Monday, January 1, 2018

US President Spends 3000th Day In a Row Golfing At His Own Course At Great Taxpayer Expense

News flash: The Republicans don't care.

Before Trump was president, he and his supporters talked about how much time Obama spent golfing, and claimed that Trump wouldn't be golfing, he would be working. Big surprise!, turns out that wasn't true.

There are a lot of news stories about Trump golfing, week after week, as if eventually Trump supporters are going to realize that he spends a lot of time golfing at their expense, and change their opinions. Those who write the stories keep writing them because they're continuously outraged, and because it seems as though their audience hasn't heard the news yet. Guess what! Trump supporters just do not care.

Democrats expect Trump's supporters to acknowledge the hypocrisy, and to be fair about it. Why is that not happening? Why will it never happen?

It's because this has never been about time spent golfing. Trump supporters didn't really care what Obama did on his time off, all they cared about was that they didn't like Obama and attacked him for whatever they possibly could. To them, the difference between Obama golfing a few weekends here and there and Trump wasting taxpayer money golfing as much as he possibly can, is that Obama is black, and Trump is white, pro-white, anti-minority, misogynistic, etc. No amount of golfing that Trump does will make him black, so you can stop expecting his supporters to ever be outraged by it. That's why Trump was right when he said he could shoot someone on 5th ave without losing support. His supporters don't care about what he does, just what he stands for, and more importantly what he doesn't (ie. support for and acceptance of the people they hate).

Not only is it impossible for fervent Trump supporters to be outraged by how much taxpayer money he wastes on his own golf courses, but it actually does the opposite. What they see is that liberals get upset over such wastes, and that pleases them immensely. If they could cause a single democrat to break down in tears and frustration, that would be worth the US going into crippling debt that they could never escape from in a thousand years. The more Trump golfs and the more poor people suffer, the happier Trump's hardest supporters are.

This is why we should never expect someone to show consistency and fairness in dealing with Democrats and Republicans. Politically motivated individuals do not deal with one or the other out of only a sense of duty or respect for law or whatever, they do it to achieve an outcome. Expecting the same punishment for the same crime committed by a Democrat and a Republican is not reasonable if the punishment was done to gain an advantage, instead of because it fit the crime. Moral behaviour and fairness have (sadly) become associated with liberals only. Liberals must stop expecting... anything!, anything decent at all, from Republicans, if they hope to achieve their goals. After all, Republicans aren't going to be affected the same way by the injustices, and they're not going to change their behaviours just because they're reprehensible.

Sadly, one way or another, eventually no one will be shocked or interested in the stories of how much Trump golfs, or whom he's cut support from next. Simply being outraged, without action, expecting outrage alone to effect change, will do little except encourage the hateful, especially when normalization of outrages both dulls people to it, and becomes accepted as it becomes ubiquitous.



I'm reminded of the daily outrages of the Bush II era. Trump now seems like a worse president, definitely more selfish, uncaring, stupider, and incompetent. However I'm not convinced he's overall worse, because while Trump seems to have debilitating mental illness, cares for no one but himself, and is only concerned with his own image and fortune, he does at least seem to not want to get involved in additional wars. He has increased attacks on countries of people he couldn't care less for, and in the end we'll have to estimate the number of deaths he's caused to see who's worse on that front, but he's not the war-hungry president that Bush II was. Bush revelled in being a "war president" and saw glory in sending his own people to kill and be killed. Trump may be the worst person ever, but that one issue---the appearance of a desire to avoid full-scale war---makes it seem like his behaviour is all a self-serving act meant to gain the most for himself at the expense of everyone, and not based on a genuine biblical belief that he must gain glory by ushering the holy final battle between good and evil or whatever, as many people hope, and as Bush II appeared to feel of himself.

No comments: