The following is a Facebook post from a wonderful man, smart, ethical, analytical and compassionate. I’ve known him for over 40 years and respect him deeply. Yet he posted,
“Folks, remember nothing about the actions of this administration and its minions is normal What is going on in our country is not normal.
A President who insists on making himself the news and communicates in absolutely BIZARRE ways, the multiple DC building projects, dispatching the military to American citites, the ignoring of norms, Congress being AWOL, a $40 Trillion deficit, high gas prices, high food prices, and no explanation or plan to get out of this war. Most importantly, the flouting of Court orders and the endless work arounds to get what this administration wants is Not Normal.
I wonder what part of the Court order stating that only Congress could rename the Kennedy Center they didn’t understand?
“. . . Members voted to close the center for two years for a $285 million renovation, after being handed what lawyers challenging the board described as a “vague, two-page PowerPoint” two days before the meeting. Only three members voted no, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Rick Larsen. The board also voted to inscribe “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” below Kennedy’s name, rename the grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” and add a third line about a Trump-named endowment if it hits $100 million . . .”
I had to wrestle my fingers to the floor to stop myself from responding. But I did. I’m still sorely tempted, however, to point that what is so obnoxious about this post is the writer’s assumption that his assessment is undeniably fair and valid. He’s assuming that everyone on his feed is just as Trump Deranged as he is. These people make declarations; they aren’t interested in a discussion, and anyone who dares to say, “Now wait a minute…” will be unfriended, tarred as MAGA and a Fox News ventriloquist dummy while being rebranded as evil.
But talk about moldy Axis talking points! That “normal” salvo: what a cheap shot, and one the no one who wasn’t screaming for Joe Biden to be put in a home is ethically estopped from making! Strong leaders and effective Presidents are never “normal.” To me, that complaint is signature significance for someone who is ignorant regarding the Presidency and leadership.
Ethics Alarms 
Maybe it boils down to, “He’s not one of US!” At its highest levels, the U.S. is an extremely classist society. And given there is no royal, hereditary class, the dividing lines are arbitrary, hidden, and malleable. I bet Trump’s SATs were terrible!
I remember during Trump’s first term, I made a Facebook post that tried to explain to lefties the concept of “resistance burnout”…. Basically, if you approach everything Trump does with the exact same amount of action and outrage, then you lose the ability to signal what is actually important, and everything just ends up sounding like an adult from Charlie Brown. I used how Trump muzzled the EPA’s Twitter account and how he appointed a man actively being sued by the EPA as head of the EPA as examples of something very low stakes and something legitimately bad.
Because there is some there there, and a sane resistance has a place. I’ll put it out there: I was absolutely more than willing to talk about how awful Biden was, and how the 25th was probably more appropriate for him than any other President in living memory. See: “Weekend at Biden’s” and “President Autopen”… That wasn’t normal either.
Because Trump isn’t normal, but just saying that is insufficient. “Normal” isn’t a moral state of being. What he does is important, and while I could be annoyed at all the capital projects, particularly during a cost of living crisis (I am), or his instinct to rhetorically pee on everything he can in an attempt to get his name on things (ditto), or his desire to add acreage to the American empire by floating ideas that are just… Never going to happen, as some kind of legacy project (also yes), these things are relatively unimportant. We need to be able to walk and chew gum, and separate the annoying things Trump does from the things that are actually problems.
Trump’s second term foreign relations has been… rough. Nothing indefensible, but if we’re going to criticize Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, we can probably squint and see the parallels to Trump’s…. whatever this is…. with Iran. Even if you want to make the argument that the base action was good, the lack of planning is evident.
His economy has also been rough, and he’s picking fights with everyone. It’s not good enough to look to other nations and point out that they’re doing worse either… Trade is not a zero-sum game, theoretically, people are unloading stuff they have too much of and getting stuff they have too little of. His tariff policy has extracted $300 billion dollars from the American economy, and how much better off do you all feel for it?
I think Trump-supporters are willing over overlook not just the small shit, but the massive, systemic problems in Trump’s administration, because you like some of the other things that he’s doing, some of the things politicians have been saying for years that they were going to do, but didn’t. Trump legitimately worked a miracle at your border, as an example, and that’s great, I just don’t understand the…. cultish loyalty to him. You could theoretically have the good stuff without the bad, they aren’t mutually dependent. More… He’s done. Regardless of what happens during the midterm, Trump’s presidency has an expiration date, and how much you love him now isn’t going to matter in 2028, because he will not be on the ticket. If you can’t even signal what you think are excesses to someone who will never run another campaign in their life, what’s the point? You’re just signaling that your party can take your support for granted.
Rational, measured analysis. I also don’t understand Trump cultism, at all. But as I’ve written a lot here, we judge Presidents on their best accomplishments unless their botches are so unforgivable that they cancel the triumphs.Good lord, if it hadn’t been for the Depression and WWII thingies, FDR would be rated as one of the worst Presidents. Four terms? Locking away citizens based on race? Defying Congressional edicts? Handing whole nations over to Soviet slavery?
Purple hair and cutting off the genitals of boys is not normal either, until it is.
Welcome to the new normal, crusty old man.
Wait, why do you assume a friend of mine is a crusty old man???????????
It wasn’t too long ago that an Office of the President repeatedly ignored Supreme Court rulings that forgiveness of student loan debt violated the Constitution. Not to mention that enforcement of Congressionally-passed Immigration Law need not be enforced if an Office of the President said that it didn’t. (The Office of the President is always larger than just one man, sometimes much larger.)
Just because the Trump administration hasn’t described in vivid detail the plan to stop Iran from terrorizing the world – doesn’t mean there is no plan. And one of the things we know about the President is that he is flexible enough to change course when the situation merits a change, and actually kind enough to prefer diplomacy to raw power and violence. I hope he and the War Department can make headway very soon and I am confident in their tactical abilities. It is so easy to forget that waging war is never a straight line proposition – you zig and zag, serpentine to the goal.
I think reality has to assert at some point.
I don’t think anyone is going to sing the praises of the Iranian regime. And I think there’s something to the idea that if someone hadn’t taken the initiative, someone would have found a way to force kicking the can down the road, because that’s what history tells us would have happened. The planet probably is in fact safer today than it was before Trump attacked Iran, even if our gas costs more.
But just because we can point at something and say that the ends were good does not justify the means. Saying that Trump’s actions in the Strait were good is exactly like saying that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was good. There were definitely people that wanted the boys home from Afghanistan and to stop pissing money into that sandbox. The problem wasn’t necessarily the withdrawal, it was how the withdrawal was done. It could have been done better, with less death, and less loss of face and treasure. You didn’t have to have the pictures of people hanging from aircraft. you didn’t need to abandon your translators. Similarly… The problem isn’t attacking Iran, it was how the attack was done.
Pretending that Trump had a plan, or that everything went according to it, is ridiculous. Trump spent a lot of capital trying to guilt America’s allies to go off as half-cocked as he was into the strait, and came up empty. I’m old enough to remember the idiotic talking point that NATO (a defensive alliance) allies weren’t living up to their obligations because wee weren’t sending our boys into Trump’s offensive actions. This has gone on longer than it should have, Trump looked extremely weak, and a lot of American blood and treasure was spent that did not necessarily have to be.
But keep on believing in his mysterious ways, I guess.
It’s not so much a belief in mysterious ways as in the reluctance to totally destroy a country’s infrastructure because the Iranians in power don’t give a flying fig about their people. We actually care more. So, yes, it is taking too long. Let’s get it done. I’m not a cultist but do believe the threat is real and shouldn’t be kicked down the road.
What you don’t understand is that you’re rhetorically looking at someone who used a flamethrower to pop a zit on their face, and saying that despite their face being 90% covered in melted scar tissue, they did manage to get the zit popped.
Again: No one is defending Iran.