Orange Overdose

Too much of a completely horrible thing.

Photo by Adelade Mbuyazi on Unsplash

I’ve been having a harder time focusing than normal and that’s saying something. It’s been harder to settle down, organize my thoughts or even focus on what I’ll write. I’ve come to learn recently that I’ve got ADHD. Learning that has been comforting in that it’s made some things make more sense for me, but that’s not what this post is about. The source of the swirling vortices in my whirlpool mind, dragging down all semblance of ordered thinking and plans to the murkiest depths, isn’t the fault of my diagnosis. What is it?

Trump.

I don’t usually write this man’s name. I hate reading it. I can’t stand hearing it. I do all I can to avoid the face and voice that belongs to it. I’ve watched years of this failure of a man undeservingly grab news coverage, sometimes lately even being feted, and I do whatever I can not to see that arrangement of letters. Honestly, that name, in my opinion, should be seen as fetid, not get feted.

No matter, it’s everywhere. Inescapable. I’m days behind on reading my Substack subscriptions. Latest Substack podcast episodes dropped? Fuhgedaboudit. I wonder to myself why that is. Then, I scan the titles of the days of backlogged reading and it becomes clearer. Nearly every one of them reads like; “Court defies Trump!”, “How to beat Trump”, “Trump’s plans to steal the election”, “Stop Trump from stealing the election”, “Will Republicans finally break from Trump?“, “Is Trump finally going to stop the war?”, “Trump lies again when he…”, “Let’s mass and raise our voices to show Trump…”

God damnit! I’ve had it!!

I get it. This country failed an open book test for the second time, with the correct answers written in bold, highlighted and circled, once again saddling itself with a loathsome cretin in its highest office. This irredeemable, uncouth, babbling, incontinent, flatulent fool is the elected leader, and the actions of the person holding that office are generally newsworthy. Other things are true now, though, that weren’t in prior presidential tenures. Those include:

• He’s grossly incompetent, which is only eclipsed by the laziness with which he approaches the job.

• He lies on a monumental scale. Brobdingnagian, even. Nearly everything he says is a lie or exaggeration, often packing loads of them in the same sentence or whatever passes as a sentence from him.

• He’s unread, unstudied, undisciplined, unmoored, and completely deluded.

• No one in his Cabinet or recently hired to perform any duty in his branch of government, is trustworthy or honest. Most of them are as incompetent as he is, if not more so.

• He doesn’t have an original thought, and outside of the outright grifts that enrich his family, nothing else you see come out of his office is his idea. Anything that has potential lasting electoral, constitutional or legislative impact came from the Heritage Foundation, Koch or some other right-wing think tank.

• There is no grand plan or multi-step approach to anything you see him doing. If Heritage or Koch didn’t write explicit step-by-step instructions to carry out some boneheaded idea, whatever hastily cobbled and Sharpie-signed Executive Order he flashes from behind the Resolute Desk between bouts of narcolepsy is the extent of it.

With those things established, any ponderings about “his” grand plans to do this or that are wastes of breath and ink. He doesn’t plan. As Jeff Tiedrich often writes in his Substack, “he acts first and thinks never.” Truer words were never written.

He’s not playing global chess, checkers, Chutes and Ladders or Candyland. As he fights to stay conscious, he’s slapping that EKG of a signature on some Executive Order with a magic marker, bellyaching about how this person or that wronged him, threatening someone with revenge over some petty-assed slight, waiting for whichever of his hires stands behind him to clap like trained seals for doing some basic task, then retiring to watch Fox News turned up to earsplitting volume or go to sleep. Otherwise, he’s scheduled to struggle at playing golf at one of his courses.

To paraphrase the self-proclaimed apostle, Paul, we do not struggle against royalty, principality or a cunning, calculated and methodical long-range political plotter. We’re not even facing off against the best politician of the last few years, much less of his or any other age. Yes, he is the person signing the orders, but he’s not the one conjuring up the ideas. He has no ideas, besides using his position to leer at women and enrich himself.

That’s why there’s no specific, detailed plans for anything. That’s why there’s never a clear goal. It’s why vaguely stated goals for the same action, shift or change completely. It explains why disastrous results, that were predictable to everyone with a working brain, become a total surprise where “no one could have known this could happen.” Frequent retreats to discussing his happy places, like the unauthorized ballroom he wants to build, old gripes and recounting his Apprentice ratings, stand in for the attention to governance people have come to expect from a president.

Worst of all, he’s starved for attention. He CRAVES it. He can’t get enough. He’s never seen coverage he doesn’t like, even when it’s unflattering reporting where he responds by barking at women reporters, just to tell them how “horrible and disrespectful” they are. He knows those outbursts to unfavorable news will get coverage, and he’ll keep the one thing he loves staring at more than pageant contestants in the news: his own name.

I think it’s this point that enrages me the most. He does wild things expressly to keep being seen, noticed and reported on. The news services know this. All of us at home know this. Despite that, and the growing number of us with unfavorable opinions of him, these sadists can’t help themselves. They’ve been so thoroughly trained to pull sour milk from the udders of the cash cow that is this single-person pandemic, they’re apparently incapable now of stopping. Dedication to keep tweaking nerves with constant coverage of his every ridiculous word or move, cascades into further opining and think-pieces examining the possible machinations behind the warped mind sitting in the Oval Office.

Can there be a total blackout of coverage? Of course not. For ill and even worse, we’re stuck with this albatross for the remainder of his term and presidential actions get reported. In respect of the bulleted points above, the old adage that as president ‘whatever’ he does is newsworthy is a bullshit claim and no longer applies. He doesn’t do much, thankfully, so lots of what is reported is what he says, and nearly all of his statements are baseless and empty. Every stupid, unsupported utterance he makes isn’t news, it’s noise.

Look at coverage of the current expensive and prolonged Iranian military engagement, utilizing a significant number of men and materiel, that is somehow not an undeclared and illegal war. It’s over, we won. It’s not over but we won. Maybe it’s not over. They’re completely obliterated. Ok, maybe significantly weakened. Yeah, they’ve got a few things still, but not as much as we have! They surrendered! They didn’t surrender. They agreed to a ceasefire! Oh wait, they just shot at one of our ships and shelled another military base. They’re dying to negotiate. Wait, what? Iran released another animated, Lego-styled banger of a hip-hop video, taunting, talking shit and pulling the US admin’s card?

If memory serves, all of the above happened over the course of a few hours last Tuesday. None of that coverage informed. None of it appears to be fact-checked before it hits screens. All of it reads like junior high students, ferrying disses back and forth between two enemies, hoping they instigate them into meeting after school to fight. Most of the misinformation came from the same leader that reporters documented lying thousands of times over his first term. None of it includes the subsequent cottage industry of hot takes, opinion and “analyses” of every single play in that play-by-play.

I told friends of mine that one of the things I lamented most, during frequent bouts of anxiety about his second term, was knowing this unceasing stream of chunky, feculent sewage was on its way. All would be followed by reports and analyses of every single noxious spurt. I admitted celebrating the “boring”, capable and competent government of the Biden administration in comparison. It wasn’t a traveling carnival’s roller coaster of a government, and I was glad not to be hanging on screaming, expecting at any moment that some neglected but crucial part would give out, it would all fly off the rails, hurt and kill untold numbers of people on and around the ride.

That’s no longer true. Neither is peace, whether of mind, body or environment. So, what is it I’d prefer instead? I probably don’t have the answer but I have an answer.

I’d like to see better effort, from news services and those analyzing the “breaking news” that’s often slapdash, full of holes and marginally informative. We’re supposed to get news, not a tennis match or looking on as two people take turns snapping on each other. It’s not enough to report, he said this, they said that, he said this, they said that and so on, ad infinitum. For instance, in the Iranian not-war example, the report should say, President claims cease-fire, but Iran has not verified an agreement.

Those doing further examination of these developments would…wait and not write a damn thing. You see, there’s nothing to analyze because only one unreliable proven liar has made a statement. Without some independent confirmation or clear communication from the other party that this evolution has veracity, any further breakdown of what it could mean is just a waste of time. Life is short, and what’s left of my life’s wick is getting shorter. As I get older, I get more crotchety, and I don’t like anyone else wasting my time.

It’s not that I don’t want to be informed. I do. I just don’t want to be overwhelmed by thoughtless parroting, followed by poring over insignificant statements like annoying gnats in a growing swarm. Every bit of this man is toxic. I’d like to keep my exposure at the lowest parts per million possible, while maintaining awareness and absorbing thoughtful examinations of and with substance.