Late at night
Speaking of “can you think of one good quality in Trump?” –
Objection!
No. Not drinking and staying up late do not add up to being “a worker.” Trump was very productive on Twitter, too, but that also doesn’t count as “work,” especially given the quality and content of his tweets. And what really doesn’t count as work – what counts as a pathetic infantile waste of time – is “watching every show.” The giant baby “watches every show” because they talk about him; he watches them to see what they say about him. It’s nothing to do with work, let alone his job.
According to all the reports he’s done literally no work since the election, he’s done nothing but try to steal it back. He hasn’t done or said one single thing about the pandemic since the election. He hasn’t done or said one single substantive thing about anything else either. His “work” on January 6 set off the violent attack on the Capitol. No, the fact that he’s not an alcoholic does nothing to compensate for that.
Could you be more specific?
Sorry, couldn’t resist!
Apparently — at least according to Mary Trump — the whole “he’s not an alcoholic” trope goes back to the family narrative that if you’re sick or you’re an alcoholic (like poor Fred Trump Jr.), you’re a weak loser.
In terms of actual work, Trump’s activities are hard to quantify. No doubt, he generated tons of waste heat and entropy, but how much actual work in ergs is hard to estimate. Perhaps we need a new unit for ‘work’ that isn’t related to actual energy-related displacement at all for people like him. I suggest the ‘ARRGH’, where an ARRGH is defined as the force required to move one batshit concept through one news cycle.
I’d normally be inclined to give someone credit for not drinking, but in Trump’s specific case being a drunk would have been preferable to what he did instead.
22 hours 41 minutes.
Would you though? Moral credit? I would put it in a category like taking vitamins or getting exercise. It’s healthier, and it avoids the nightmares of alcoholism, but I don’t see that as a moral plus. It’s useful but not particularly admirable in itself.
The two forms of Trump work I’m now most looking forward to are a lengthy round of
a) Licence plate manufacturing (or whatever the current equivalent work currently done while in prison)
followed by an eternity of
b) Decomposition.
If he’s such a hard worker, what has he actually done? Where are the flying cars that he’s invented, or the miracle disease cures, or the populations of out-of-work homeless families whom he’s given jobs and homes, or the kids whom he’s inspired to emulate his lifestyle of overindulgence and gaudy gilt obnoxiousness?
James Garnett, my husband was reading to me from an article about Trump’s accomplishments, and on the whole, I would have to say the ones he mentioned are neither work nor good, like Jerusalem. Clearly the person writing this article thought they were good, but my husband and I shook our heads at that, and also I think calling that “work” is worse than hyperbole. Send out a tweet acknowledging Jerusalem as capital of Israel, then push the button for a Diet Coke and go watch Fox News saying how great that he did that. Rinse, repeat.
I never thought that staying up late and not consuming alcohol, whilst watching a screen, counted as working hard! That means that I have been working hard for a lot longer than the mango Mussolini! Woohoo!
Yes, a little bit. Alcoholism and other addictions are so prevalent that I think people, especially those prone to addiction, get some credit if they steer clear of that mess.
lol good job tigger!
Skeletor – yes, I guess I see that. I guess I do too, in a negative sort of way – I hate alcoholism, because I’ve watched it ruin people, so not being alcoholic does elicit a kind of absence of dread that can be seen as moral credit. Only sort of though, because I just plain don’t like the stuff, nor do I like recreational getting drunk, so I know in my own case there’s nothing to approve of.
Chocolate, on the other hand…
I know what live can be with an alcoholic, so I’ll second (or third?) that…I do drink, but only a glass of wine sometimes. I have never gotten drunk, and don’t even get tipsy, maybe because I’ve seen what it can do. Stopping a one glass is easy for me, so I find it difficult to find any moral sense in the fact that I don’t get drunk or become an alcoholic, but maybe I restrained myself in the past and earned credit for that. Still, that is one of the good things I see about Trump, because it seems to me a drunk Trump might be even worse than a sober Trump.
I just watched that video without the sound on because I didn’t care to hear what was being said. I was just intrigued by girlie on the right seemingly employing a filter to go on a news program (darling where’s your nose!?) And wanted to see her move and speak. Did I really just watch 23 seconds of a split screen where one person just blinked and tilted her head a bit?
It’s probably not a filter. Generous application of foundation and her room’s lighting make for small contrast in colour and brightness across her face relative to the background. The video compression algorithm then jumps in and compresses by treating areas with low internal contrast as a single blob of colour/luminance.
Actually it gets worse because there are at least two passes of digital compression: one for whichever video chat system is in use and then another for broadcasting the composite video. This will compound the effect of throwing away “redundant” details like noses.
One of the fringe Kennedys, in an alcoholic memoir, did a nice trope comparing Chamberlain to Churchill. In the real crisis, who did you want in charge? The nice polite professional administrator/politician, or the defiant, bottle a day drunk?
When ‘the gatlings jammed and the colonel’s dead’ the alcoholic may be just the one you want in the next fox hole.