Trump's Press Conference

Is He Really Serious?

            With Trump’s first press conference since July, we now know we’ve entered a bizarre world where entertainment has finally merged completely with reality. What can we call it?

            Reenterality? Enterealitainment?

            The President-elect of the United States is poised to come into office declaring what amounts to war on the U.S. intelligence agencies and the international press. He faults the agencies for leaking bogus information about his business deals and after-hours exploits in Russia, and he excoriates the press for reporting it.

            If this were a movie, we might be on the edge of our seats. We wouldn’t know what to expect. Whose side would we be on? The CNN reporter who made an ass of himself shouting questions that it was obvious Trump would not acknowledge? Or the man himself at the podium, turning every aspersion cast on his character back upon his accusers while promising to make everything better than it’s been in America for a long time, and to do it practically overnight?

            At a certain point I have to step back and run a sort of diagnostic on myself.

            Q: Has America ever been a real democratic republic, as the founders intended?

            A: No. There have always been powerful factions trying to limit a full democracy of one person, one vote and even citing the founders as their authority to do it.

            Q: Is Trump really a threat to our democracy, as many people warn?

            A: No. He can’t really get away with false claims and lies forever, even within his own party.

            Q: Is this really a coup d’etat by the right wing of our nation, which has long plotted to reverse our social gains going back to the New Deal?

            A: Uh-oh. That could be. But it’s an imperfect coup because the President is unstable.

            This is where Enterealitainment gets creepy, but if I were writing the script from here I’d have that instability at the top implode and, like the Towers on 9-11, the whole party which supported that top, essentially trying to control it and use it for its own ends, would collapse under the weight of its exposure and fall into the abyss of a lost identity.

            The Democrats in my script are not too far behind that chaotic scenario, as an elected minority tries to hold the ship of state steady on the course as we’ve always known it, pounded by storms that rock the very Earth on her axes. And then the Democrats split apart and fall into quarreling factions, as well.

            We’ll need a hero to save us, then—a Great President to rise from the people, the one some of my friends thought Obama would be. He wasn’t, but he could be the One Who Came Before.

            No, no, no, not a Second Coming! The first one caused enough trouble in the world!

            Bottom line: I think the Trump Presidency is a mistake. Countries make mistakes. People make mistakes. They recover. Or sometimes they don’t. That’s the suspense of mistakes. It usually takes courage to recover, especially from the big ones.

            We’ve been making mistakes at the top for a long time—mistakes compounded upon mistakes. Mistakes of hubris, mistakes of lust. Those mistakes are our mistakes. We are all complicit in them, in one way or another. Trump, larger than life, rises from the  consciousness of the Americans who voted for him and, frankly, of the Americans who didn’t, to show us a side of ourselves which very few, according to polls, are that happy with.

            But some of us think that because he’s a successful businessman he will make things better for us, give us a better deal, even if he is a snark.

            I’m drawn right back into my annual one-man show, “The Concise Dickens’ Christmas Carol” and poor Jacob Marley’s after-life torment for his misspent existence. As a successful businessman.

            In short, Trump’s first news conference, where he attacked the people who advise him and the people assigned to keep him honest, doesn’t bode well for the future of his presidency or of our democracy, which Obama the night before pleaded for us to keep alive.

            Whether or not it’s a coup, it’s shaping up to be a schism. And don’t think the real figurehead is Trump. Trump could easily be dumped by the House and the Senate, and then our President would be Pence.

            “Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?”