Trump is an excellent communicator with asterisks which will be his ultimate downfall, as some point. But maybe he’ll run out the clock on his life and there will be no downfall, even if history goes on to villainize him even further.
He picks a good polling message and sticks to it *
I am hard to imagine a politician that sticks to his message more than Trump. The president latches on to a message and regardless of the issue always br v ings it back to his core message.
Mostly recently it’s been DEI. Every issue he discusses lately is DEI. Why did a plane crash into the Potomac? DEI. Why is it cold in February? DEI! Why is the sky blue? DEI!
Does he believe such things? Probably not but he knows the value of sticking on message, and always bringing the conversation back to messages that poll best for him. Of course, you can only force a message to a certain point when it becomes absurd and doesn’t pass the laugh test. And he runs a real risk of the laugh test being pulled on him, and becoming a joke of a personality, one even as president nobody takes serious or fears anymore.
He’s good at making the story about himself *
The President often gets headlines by virtue of the important office. But Trump more then any other politician I can think of gets in the news, by saying outrageous things that bring in viewers to the news and help to sell advertising.
In Trump’s mind, there is no bad publicity, except for being ignored. When many politicians just want to do their jobs and stay out of the news as much as possible, Trump wants to grab headlines. He actively strives to be heard, be the center of attention. There is a lot of risk in such a strategy, as news is unpredictable and narratives can be built up over time that are quite harmful.
Buckle up the month of February is upon us all. It’s the shortest and most miserable month of them all. But as they say, the darkest hour is before dawn. It’s coldest, it’s snowy and salt encrusted up here in New York but spring is coming. Often this is the month we get the coldest of cold blasts in recent years, real-good thaws are exceptionally rare in February not that we would want such a thing as fire bugs like myself don’t like burn bans plus what good is winter camping in mud and muck? Rather shit by frozen this time of year.
One of the keys to surviving this month is to remain positive. To fend off the paranoia, which always seems to strike me so deep during this cold and dark month. The news media makes a lot of money off making people paranoid and fearful, even if much of what they report is exaggerated and not relevant to one’s own situation. I try to keep such thoughts out of my head, but you open social media and turn on the radio, and they are constantly reminding you – be afraid, be very afraid. It sells lots of laundry soap and KIA Automobiles. The cops and the commercial institutions are out to get you, we are told. To destroy your life, take away your freedom, steal your money and property. That’s what the news wants you to believe.
Some paranoia is justified – there really are people out to get you. But with the cold and generally depressing weather of this month, it can be hard to keep it in context. Now the mental health advertisers are probably analyzing this post in algorithms and are already getting to serve me up ads about how what you need is mental help — served up from home for only $25 a session. Whatever is my response! Tried that, going to the creepy guy in the basement, sitting in the couch. I thought it would improve everything in my world, giving me context, but ultimately I came to realize a diagnosis won’t help anything but billing — the buck stops with me.
February is so tough. But as Richard Hofsteader pointed out in his famous 1964 essay, “We are all the sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is not only afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but with his fantasies as well.”
It’s only 28 days and I will survive. April, she will come, as song says. Better days are ahead, it’s why I suffer in the cold apartment, slogging through the snow, on the dirty old city bus, working like a dog in office overlooking the old city dump and wastewater treatment plant. It is better now and only will get better. But it’s day by day as the slog through February is underway!
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