Those trivial fights are so far behind us
Richard Wolffe at the Guardian isn’t fooled.
The sheer effort required to start a speech by condemning racist murders and antisemitic attacks was historic. After all, earlier in the day, the same president had suggested all those bomb threats to Jewish community centers were the work of his political opponents “to make others look bad”.
And in between the two he suddenly became a completely different person. Yeah, that’s it.
“The time for small thinking is over,” said this president of exceedingly large thinking. “The time for trivial fights is behind us.”
Those trivial fights are so far behind us that it’s been a full two days since he tweeted that the Russian stories were just a Democratic conspiracy to “mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!”
Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 26, 2017
Well that was before he became a completely different person.
“We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts,” Trump concluded. “The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls.”
Sometimes those hopes and dreams just happen to include the demise of the New York Times, CNN and all the enemies of the people known as the free press.
There is indeed a torch in Trump’s exceptionally large hands. And he’s not afraid to use it.
His hands tripled in size yesterday between that conversation with Fox and the So Presidential speechy thing. His hands are now bigger than his head.
What amazes me is how people can flip their opinion about someone on the basis of a single carefully crafted stage-managed speech. OK, he sounded some conciliatory notes and seemed a teeny bit presidential in this speech. Based on past performance do we expect that to continue? I’d be happy if it did, but I won’t be putting money on it.
And now having read earlier posts and comments I see I’m late to the party. Again. Carry on.
It’s not often the same guy can play both the bad cop AND the good cop.
“What big hands you’ve got”
“All the better to…”
well, it writes itself, really.
Steve Watson @3,
But isn’t that pretty much what abusers do? They don’t play “bad cop” 100% of the time, or else victims would leave. Instead they go through periods of pretending to be nice and sweet, apologizing for the awful behavior of the “bad cop,” while subtly or not-so-subtly hinting that if the victim isn’t more cooperative and obedient, “bad cop” might have to come back….
@screech:
Yes and no. The good cop is as much of an abuser as the bad cop. That’s the entire point. The good cop is there to make the victims feel that there’s a system working on their behalf. The bad cop is there to take that impression away. I think you’re right that abusers tend to be both good and bad cop but perhaps wong that good means actually good.
Oh, agreed on all counts, other than that I wasn’t assuming or suggesting that “good” cops — in either the actual police context or in my abuser analogy or in the Trump context — are actually “good.”
I think the common thread linking all three examples is that when the definition of “good” has been lowered to “doesn’t personally engage in or overtly encourage the shitty behavior of his ‘bad’ counterpart, although he effectively enables and benefits from it,” then it’s quite easy to be a “good” cop. And yeah, the whole point of a good cop/bad cop routine is that they’re working together to manipulate someone, which makes the good cop complicit in all the wrongdoing of the bad cop, and therefore not so “good” after all.
In the bland fog of ‘reportage,’ its difficult to know what actual people are thinking.
There is a large, but uncounted, body of Trump trolls who would applaud him if he butchered and ate a baby on live TV. For the rest? How debased is America’s judgement?