Donald Trump came to Washington to shake things up. Little did we know that we would be this shaken, baby.
The government shutdown is just another small concussion in the relentless whiplash President Trump is inflicting on our national gelatinous brain-matter. The usual questions are jarred loose and percolate: Is Trump responsible? Is Trump helping or hurting? Does anybody know what he wants? Does he? The answers to these questions are the questions themselves. Trump is a completely unstable force at the center of our government and society. That is the problem itself. In a nutshell, so to speak.
The result of this is a measurable collapse of trust and confidence in the United States. It is the opposite of leadership. It is a loose cannon rolling on the deck of a rudderless ship. What can go wrong? Everything could go wrong. Everything will go wrong. Everything is going wrong.
The government shutdown, whether it lasts days or decades, is only a symptom. The disease is our demander in chief. Or is it philanderer? Recently it has been more like bystander, as Trump cooed to the world that he would accept any deal the smart people at the table came up with, except, wait, no, not the one they actually came up with. He wants a document of love for the “shithole countries” we need to throttle. To build an America rattled in its mission to … whatever it was.
Can we shake off this latest concussion? Of course, and the president will do the shaking. And shaking. He will shake us until we are as disoriented as he is, and then we will defer to his whims in our learned helplessness. As we await the permanent dementia he is baking into our craniums.