Donald Trump thought being president "would be easier" -- and so did his deeply ignorant voters
MONDAY, MAY 1, 2017 09:00 AM EDT
Donald Trump thought being president “would be easier” — and so did his deeply ignorant voters
What can you even say? The profound political illiteracy of roughly half our electorate brought us to this
BOB CESCA
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck,” the great George Carlin once said. “Where does everybody think these politicians come from?” he asked, “They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality.” Carlin observed that it’s American voters — “selfish, ignorant citizens” who give us “selfish, ignorant politicians.”
Carlin’s view of our “garbage in, garbage out” electoral system couldn’t have been illustrated with more obvious accuracy than with the election of Donald Trump. In just about every way, Trump is a direct reflection of the cynical, superficial, nearsighted mentality of too many 2016 voters who thought it’d be more appropriate to elect a berserker president as a “fuck you” to the left than to consider what kind of irreparable damage might occur by electing an incompetent reality-show stooge and tabloid New York socialite as leader of the free world.
In an interview with Reuters last week, the president said, “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” Of course he thought it would be easier: Otherwise he wouldn’t have run. Again, Trump’s ignorance on display. You’d think he might have asked around before deciding to commit millions of his own fortune to run in the first place.
Instead, Trump based his assumptions on a narrow, uninformed pop-culture view of what it means to be president. He never fully grasped that the presidency isn’t a retirement option or a TV-host gig. It’s real work requiring almost inhuman discipline as well as a near-comprehensive understanding of the realities of American politics. Granted, no one’s ever fully prepared to be president directly out of the box, but most candidates with serious aspirations are at least aware of the fact that it’s one of the most challenging and sobering occupations on the planet, requiring a deadly serious attitude and sacrifices we can barely begin to list here.
That said, Donald Trump couldn’t have reached this point without the support of 62 million voters who seemed to also believe that anyone can do the job — even a guy whose words and deeds were and have always been unserious. In the years following Watergate and the demystification of the presidency, too many voters have become convinced that anyone can be president as long as they pretend to be folksy. The ascension of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin further softened the ground for the ultimate dumbing-down of GOP voters.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/05/01/donald-trump-thought-being-president-would-be-easier-and-so-did-his-deeply-ignorant-voters/
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