{"id":23908,"date":"2020-10-09T20:25:25","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T00:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=23908"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:46","slug":"no-trump-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2020\/10\/no-trump-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"I Will Trump No More Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some readers may have noticed that, for some time now, I have been walking a tightrope of cognitive dissonance here.\u00a0 It stems from trying to reconcile these contradictory truths: Donald J. Trump is an unreflective solipsist<\/a> and a pathological liar; the United States is a democratic republic; and Trump is President of the United States.<\/p>\n

America has managed to slog through three years of this dissonance, all the time griping and sniping and whining and never fully accepting.\u00a0 But in this pandemic-dominated year, the consequences of those contradictions have been all too painful.\u00a0 Our domestic tragedy (200,000-plus lives and counting) cannot be lightened with mocking and finger-pointing.\u00a0 Rather, it calls for trying to stay sane.<\/p>\n

I could justifiably rail against Trump every single day on this blog, and perhaps I should. However, there is already no shortage of Trump hypocrisy call-outs, ripostes and satires on social media and late-night TV.\u00a0 Why add yet more (i.e., mine) to the mix?<\/p>\n

So, believe it or not, I have been holding back.*\u00a0 I don’t want my mind or this mouthpiece to be swept up in the Can-You-Believe-What-He-Said-Today tsunami.\u00a0 No one can keep up with the pace and scale of the outrage created by this apprentice president of ours.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, avoiding mention of our Orange Mussolini makes me feel as if I’m not doing my duty as a citizen.\u00a0 On the other hand, responding to Trump’s every petulance is like “letting the terrorists win” if I may invoke that oft-cited refrain from post-9\/11 days. Americans should not have to serve as Trump’s puppets in any sense, offense or defense.<\/p>\n

Trump is truly the elephant in the room — except that Trump-phant weighs 1\/8 of a ton and has wispy dyed hair and tramples down just about everything sweet and gentle about this country, for abject reasons known only to Trump-phant and his family and herd.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, I will be doing my best to ignore Trump-phant until the election is over and the winner is declared.\u00a0 You all know what it’s like out there.\u00a0 I do too.\u00a0 Having turned in my ballot, it’s now about holding tight and encouraging other rational folk to do the same.\u00a0 Self-preservation is a hard calculation.<\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

* As a fact-check, I did a search and found that I have mentioned Trump in 96 posts here, dating to 2012<\/a>.\u00a0 So this one is No. 97, or more than one of seven posts on The 100 Billionth Person.\u00a0 Sigh.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some readers may have noticed that, for some time now, I have been walking a tightrope of cognitive dissonance here.\u00a0 It stems from trying to reconcile these contradictory truths: Donald J. Trump is an unreflective solipsist and a pathological liar; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23908"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23954,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23908\/revisions\/23954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}