Normalization for dummies
Most every journalist who covers Trump knows of these things:
1. He isn’t good at anything a president has to do. From the simplest, like pretending to help out in flood relief, to the hardest: making the call when all alternatives are bad. (We’re told he can be charming one-on-one. So maybe that’s his one skill.)
2. He doesn’t know anything about the issues with which he must cope. Nor does this seem to bother him.
3. He doesn’t care to learn. It’s not like he’s getting better at the job, or scrambling to fill gaps in his knowledge.
4. He has no views about public policy. Just a few brute prejudices, like if Obama did it, it was dumb. I do not say he lacks beliefs — and white supremacy may be one — but he has no positions. His political sky is blank. No stars to steer by.
5. Nothing he says can be trusted.
6. His “model” of leadership is the humiliation of others— and threat of same. No analyst unfamiliar with narcissistic personality types can hope to make sense of his actions in office.
It’s not like items 1-6 have been kept secret. Journalists tell us about them all the time. Their code requires that. Simultaneously, however, they are called by their code to respect the voters’ choice, as well as the American presidency, of which they see themselves a vital part, as well as the beat, the job of White House reporting. The two parts of the code are in conflict.
If nothing the president says can be trusted, reporting what the president says becomes absurd. You can still do it, but it’s hard to respect what you are doing. If the president doesn’t know anything, the solemnity of the presidency becomes a joke. That’s painful. If they can, people flee that kind of pain. In political journalism there is enough room for interpretive maneuver to do just that.
This is “normalization.” This is what “ tonight he became president ” is about. This is why he’s called “transactional,” why a turn to bipartisanship is right now being test-marketed by headline writers . This is why “deal-making” is said to be afoot when there is barely any evidence of a deal.
I urge you to click the link and read the comments too. Some great points there.
I just have to add that some of the top Democrats are enjoying the "good press" about all this "bipartisanship." They too are normalizing Trump.
He's a monster and every time they embrace him he gets a little bit more undeserved credibility. Sometimes they have no choice. When 800,000 people's lives and futures are at stake, for instance. But they should not be so celebratory or tell the media that "he likes them" even if they think they are being cute and trolling his base. His base doesn't care what they think. Their base does though and there's slightly foul taste their mouths over all this Trump love. They should carefully think through what they say as they work their way through this mess.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2017/09/normalization-for-dummies.html
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The "normalization" of Donald Trump, and the continued rejection of it, is the biggest ongoing story in America today.
I should say the attempted "normalization" of Trump is the most important story. The media actually doesnt cover it enough so it is not "the biggest" story.
This is 12 year old bully stuff, gross, stupid, puerile.
This is his idea of fun.
He's 71 years old.
Normalizing the indefensible is becoming everyday fodder in this country. Now Sean Spicer is a celebrity that openly mocks his own boot licking purpose on the widest audience he can muster.
What is that law in physics where in time everything deteriorates? That is what happens in trying to keep Trumpism at bay. Time works in his favor as his idiocies become so common place that people become unconcerned with them from pure repetition.
Donald Trump is entropy on steroids. Kind of like this site is.
90% of the time, I want to scream at him-- GROW UP.
I am so very grateful that I'm not married to him and am out of his orb... There could be worse things than being a person of no importance!
90% of the time, I want to scream at him-- GROW UP.
Do you think it's going to happen one day?
Me screaming, it does. Him growing up? Never.
Then he does not belong in the office of president of the United States.
I agree with you!
Well, Trump and has been " normalized". He's the President and his numbers have been going up some lately. He's doing a good job.
When everyone thought Hillary was going to win and then she didn't..
The headline here should read: "only dummies think Trump needs normalization."
The headline here should read: "only dummies think Rump is normal"
"his numbers have been going up some lately. He's doing a good job." That's funny. His ratings are abysmal. What are they now - 26%?
It is quite noticeable how the "conservatives" want to only talk about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on a seed that is about the incredible lack of accomplishments, knowledge, class, truth telling, or decency , that we see displayed every day by President* Trump. Trumpsters truly do live in an alternate reality.
Squirrel!
They are so desperate for us to be distracted by the shinny object, to deflect.
They continue to play the "I know what you are, what am I?"
But, but Hillary, Obama, BENGAHZI!.
Yet and still, after years of this crap, I click on their links and watch their videos in a seemingly in vain attempt to get even the smallest clue where they are coming from. No epiphany has been forthcoming.
All too much of it is the equivalent of monkeys throwing their feces at a wall. At first it made me angry that they propagated so much BS. Now I either laugh out loud or feel sad about the fact that so many Americans are willfully ignorant. Sometimes I do both.
I'll call it out but no longer have any delusion that they can be enlightened.
After almost a decade of demands for accountability from the right, they lack any desire to hold 45 accountable for anything. They insist that everything is sunshine and lollypops while 'Rome burns'.
After today, any claim that there is even a shadow of normalcy in this presidency is purely ludicrous.