America In Context

Recap

Let’s review some events from the last few days:

• TV and cable news channels over-covered the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. In typical fashion, they dwelt far too long on an unimportant piece of trivia, instead of reporting on the important elements of the ceremony.  This is symptomatic of the standard laziness of most media outlets, and not surprising.

Yet at President Trump’s behest, the official White House press secretary stood in front of the press room … and blatantly lied. He not only lied about something that shouldn’t be important to anybody, but he did so with a level of rage that should be reserved for accusations of treason. Press secretaries don’t do things like that, they are trained to keep their cool under the most trying of situations. Sean Spicer isn’t some newbie, he’s a seasoned veteran of press rooms of all types. But there he is, blatantly lying in the White House briefing room.

• The White House ordered multiple federal agencies to stop making information available to the public via social media accounts. It started with ordering one government Twitter account to retract a tweet about the aforementioned crowd size, then ordered the entire National Park Service to stop tweeting about climate change, and has moved on to the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Department of Transportation then got into the act.

So let me get this straight: the federal government is funded by taxpayer dollars. The federal government works for us. The federal government is now being prevented from talking to … us. That’s really what it is. This isn’t “stop talking to the press cuz the press is mean to Trump”, this is the government must stop talking to us. Lots of folks, both Trump supporters and not, hate political correctness and oppression of speech. So we combat that by hiring a guy … who then institutes gag orders on those agencies to stop talking to us? Here you have to ask … why? They won, these agencies aren’t going to make a difference in the coming agenda, they will become the coming agenda whether they like it or not, so why bother silencing them?

• The White House has reaffirmed their position that millions of people voted illegally in the recent election. No evidence has been presented by any state election officials in any state, Red or Blue, to provide evidence to support this claim; no independent watchdog authority of any persuasion has come forward with any evidence;  and even fellow Republicans have stated there is no evidence of significant voter fraud. 

Again, why is President Trump even going down this path? His victory was verified, there were no legal challenges, he is President according to the U.S. Constitution and all applicable laws. Yet he continues to manufacture a voter fraud narrative out of whole cloth? For what possible purpose, especially when it would be so much easier to just stop wasting time talking about it and get on with the business of implementing his agenda?

The Question

So now I have to ask that one question I teased in the headline:

Trump supporters: is this really what you signed up for?

I get that you have a lot of complaints with the way things are. The Obama administration actually wasn’t that great. Sure, they had good economic numbers, but those statistics are broad and kinda suck, they don’t really reflect the realities on the ground. There are a lot of regulations that do waste money and hamper job growth (being in IT, I have to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley rules, a large number of which are ineffectual). Urban riots that hit the country in the past few years are certainly bad. The opiate epidemic that has hit many rural counties is horrific. I know I was less than thrilled with our choices this past election. I can definitely see the appeal of massive political change in this country.

But is this really what you wanted? A man so protective of his own image he’ll intentionally lie to the American people; will intentionally muzzle the most unimportant of administrative departments; and will manufacture “facts” out of whole cloth just to give him legitimacy?

I really want to know. I just don’t get it.