Friday, February 17, 2017

Hysterical? Moi?

I have now been accused of being hysterical* a couple of times in two days.  First time in my life that I can recall.  Why?  Because Trump is freaking me out.  Now, the question is am I unreasonably freaked out and thus suffering from hysteria or am I reasonably freaked out and suffering from too good of an understanding of the risks and dangers of today?  I, of course, vote for the latter.

Let me explain.  Yesterday, at the Ottawa Conference on Defence and Security, there was a panel on US-Canadian relations, which was all about Trump.  One of the panelists insisted that Trump might be the normal one and the establishment might be out of touch.  That didn't go over well with me.  In my question which was actually a comment, I contested this, starting by saying that I left sorry for the speaker since he was speaking exactly when Trump was press conferencing in a most, um, hysterical way.  After I had my say, a second panelist suggested I was being hysterical.  I had to get out of my seat to respond to that.

What is my case for reasonably being concerned about the dangers Trump poses?
  • His National Security Adviser turned out to have ties to Russia.  Oops.  And this is the third, THE THIRD, of his advisers being fired, with two of them, Flynn and Mantafort, being tied to Russia. 
  • Trump has been exceptionally critical of the judicial system, the one branch that is checking and balancing. 
  • The whole Taiwan thing... which now has China convinced that Trump is a paper tiger--which is not good.
  • Trump's contempt for NATO
  • Jeff Sessions: how come he is too racist to be a federal judge in 1986 and just racist enough to be Attorney General?
  • The immigration ban--both in substance and in process.
  • Trump empowering an avowed Leninist who seeks to bring down the existing order and thinks that war with China is both inevitable and desirable.  This would be Steve Bannon, white supremacist.
  • His attacks on the media, complemented by Kushner's meeting with Time Warner people about problematic CNN folks (Ann Navarro, Van Jones). The latest:
 Media preview

And it is not just me--GOP folks too.

 So, who's hysterical? Me or this guy?







*  Hysterical is, of course, gendered as it tends to be applied to women, as if women freak out and men don't.  The nice thing here is that the term is being applied to men--me, Donnie Trump, etc.

1 comment:

Erik Bruvold said...

Ok. I tried twice to start a post that said, "Yeah you are being hysterical" just to be contraian and then couldn't. He really is so much worse than possible and seemingly worse every day. Going to be an AWFULLY long 4 years.