This weekend was Trump’s first weekend in office. He was inaugurated on Friday, said he was taking the weekend off, and was going to report to work as President today- Monday. Many protested his inauguration simply by ignoring it. The inauguration was lightly attended, but Saturday there were marches around the country, organized by women. Estimates are that approximately 3 million people participated in those marches (ironically just about the number of votes that Hillary Clinton got more than Donald Trump). Trump just could not stand this. So, on Saturday afternoon, he summoned the Press to the White House briefing room and sent his Press Secretary out to scold the press on the “false” news that the inauguration had been so lightly attended. This was the first White House press briefing of the new administration, the critical story of how many people were in attendance to pay homage to President Donald J. Trump.
Tywana went out and did the Cincinnati women’s march. It seems like most of the women I know were marching in their respective cities. The moods of the marches were very upbeat. People are fired up and ready to go to fight the Trump agenda. As a political junkie myself, I’m sitting here wondering where all of this enthusiasm was in November. I’m wondering where all of these people are during the midterm elections. Then I started to think “Maybe we’re addicted to drama.” One of my friends suggested the cure to Trump’s narcissism and gaslighting us is to simply ignore him. That’s a great suggestion. There are just two problems. The first is it’s a little difficult to ignore the most powerful man in the world, especially when he’s a Twitter addict. Second, I think we’re addicted to drama.
We went from No Drama Obama- the most squeaky clean President and administration in my lifetime, to a man where we literally wonder what the hell he’s going to do or say next. Trump’s cabinet picks and Trump himself were embroiled in scandal before he even took the oath of office. In his first 24 hours officially in, he has already started a war with the press. He went in front of the CIA on Saturday and called the press liars again.
It’s almost as if we said “This is boring.” Under the Obama administration, by almost every objective and relevant measure things in this country improved. So what happened. Those who supported Obama and his agenda got complacent. Some said things didn’t improve enough. Those who didn’t support Obama said things were going to hell and bought into Trump’s dystopian view of America. His inauguration speech is known as the “American Carnage” speech. They have bought into the notion that America is not only going to hell, America is hell.
Now that Trump has taken office, the marches have begun. The moods of the marches was interesting. As I said earlier, they were very upbeat. People seemed to actually enjoy having a cause to rally around.
These next four years will be “interesting”. The old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.” applies. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we know it will be anything but boring and it’’ll be filled with drama. I can’t help thinking we brought this on ourselves.
People speculate why we incarnate in the first place. Is it for “spiritual growth”? Do we place ourselves in hardships to become better people? Could be. But, I’m wondering more and more if maybe it’s just because we are addicted to drama. After all, we write books and make movies where the heroes always get into scrapes before they are saved. Do we create real drama in our real lives for the rush of being able to work our way out of it?
I’m a silver lining kind of guy. My belief is that Trump represents a dying breed. I see him as a T-Rex (tiny little hands and all). He represents the death throes of an era that we are ready to put behind us. But, we needed this last hit of drama to really seal the deal.
