I’m Done Writing About Trump

Reporting on the Goings-On of Trump Went From Exciting, To Repetitive, To Exhausting and, Eventually, Very Boring 

 

The number one rule of getting a lot of traffic on your blog is to use a clickbaity title and then make a shameless attempt to clarify the parameters of it in your opening paragraph. It’s the online equivalent of promising your parents you won’t spend the money they lend you on drugs, then as soon as they walk out of the room whispering to yourself, “Unless you count weed.”

So, anyway, to be sure there will still be some Trump-adjacent pieces up on Popticon in the future, as he has so successfully permeated every aspect of our culture and consciousness as to make this basically unavoidable (in fact, you should keep your eyes out for an upcoming piece on the batshit feud that’s been going on between Saturday Night Live and Trump’s administration for weeks now).

But on this matter we stand resolute: as far as articles focusing purely on the man himself, his absurd, desperate tantrums and indefensible policies, today we are firm in saying that we’ve had enough of hearing about, reacting to and reporting on the activities of one President Donald Juárez Trump, as I’m sure any of you who have bothered to keep up are fairly sick of reading about the orangutan-flavoured cunt anyway.

That said, our one glaring and fairly open-ended condition on the above rule is that we will immediately report on a significant public scandal or substantial motion by members of Congress (or other authoritative entity) that would almost certainly lead to Trump’s resignation or impeachment. Therein, however, lies the fucking rub because at this point – and I have absolutely no hesitation in saying this – any other President in Donald Trump’s position would already be long gone.

Take that as hyperbole if you must, but try to imagine another sitting United States President in recent memory enduring the utter cockery of the last seven weeks without basically combusting into a shame fire. I mean seriously, imagine Obama, or Bush, or Clinton (either of them) having their National Security Advisor resign in their first month of office due to illegal contact with the Russian government who almost certainly helped to sway the election in their favour. Then follow that with their Attorney General having to recuse himself from a federal investigation into these matters because it turns out he did the same fucking thing! And then, to cap it all off, this hypothetical President accuses his predecessor of tapping his phones with about as much proof as your nan has that the Persian guy who lives next door is actually Osama bin Laden.

How, then, has this froggy, barbershop disposal unit managed to remain so seemingly untouchable in his guise as Leader of the Free World, much as he did throughout his campaign last year? It’s maddeningly simple, really, and attributable to a trait so vile and all-encompassing that you almost have to admire the depths of it: the man has no damn shame. He can rally the people at his base behind him and lend the thinnest scrap of plausible deniability to the Republican representatives who back him because he will never, ever admit to committing any wrongdoing, no matter how incriminatingly obvious the evidence against him is. His greatest, most irritating gift is the ability to eschew culpability and hurl it straight back at his detractors, never subtly but always effectively.

It’s a tactic that dates back to childhood, expanded on for the purposes of the much messier (though just as juvenile) wider world of politics. Everytime Trump shrieks, “FAKE NEWS!”, it’s like a seven-year-old on the playground being cheered on as he grabs a scrawny kid’s fist and drives it into his own side, yelling, “STOP HITTING YOURSELF!” over and fucking over. Except, in this case, Trump’s somehow got the teachers cheering too. Christ, even the goddamn principal is playing along, so caught up in the moment that he finds himself handing the snivelling shit that is Donald the keys to the staff room liquor cabinet. With Trump’s particular set of gross predilections in mind, this analogy is about to get seriously out of hand if I keep it going, but you get the picture.

So, with all that said, it’s at this point that I have honestly just gotta opt out. It has simply become too infuriating to see scandal after scandal break (on a literal daily basis) with no lasting consequences. It is too gobsmackingly overbearing to listen to a constant stream of certifiably unhinged nonsense spill from this half-popped boil, receiving not criticism but wide-spread affirmation from so many for “keeping it real.” Is that a cop-out? Fine, but I’m hoping the reduction in bile and pent-up rage in my system might mean I’ll live longer. I mean, as long as any of us are gonna live now, anyway.

I’ll leave you with this thought: as I’ve said previously, this can’t last. The reasons are manifold and growing more and more intricate by the day, but what’s most concerning is that in just the last week I’ve become convinced that the line Trump will need to cross to finally usher in his downfall could still be a ways off. He displays the indifference and disdain for reality that an autocrat might, while his followers share the dedication of deluded cultists. That’s a scary fucking combination, one that leaves us very few roads left to travel in the future.

Remember, after a while it’s not enough to just insist to the people that, despite what they may believe, the sky is in fact purple; eventually, you’re gonna have to hold them down and forcefully strap on a pair of tinted goggles. Let’s all seriously hope there’s some form of reckoning for Mr. Trump before that day comes.