The Pervasiveness of Trump Politics: All This or All That

Donald Trump’s administration is giving the news media a lot to talk about.

Perhaps that’s an understatement.

But what is amazing to me is how far the leading party members will go to defend their party leaders—for example, the tenacious way they choose to avoid the hard questions put to them by news reporters, regarding the many questionable dynamics going on in the present administration (such as misspoken confusing or contradictory words & messages to actual questionable behavior by cabinet members).  Instead of answering hard questions, I watch them pivoting and redirecting rather than owning and responding to all that is going on in this administration.

I’ve always heard that “politics is dirty.”  I’ve heard that sentiment since I was a child.  Yet, I’ve always resisted accepting this sentiment at face value, believing that it doesn’t have to be that way.  I find myself not able to resist anymore.

I now feel that I must agree: Yes, politics is dirty.  (“Dirty”: dishonest and conniving, lacking in integrity, manipulative, twisted and perverse and abusive in its exercise of power and authority, self-serving, and so on.)

All I see in today’s political arena is this:

One must see one’s own favored party, along with its leaders, as always in the right; that is, it (the party) and they (party leaders) can do no wrong.  They have the purest of motives, are altruistic at heart, and basically all around wonderful honest and trustworthy people.  Hence, one’s own party’s leaders should exercise all their power and authority to assert (dictate) the party’s preferences, values, and agenda, irrespective of the opposing party.

And, if mistakes are made by one’s favored party leaders (from the President on down), one must see it as the result of innocent shortcomings fraught with good intentions and therefore conclude that they are nevertheless above reproach.  Thus, their response, when party leaders are asked to give an account for their questionable words and/or actions, should therefore be one of spin, pivot and redirection, outright avoidance, and/or blaming of the opposing party and the Media.  In other words, there should be no admittance of wrongdoing of any kind, ever!

By the same token, one should also assume that the opposing party and its leaders are always wrong, lack legitimacy, are un-patriotic in spirit and behavior, have false selfish and egotistical motives, and can do no right.  In short, one must believe that the opposing party and its leaders are harmful to the nation’s welfare and therefore must never have a part or voice in influencing national policy.  It’s as simple as that.

This is what we have come to.  Yes, it’s now that black and white.  How SAD!