Pierce: The Currency of Trumpism Is Insincerity

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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18196880/trump-florida-shooting-statement/

The Currency of Trumpism Is Insincerity
Why would you expect a school shooting to change that?
By Charles P. Pierce
Feb 15, 2018


I don’t know. Even I would tend to give this president* something of a break on his reaction to the massacre in Florida. He said the bare bones of things that we expect presidents to say, even though I’m willing to bet the Bibles at Mar-A-Lago remain un-cracked and that the president* couldn’t find the actual quote from Scripture that he cited if you spotted him St. Jerome and King James:

"I’m making plans to visit Parkland, to meet with families and local officials and to continue coordinating the federal response. In these moments of heartache and darkness, we hold on to God’s word in Scripture: 'I have heard your prayer and seen your tears, I will heal you.'"

Strangely, no president elected in my lifetime has a better sense of the violence that is marbled throughout American culture than this one does. He knows it because he used it to get elected. He knows it because he saw it in the blazing eyes of the people at his rabid rallies. He knows it because, quite frankly, he is addicted to the thrill of it.

Because of that, he supercharged a politics in which sincerity already was a sucker’s game, a tactic to be derided and mocked. Because of that, nobody expects him to mean what he says, because that would mark you as a sap who believes that politics can be a constructive endeavor, and that government, whatever its faults, is something to which we all contribute, even those people who don’t think they’re contributing at all.


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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18196880/trump-florida-shooting-statement/