Outrage and Deny on Repeat to Exhaust Opposition

When Trump was elected to office back in 2016, I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first. I hoped that all the terrible things he said he didn’t really mean. Within two weeks he’d completely exhausted that goodwill. I couldn’t tell you now what exactly happened that made me take his hate seriously. Because since then he’s managed to do and say and incite so much offensive behaviour and policies that … I get exhausted just at the thought of thinking about it all.

And I think that’s the point. I think Trump has a deliberate strategy of causing outrage and then denying any culpability or even understanding of why people are outraged. And he does this in a non-stop manner in order to exhaust opposition.

I want to ignore all Trump related news. I haven’t managed to do so – yet. Our world is turning towards a self-harming form of self defensiveness. Protectionism is part of that trend. And I’m very much opposed to it. Not just Trump’s hastily proposed measures. I’m also opposed to the EU’s tariffs on Chinese EVs, for example.

Trump’s tariffs plan was so obviously idiotic, on Saturday I was going to change the front page of twimii to the cartoon you see below.

But then wishing people a nice weekend seemed more important. I knew there was a good chance he’d do a u-turn. And … there are so many other things to criticise that Trump has done since taking office, like worrying sounding ICE raids, or blaming an air traffic accident on DEI, giving an unelected billionaire access to people’s social security details, ordering a migrant detainment centre be opened in Guantanamo Bay, and attempting to deny the existence of trans people.

Two weeks. It’s only been two weeks.

With patient and firm determination we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every mountain of pride and irrationality is made low by the levelling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom.
Martin Luther King Jr, Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964

Stay strong.

This is exhausting but remember justice is inevitable

To be clear, I believe that justice is inevitable but I also believe we must all do what we can to bring ourselves and our world forward to a more just and fair future. There are couple of other MLK quotes that are appropriate here:

If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl; but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.

Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. I will protest and I will move forward as best I can. But I’m not going to pay close attention to what the antics of the outrage-deny-exhaust-opposition circus. I’ve decided I will only watch or listen to international news shows at weekends. But I want to pay close attention to what is happening here because I don’t want that type of buffoonery taking hold here. It stinks.