It is at times like these that I most acutely feel that I’ll never truly become an American. I just can’t comprehend why this Trump-related drama number five million isn’t insanely boring. It’s so repetitive. Everybody on either side has already said exactly what they are saying now on a gabizillion previous Trump-related occasions.
Why is being stuck in this loop a good use of one’s time? It can’t be entertaining because it’s always the same. It can’t be instructive or edifying. It’s a time and energy drain with no reward. Even the second round of the academic Hunger Games I’m participating in today is more useful. At least, I can try to save a job. Keep the lab open. Get my students their free tutor back. And the people who squandered their energy on this ridiculous Trump drama won’t be able to fight as hard.
OK, I think I just answered my own question. Never mind.
Clarissa's Blog 
Eh. I’m American and I find it tedious. Nearly everyone I know has entirely stopped talking about the guy– even the ones who were fans. It was incredibly weird back at Christmas when my 3yo spontaneously named his new fire-truck toy “Donald Truck”. Couldn’t even figure out where he’d heard the name– must’ve been my dad, who was visiting.
Most of the news I’m keeping an eye on is the emerging post-v maternity stats. Not a drama (almost entirely absent from MSM), just a question I want answered. Some countries take forever to publish their data, but we’ve finally reached the stage where even the most lackadaisical vital-stats departments have to release something, so that’s beginning to be answerable. Now we wait for the paranoid hot takes to settle down, and a clearer picture should emerge.
Also watching real estate prices. That’s a bugger and a half. Have completely stopped reading all the news on the subject, because it’s all wrong. Whatever anybody national is saying about house prices apparently does not apply in my area. Pure fantasy. The only thing that counts are the actual listing prices, and they are not budging.
Another thing worth watching keenly, which is not in the news anymore, is the grocery bill, which I approach with increasing trepidation. A “short” grocery run this week (just filling in the gaps, not restocking the pantry), dinged me for $140. Four shopping bags.
Those last two items together tell me that real-estate prices are coming down, but they’re declining in concert with the value of the dollar, and with our income. This is far more significant than anything involving Donald Truck.
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“I just can’t comprehend why this Trump-related drama number five million isn’t insanely boring.”
Up until 2017, it was a tradition of the United States going back 228 years that Presidents and serious political candidates for the Presidency weren’t targeted by politically motivated prosecutions aimed at making it putatively unlawful for them to run for office, or to execute their offices once honestly elected to them.
After 2017, our elites decided that Trump was so threatening to them that they were willing to shred what had been over two centuries of American political and moral tradition.The latest prosecution, based on a misdemeanor with an expired statute of limitations whose inane NYC DA decided to magically convert into a fresh felony, is so nakedly in violation of that tradition that even people in the GOP who openly detest Trump have called it a sham.
Perhaps, for a newcomer honestly befuddled by American behavior, this latest episode seems like not such a big deal. But for those of us who were born here and grew up here when this was a country ruling by legitimate popular consent, checks and balances on power, and the rule of law, it is an outrage that cannot be borne, let alone ignored. It is especially so for those of us who noticed the likely endgame of all this, exemplified by Jeffrey Epstein.
The confusing part is if you mix up Trump himself with what Trump genuinely represents here. Trump himself is very often (not always!) a buffoon. I agree completely with that part of people’s ennui. But, for better or worse, Trump as a political symbol has become the one GOP candidate since Ronald Reagan who managed to talk about America’s problems in a way that made ordinary human beings feel like somebody was paying attention to them. The importance of that cannot be exaggerated. The fact that the regime is finding it necessary to concoct putative legal justifications to put Trump under a gag order and find him guilty of claimed felonies should tell you everything you need to know about whether this is serious. The regime cannot allow Trump to run for the Presidency in 2024, period. If that is not direly important, nothing in American political life is.
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That’s exactly it. He’s a symbol who talks. Isn’t it convenient to have somebody who talks a lot but is completely compliant on immigration, COVID, vaccines, BLM riots, everything? He couldn’t even fire Fauci or pardon the 1/6 prisoners.
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“[Trump] couldn’t even fire Fauci or pardon the 1/6 prisoners.”
On the one hand, I agree: while he was President, Trump generally acted like a round, loud, blustering , undisciplined, unfocused, flaccid man who seemed mentally stuck in 1985. He seemed entirely unable to comprehend what era he was actually living in or how completely useless his charisma or deal-making skills were in confronting the sociopaths actually running the United States in 2017 onward. He repeatedly fired highly intelligent, competent, and loyal people while clutching snakes and weasels like his son-in-law Jared Kushner to his breast. Trump was, for lack of a better word, Trump-y.
On the other hand: if that was really the complete story, presumably it would be in the rational self-interest of our regime to let Trump run for the Presidency in 2024 in peace. Yet, they’re showing every sign of wanting to make it impossible for him to run. Why?
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Right now, it mostly looks like they are trying to give him tons of free publicity. The charges sound really flimsy. He’ll beat them heroically on the eve of the election.
If, on the other hand, they let him be and didn’t generate endless publicity for him, people would have moved on.
A persecuted lone hero is a deep American archetype. Americans find it irresistible and will forget every betrayal in response.
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Don’t worry, this American can’t get into it either. I don’t even think it’s necessarily unimportant, I just can’t be fussed to follow every little detail. If something really big happens I’m sure someone will tell me.
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Have you seen American coverage of the Olympics?
Americans LOVE drama.
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