With Trump its time to go beyond mere disgust

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/28/trump-disgust-president-repulsive-behaviour

With Trump it’s time to go beyond mere disgust

Jonathan Freedland

(snip)
Six months into his presidency, and the Donald Trump show remains compelling viewing. Each day brings a new twist or sees an old taboo broken. It could be Trump publicly undermining and humiliating his own attorney general, or summarily firing his chief of staff, as he did on Friday.

The reaction of much of the watching audience, especially around the world, shifts between amusement, eye-rolling disdain and bitter condemnation. On social media, Trump’s latest words or deeds are regularly juxtaposed with his past record, exposing him as a hypocrite or liar. Some days, Twitter sounds like one loud, global facepalm.

But is there any point in this constant tutting and harrumphing at Trump and his daily misdeeds? The president’s allies denounce it as elitism, a Davos-set snobbery towards the vulgarian from Queens and his uncouth, deplorable supporters. Besides, mockery by educated liberals seems only to reinforce Trump’s claim to be the champion of the left-behind, taking on a rotten establishment. The unpalatable truth is that, among at least part of his base, the worse Trump behaves, the more it helps him.

Now even a few unbending anti-Trumpists are wondering if they can face three and a half more years – at least – of daily head-shaking. This week the veteran US journalist Michael Goldfarb sighed via Twitter his frustration: “OK hashtag resisters, enough with arms akimbo huffy markings of all the hypocrisies of Trump regime. It does no good.”

He has a point. Rather than just sharing in the collective finger-wagging of the filter bubble, opponents of Trump, inside the US especially, need to act and organise. The fruit of that approach is visible today, after the seven-year Republican campaign to destroy Obamacare crumbled on the floor of the Senate.
(snip)

[Danmel]

1. This is very well stated

Thanks for sharing it.
My co-worker and I were discussing this the other day.
How what is happening in Washington is not only reflective of a diminution of standards of behavior and competency, but an amplifier of this seeming inexorable slide into hostility and chaos.
A lot of people seem to really enjoy this.

[J_William_Ryan]

2. Which illustrates the problem

“But is there any point in this constant tutting and harrumphing at Trump and his daily misdeeds?

No, there isn’t.

The problem is that the voters will become immune to the malignant, hateful idiocy that is Trump and the reprehensible right – it will become the ‘new normal’ during the next three and a half years.

And this, in addition to a strong economy and the Democrats lacking another Bill Clinton or Obama, will result in Trump’s reelection.