stage to have a debate and, from what I’ve heard (you couldn’t pay me to watch this one), Republican VP candidate Mike Pence acquitted himself far better than Donald Trump did in his disastrous debate against Hillary Clinton.
And the Donald, from reports out there, wasn’t all that happy:
While I suppose it should surprise me, it doesn’t. Mr. Trump has always struck me as a classic narcissist and woe be to anyone/anything that takes away from his limelight.
Yet on the other hand, and again based on what I heard, it appeared Mr. Pence didn’t exactly go to bat for his candidate, so there could be more complex emotions going on here.
What I find the most fascinating so far with this race is that apart from being a narcissist, Mr. Trump constantly engages in what psychologists have called “projection”, which is defined as:
The unconscious transfer of one’s own desires or emotions to another person.
Many years ago and shortly after the disbanding of The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney (and George Harrison to a lesser degree) took shots at each other via their songs. Paul McCartney’s “Too Many People”, for example, is widely considered a song which takes aim at Mr. Lennon:
Included in the song are these lines:
You took your lucky break and broke it in two. Now what can be done for you? You broke it in two.
John Lennon shot right back with “How Do You Sleep”…
What was most fascinating to me was that in the Imagine film, Mr. Lennon talks about that song and says this about it:
(How Do You Sleep) is not about Paul, it’s about me. I’m really attacking myself. But I regret the association, well, what’s to regret? He lived through it. The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about these things and not what the writer or commentator thinks about it. Him and me are okay.
By the point of this quote many years had passed and the raw/negative feelings the two had for each other subsided but I nonetheless find Mr. Lennon’s statement incredibly interesting.
Sure, on the surface of the song he was going after Paul McCartney and now regretted it. However, I suspect Mr. Lennon was very much on to something with that quote and had realized the song, while appearing to be a full on attack on Mr. McCartney, was also more than a little self-loathing as well.
Check this song lyric from “How Do You Sleep”:
The only thing you done was yesterday And since you’ve gone it’s just another day
Once again and on the surface it is clear Mr. Lennon is referring to the famous Beatles song “Yesterday”, which everyone who knows their Beatles trivia knows Paul McCartney composed and recorded pretty much completely on his own, and comparing it -unfavorably- to Paul McCartney’s post Beatles solo song “Another Day”…
Now, in light of John Lennon’s statement, one can (ahem) imagine he realizes much of his criticism is indeed projection and that the negative statements he makes against McCartney are about him.
John Lennon was known to be very self-critical and at times displayed levels of self-loathing. I recall reading one interview where he dismissed the entire Beatles catalogue and said if he had to do it again, he would do every song completely differently, implying all those songs they released were not all that good.
There were also interviews where Mr. Lennon expressed equal parts admiration for and jealousy of the song “Yesterday.” It is arguably the single best known Beatles song yet, as noted above, it is entirely Paul McCartney’s work and John Lennon had nothing at all to do with it.
The success of “Yesterday” made Mr. Lennon (and the other Beatles, of course) a ton of money yet it irritated Mr. Lennon. A confidant of his stated:
“Yesterday drove him crazy,” veteran New York journo/broadcaster Howard Smith told MOJO. “People would say, ‘Thank you for writing Yesterday, I got married to it, what a beautiful song…’ He was always civil. But it drove him nuts.” (The full article can be found here: John Lennon was Haunted by Yesterday)
So if we are to believe Mr. Lennon in that later interview and consider the song “How Do You Sleep” as being a projection of and ultimately about Mr. Lennon, the line “The only thing you done was yesterday” takes on a completely different meaning.
Mr. Lennon is making what amounts to an incredible self-loathing statement: “The only thing I -John Lennon- am known for is the song “Yesterday”, and I didn’t even have anything to do with it!”
Perhaps this is indeed the case and Mr. Lennon had an uncanny insight into his own psyche.
Something, sadly, I don’t think Mr. Trump is capable of.
