Year of the Jackass

“I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed.” Donald J. Trump, speaking to the press on January 14, 2018.

There’s no point in deconstructing the many racist comments that Donald J. Trump has issued in his first, calamitous year in the White House. From the Muslim ban to the idiotic border Wall, the man is a racist and white supremacist, end of tale. The shocking thing to me is the craven reluctance of Republicans to exercise their constitutional duty and hold Trump accountable. As long as Trump is useful to Republicans, they will continue to shield him from the criticism and censure he deserves. This is a lesson in cowardice and hypocrisy that should not be lost on the public. As Noam Chomsky often says, the GOP is no longer a political party -- it’s a quasi-criminal organization, a gang of looters.

The news moves fast these days and trying to keep pace with Trump’s lame tweets and inane pronouncements (most of which are flat out lies) is futile, and the corporate media offers little help because nearly all reporting is devoid of context, history, and perspective; one can’t honestly learn much of use about this country or the world from the mainstream corporate media. As Chris Hedges frequently points out, the corporate talking heads are not journalists as much as they are courtiers, sucking up to the powerful in exchange for access; they support the ruling class rather than oppose it. It’s a sad state of affairs that has been building for many years, ever since media ownership consolidated into fewer and fewer hands -- all of them corporate -- and the corporate masters demanded that news divisions turn a profit. This trend moved in lockstep with the neoliberal notion that every facet of American life could be commodified, sold, traded, or squeezed for profit: health care, education, freeways, prisons, housing, and so on.

A strain of bad juju is loose in our land, felt most acutely by people of character, soul and heart, traits missing from the Republican mafia and the Trump White House. Destructive cruelty, mendacity, ignorance, and arrogance rule. Who but Donald J. Trump could make George W. Bush look, not only competent, but eloquent and coherent by comparison? It’s still very difficult to accept that the President of the United States is an ignorant, lazy, asshole with the mental capacity and attention span of a fourth grader. Of course there have been terrible presidents in American history -- Trump isn’t the first ignorant racist to hold the office, but he is the stupidest man to reign in the nuclear age, and his denial of the reality of climate change borders on the criminal.

If Hunter S. Thompson were alive to witness America’s descent to bonafide banana republic, he would surely load a pistol and blow his brains out. The first year of Trump has been, as HST might say, a King Hell year of complete degradation. It didn’t take Trump long to drop his pants and piss all over the tomb of the American Dream.

Trump’s erratic behavior and sheer incompetence are not laughing matters, as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson recently pointed out: “The nation has never faced a situation like this: It is unwise to take literally or seriously anything the president and his official spokesmen say. An administration with no credibility cannot possibly lead.” Bingo.

Hold on world, year two of Trump is about to launch. I guarantee you it will be the Year of the Jackass.