Trump & the Uniquely American Addiction to Entertainment Now Literally Threatening the World

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After Trump was elected, and before I decided that trying to talk to the vast majority of Trump supporters was a complete and utter waste of time, I took to asking them what, specifically, they liked about this man. Almost everyone would blast either Hillary or Obama, but I would try and rein that nonsense in, and get them back on point. No, no, that's now what I asked. What is it about this man that you like so much?

That was a tough question to answer. Some of the answers? One guy actually agreed that Trump was a bully, but said that this was what he liked about him. Another said that Trump had done what he said, had kept his promises. I asked him if he remembered some of Trump's key promises during the campaign, such as making Mexico pay for that wall, or defeating ISIS within one month of being in office, or promising to drain the swamp, or completely get rid of Obamacare and create a system where everyone was covered.

Things like that. You know, campaign promises that he made. Had he delivered on them? The answer was that his presidency was not over, and that he would fulfill them. Once again, someone who believed that this man should be taken seriously, but not literally.

It is going on three years into this ridiculous and laughable presidency, and none of those promises seem any neared to being fulfilled.

By and large, those were the most substantive responses that I got. Some suggested that they simply had loathed the Obama years and/or could not bring themselves to voting for Hillary. So, Trump it was.

But when I pressed, and said what was it about Trump that they liked enough to vote for him, and in the case of his more enthusiastic supporters, what was it that they liked about this man in particular, the response was often annoyed. The more I probed and explored why some of these people specifically had supported Trump, and not what they did not like about Hillary or Obama, the more annoyed these people got. It almost seemed like, to a one, they could not come up with anything about this man that they actually really liked and appreciated.

Yet, there was one answer that I got, and repeatedly. Most of them felt that he had entertainment value. Most of them - but by no means all of them - kind of rushed to beat the inevitable retort by that point, usually racing to say that this was not, of course, the only reason that they had voted for him. But they would usually word it as "at least he will be entertaining."

Now, I will be honest: there was not one time that I can recall, either before he won the presidency, or since, that I found this man to be entertaining. Perhaps my idea of entertainment differs than most, but I never found this overgrown child with a false sense of entitlement to be entertaining. He was not funny, and the only sense of humor that he had seemed to be when he was insulting people, and that usually was unintentional, because he was actually serious about his ranting and raving. Of course, when you turned the table on him to check if he could take it like he could dish it, he typically melted down like a spoiled little child, and then unleashed even fiercer, mean-spirited tweets. If that is what passes for entertainment, then I guess you could make the argument that he is entertaining. That, and presumably, some of the off the cuff things that he says, maybe. Perhaps some of these people are not so much embarrassed, as entertained, when he refers to literally dozens of other countries as "shithole nations." Or when he seems unable to criticize white supremacists and outright Nazis. Or when he threatens to wipe another nation from the face of the Earth. Or when he gets laughed at, quite literally, before assembled world leaders at the United Nations after boasting that he is the most accomplished president in American history. Or any of the hundreds of other instances where this man made international headlines for all of the wrong reasons.

Yup. This is what you get when you elect someone based on how "entertaining" he is. 

And the problem is this: he seems completely unfazed by it. There literally seems to be no shame for this man. He says and does countless idiotic things that most - almost everyone else - would be completely humiliated by, but he gets busy with the next such instance. He lies, he says stupid things, and time and again, nothing happens. People get disgusted for a while, and then it is on to the next outrageous thing that he says or does. Some people get angry at specific things, and some people are disgusted at pretty much everything this man does and represents.  

One thing is certain, however: this man will continue doing exactly what he has been doing from the beginning. If this is entertainment, then we are all forced to watch this stupid program again and again, whether we like it or not.  And even many of his staunch supporters are, at best, only luke warm about his tweets. But absurd as those tweets are, they keep coming, fast and furious and utterly ridiculous. 

All of this does not speak well about the mindset of Americans, political or otherwise. We collectively seem to have mistaken entertainment as somehow encompassing everything. So short have our collective attention span gotten, that we need everything to be packaged as "entertainment," or else we cannot be bothered to pay it any mind. Probably, I am guessing that accounts for much of the skepticism around climate change. Who wants to hear that the way that we have been living is irresponsible, and that if we continue, we will actually literally wipe out life as we know it? What fun is that? Who wants to hear that the income gap between wealthy and poor has never been greater than it is now, and that it actually resembles the gap seen in France just before the revolution? Or that we have more people behind bars than any other country in the world, and it is not even close? Or that we spend more on healthcare than any other country in the world, and we get less out of it than any other industrialized nation, thus underscoring just how badly this system is failing us? Or that the costs of college education just keep spiraling out of control and, once again, are far more than they are in any other country? Or that we spend more on military expenditures than the next ten leading countries combined, which seems to confirm that we have given into the the very same military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about? Or that we have grown to be distrusted, and in many cases outright hated, in much of the rest of the world?

Who wants to hear those things? Things like that are just bummers, man. 

Let's elect Trump instead! He's entertaining, right?

More "entertainment" from this unhinged president today. Of course.

We have all seen the ridiculous back and forth between him and Iran. Hell, we can hardly ignore it, as it has become the latest thing to dominate the headlines. Trump and his administration took a hard stance, with the fake president suggesting that an actual war would result in the official end of Iran. Then he blasted the Iran Nuclear Deal, and demanded a better deal. Iran matched his bet and raised him, suggesting that they were pursuing certain things that would enable them to develop nuclear weapons. It seemed that the Trump administration was divided, with some hawks favoring war, while others - most notably apparently Trump himself - not too enthusiastic about the prospects of a war - being much less certain. Apparently, a military strike was ordered, and it was Trump himself who backed out of it, perhaps remembering one campaign promise that his supporters tended to really take seriously: not getting involved in more wars in the Middle East. Iran insulted the United States and it's president again, and the Nuclear Deal seemed dead. Indeed, Iran was apparently pursuing nuclear weapons. Trump said that this could not happen, and then imposed very strict economic sanctions, but offered them an olive branch of sorts, saying that he was always open to meet with them, much like he did with the leader of North Korea. Iran responded that there would be absolutely no negotiating with the Trump administration, and they went as far as to suggested that Trump had "mental retardation."

Obviously, things had sunk very low. 

Not low enough for the ratings, however. And the man who always is concerned about his own ratings could not help himself: he needed to one up the Iranians. Of course he did. He clearly felt personally insulted, and is now apparently willing to risk a huge war to vent his frustrations, just like world leaders centuries ago used to do.

Mr Trump tweeted earlier this morning:

"Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!"

So, if this leads to war, surely his supporters will finally have reservations about this huckster, and see him as the fraud that he is, right?

Whoa there! Not so fast! There are things that clearly matter to them, that they rail against, and scream about how much they hate them, until someone that they like is in office. Suddenly, they grow very quiet about these very same things. When Obama borrowed money to get the country out of a financial crisis early in his presidency, they cried foul that he added trillions to the national debt. Now well out of any crisis, they remain dead silent when Trump adds three trillion dollars to our national debt in less than three years in the White House. When Obama cannot come close to balancing the budget, they yell and scream bloody murder. When Trump fails to do this, and actually greatly inflates the budget, no real problems emerge. When Obama works on a national healthcare plan that will at least curb the worst excesses of the system, there is bloody outrage, and some people slapped Hitler mustaches on images of Obama. When Trump brings back those horrific excesses, they seem fine with it. When Obama uses executive actions, he is the next Stalin or Hitler. When Trump does it, crickets. When Obama attacks Libya, there is incredible outrage. Bengazi! When Trump attacks Syria, and threatens to wipe out North Korea and/or Iran? You guessed it. No criticism.

So, are we headed to war against Iran? 

Maybe, maybe not. Look at another thing that Trump recently stated, and see if you can get a clear message from it:

“I’m not looking for war and if there is, it’ll be obliteration like you’ve never seen before. But I’m not looking to do that."

What does that mean? He does not want a war. But if there is a war, baby, he's all in, and he does not care about how destructive it is, or how this might seem to portray him as a monster to much of the world. In other words, he wants peace, but if he cannot have peace, then he will unleash a rain of destruction unlike anything seen before. 

Got it?

What about other countries? What about the European nations who have tried to hold the fragile Iran Nuclear deal together? Trump is quite clear on that, too:

“I don’t care about the Europeans,” he said. “The Europeans are going out and making a lot of money … In France, they’re selling cars to Iran. They’re doing other things.

"And let me tell you, we’re very good to Europe. We take care of them. NATO, we spend a tremendous amount ... On trade, the European Union’s taken, really, they have really taken advantage of us for a long time.”

In other words, some typical messages. Of all of the things, including the inconsistencies and incoherent, often conflicting messages, Trump has remained on point about certain things: thank God for the United States. And especially thank God for Donald Trump. 

Right.

But back to his supporters. Are they getting a bit annoyed with all of this talk about a possible war? And what about Trump's own assertion that, if it comes to it, this war will be more destructive than anything we have ever seen before?

Personally, I would not count on any kind of backlash. After all, a recent Newsweek article revealed that fully one-third of Americans would support a nuclear war with North Korea. Of course, a nuclear war with North Korea would surely force a response from neighboring China, which then would very likely spur World War III, the very same World War III that Trump detractors feared as a worst case scenario. And his supporters allegedly are dead set against another war, right? Yet, they support an outright nuclear war with North Korea. And that one-third of Americans more or less corresponds with the percentage of Trump supporters in the country, doesn't it?

That one-third of Americans were not overly concerned when asked if it meant that one million North Koreans would die. Do you think they will suddenly care if you replace North Korea, and North Koreans, with Iran, and Iranians? My guess is that it would not. Just more American wars in places that most Americans cannot properly pronounce the names of, and which most Americans could not point to on an unlabeled world map.

You might think that this would be disqualifying for them to chime in. But then again, they brought us Donald Trump, and he is in the White House. And he is threatening exactly this kind of a war. And I would be willing to bet that his supporters will not waver.

We are literally almost playing with fire at this point, and we have a childish and unhinged so-called leader literally calling the shots. 

In the United States today, we have a White House that is grabbing more and more power, stomping on the constitution in the process. Yes, the same constitution that his supporters claim to love when it comes to the second amendment. We have built concentration camps again, and we are separating children from their families in these camps. Some children have died in these camps. Yet his supporters will always find the "but" when confronted with this, claiming that they are "illegals." This president does not want a war, but threatens the deadliest war possible if Iran continues to insult him, basically. Oh, and he does not care what Europeans, or anyone else, thinks or has to say about it.

Then, of course we wonder why so much of the world distrusts us, and much of the rest of the world is beginning to hate us, right? 

Are you not entertained?

Trump threatens ‘ignorant and insulting’ Iran with ‘obliteration’ by ‘most powerful military force in world’ 'Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force,' president tweets  Chris Riotta New York  @chrisriotta 1 hour ago

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-iran-twitter-war-attack-sanctions-rouhani-response-latest-news-a8974201.html?fbclid=IwAR1GDDVLB4k5Z8ts-m9VP3rAS_WtjWRgU6Ut0wvZ4vGtS7cicn8A4LUTBJE

Trump says 'I don't care about the Europeans' after questions on Iran crisis 'I have so many targets you wouldn’t believe,’ president warns Tehran in new interview  Adam Forrest, June 24, 2019:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-iran-crisis-drone-europeans-nbc-interview-a8971141.html




ONE-THIRD OF U.S. SUPPORTS NUCLEAR WAR ON NORTH KOREA, KNOWING IT WOULD KILL ONE MILLION, REPORT SHOWS BY TOM O'CONNOR ON 6/24/19:

https://www.newsweek.com/us-support-north-korea-nuclear-war-one-million-dead-1445578?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=NewsweekTwitter&fbclid=IwAR0zdIi3D0pLeM6i8hMzsHt8nJ0UmW31Je0fhUHeSPnHQimEmxnUaUrH76w