Just Don’t Look at Him

It’s been a comparatively pleasant year of avoiding the news since the incumbent was installed in the Oval Office.

I had a good excuse to direct my attention and psychic energy elsewhere in 2017. But I also made a conscious decision to click away from headlines, and photos and memes about the president . . . and to switch channels on the remote whenever he came onscreen during those rare occasions when I watched the 11 o’clock news (typically for the next day’s weather or an occasional local breaking news story).

As I said ’way back in mid December 2016, I do not regard the occupant of the White House as a proper public official. Time and again throughout the campaign, he demonstrated utter ignorance about or disrespect for the U.S. Constitution and basic tenets of the law . . . not to mention the truth in general.

Every other president has undoubtedly lied to the public, but usually for a strategic reason: to get Congress and/or the American public to go along on a policy initiative sought by the administration, or to distract enemies and allies. During the campaign and in office, this president has appeared to lie effortlessly and repeatedly, for no strategic policy reason . . . but to entertain, to divert our attention, to grab headlines, to shock, to look great or effective when he is neither. And he has lied multiple times a week, even per day.

He’s an entertainer who has treated the highest office in the land as just another TV show or business. (And I have observed little skill or honor in his business practices, which too often employed the tactics of a playground bully.) Doing so was enough to put him in office, but it’s insufficient to govern.

As I said then, it’s bad enough that the President-elect showed little respect for the rule of law or the truth, but it was just as bad that his friends and enemies cooperated in giving him lots of undeserved attention, which enriched him as well as others.

People MAKE MONEY every time one of us circulates memes for or against the man in the White House, or shares “news stories” about him. I didn’t want to play that game. I didn’t wish to pay him even the minimal respect of taking any of his antics seriously.

Of course he’s damaged the country; there’s no question he’s lowered the content and dignity of public discourse, and encouraged frustrated and frightened citizens to bully their neighbors, even to feel they’re justified in committing acts of violence.

His appointment of Justice Gorsuch was the latest step in the conservative right’s decades-long strategy to strong-arm this nation in the direction it wants us to go without having to win elections. As with so much else, conservatives hypocritically complained about “activist judges” when decisions went against their wishes, but were perfectly content to watch jurists alter legal precedent to serve the prejudices of the right.

Still, many of this president’s initiatives have bogged down in court, failed to win substantive support in Congress, or even been cancelled by the administration in the face of public criticism. He’s clearly not delivered on a fraction of all he promised in 2016. As a college classmate of mine who’s a student of presidential history remarked, one of the refreshing lessons of the current administration is how little the president can actually accomplish on his own.

I believe anything this White House team accomplishes of substantial import either will be something I can’t do anything about personally . . . or advocacy groups from the left will duly fight it and let me know through the press what’s going on and what we need to do about it. So there’s no point in paying close attention and getting unduly worked up about the performer in the Oval Office.

I made a conscious effort to avoid using his name on Facebook and my blog, so Internet bots wouldn’t read my traffic as an indication I had any interest in the man and send more news stories and comments my way. The last time I used his name on this site was almost a year ago.

Which is not to say I haven’t argued up and down the past year with friends of Facebook friends about immigration, firearms policy, government shutdowns, Western federal land policy, and even the president’s golfing habits. Those are worthwhile because debates are instructive, they tend to bring out the worst in many of the incumbent’s supporters (for everyone else to see), and they give heart to his enemies as well as enlightenment to the large mass of befuddled citizens in the middle.

Bullying has become a norm, online as much as in public, though it may come in an understated form. But even absent profanity, name-calling, or personal attacks, the persistence and obnoxiousness of the incumbent’s fans often drives everyone from the field; it’s not worth the hassle, liberals tell themselves; this makes me feel upset and I may not be able to control my temper or my language.

This not a problem for me, however.

I’ve made copies of the interesting content from online firefights I’ve had over the years, as well as my usual year-end summaries of Portland Streetcar stories, Portland Walking Tour tales, puns and other wordplay, and editing faux pas, so I’ll be rolling all of this out here in the coming weeks. I’ve also had requests for the stories of how I met my wife, our marriage and “separate” honeymoons, and acting adventures.

Last week I had a detailed discussion that was ostensibly about the supposed mediocrity of Nickelback -- a band about which I know next to nothing -- that illuminated many of the underlying problems which have bedeviled us the past few years: disrespect for science, teachers, experts, the facts, and language . . . “fake news” . . . the deep divisions between various groups in our nation . . . and how faceless strangers profit from our outrage, arguments, misplaced skepticism, and unwillingness to take even the slightest trouble either to document or investigate online assertions.

So that’s all coming up shortly. Stay tuned . . . .