The best way to hit someone with a snowball is to actually make two of them. Hide one behind your back and toss the other high in the air. Then, while your target is busy looking at the snowball above them, blast in the face with the other one.
This is a great way to obfuscate something obvious. And that makes it much easier to sneak it past a person’s defenses that would otherwise deflect your attack. This method is great for hitting someone with a snowball, and unfortunately it seems to be a great way to run a country as well.
Our president has a great capacity for not giving a shit. He doesn’t give a shit about you. He doesn’t give a shit what you think. This allows him to make incredibly unpopular decisions that have long-lasting ramifications. That’s the other thing — he doesn’t care about long-term consequences. And if you combine these things with an innate desire to consume all available power, you have a Godzilla-style monster that destroys everything around him.
I realize I’m quickly approaching the cliff of hyperbole. I understand he’s not a fifty-foot-tall dragon karate chopping skyscrapers. He is, however, actively rolling back a shitload of protections that should be unquestionably protected.
But we’re all too busy watching the snowball sailing above our heads.
Our president does a great job of covering up his mistakes with larger, flashier mistakes. This might seem like he’d eventually paint himself into a corner. And I think we all imagined he’d run out of room by this point. But another one of his incredible abilities is to erase the past.
And he does this by lofting even more snowballs in every possible direction.
It’s hard to keep a clear mind when information is being constantly pumped into your head. You don’t have time to process anything. There’s no opportunity for analysis. We’re all too busy playing catch-up to give a piece of information enough time to say, “Hey wait a second…”
There are countless examples of this relating to pulling out of arms control deals, pushing through an insane amount of conservative judges, and using the pandemic to change immigration policies.
And while our president is suggesting we inject ourselves with household cleaners and flouting his own administration’s public health guidelines, he’s holding another snowball behind his back.
The pandemic is not the first time Trump has gone against the generally accepted opinions of scientists. The dumbest example was when he refused to admit he was wrong when he said Alabama was in the path of a hurricane (it wasn’t, despite his altered map). He’s said for years that global warming is a hoax.
He looked directly at an eclipse.
Image courtesy of the Atlantic
A lot of this has to do with the fact that he’s fundamentally unable to admit a mistake. About anything. He’s the verbal equivalent of the movie Speed. He can only move forward. He can only continue on his original path. Any loss of momentum is the equivalent of death. Take this clip for example.
“I tested very positively in another sense so — this morning. Yeah. I tested positively toward negative, right. So. I tested perfectly this morning. Meaning I tested negative.”
And this propensity for moving forward despite obvious mistakes leaves him without an opportunity for self-reflection.
Environmental protections have been under attack since the beginning of this administration. Right wing politicians seem to think about regulations the way the rest of us think about racism. The only problem is that they are in a position to do something about both of them, and we’ve seen where their loyalties lie.
You don’t have to look further than the head of the EPA for proof of this. Andrew Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist. One of his first acts as head of the EPA was to rollback an Obama-era regulation to clean up coal ash ponds (used for the disposal of waste from coal plants). The chemicals from these ponds leak toxic particulates into groundwater.
Sounds bad, right? Well too bad. It was getting in the way of business.
This is only one example of environmental considerations — and health considerations — taking a backseat to free and open business practices. Add to this the deregulations related to the Clean Waters Act, a refusal to ban asbestos, and just last month reducing regulations on emissions of mercury and other toxic chemicals.
There’s one basic fact that influences all of these decisions: Our president doesn’t give a shit about you. The same characteristic that has made him one of the most destructive presidents of our history is also the exact reason why his supporters love him.
The problem is that they are too busy looking at the snowball above their head to see the mercury-soaked ball of coal flying directly at their faces.