The Trump Legacy: A Light-Skinned Opinion

I’m not going to read the Mueller Report. Not all of it. I will digest the snippets posted online that are spun in the direction that is preferable to me. I will share these snippets on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and join the raging debate to nowhere.

Because it isn’t going to matter. He’s going to get away with it. The president obstructed justice – blatantly and in plain sight – and there will be no consequences. Maybe there will be political fallout, maybe he won’t get reelected. But that’s not a real consequence. Donald Trump will emerge from office whether in 2020 or 2024 more powerful and influential than ever. He will spread his message of hate, xenophobia and racism all over the world and will receive a hero’s welcome from Israel to Saudi Arabia to his beloved Mother Russia.

We, the American people will feel the real consequences. Because the toothpaste is out of the tube now. All of the norms are out of the window and we are left with a political free-for-all. What Trump has done most effectively is that he’s revealed the fragility of our systems. The careful checks and balances put in place by our flawed founders has kinda worked for almost 250 years. This thing is broken and I’m not sure we know how to fix it.

But you know what? Good.

for all they gassed it up in school the whole checks and balances system is a wild flop

— Desus Nice (@desusnice) April 19, 2019

Maybe Trump’s lasting legacy is that his lack of couth has unveiled the shady back room dealing that has existed in every presidential administration. Is Trump anymore despicable than Reagan, Bush or Cheney? Is his depravity worse than Clinton? Does he have less blood on his hands than Obama? Maybe . . . maybe not. What Trump lacks is the political and moral dexterity that has allowed silver-tongued orators to piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining. Trump just pisses on us. He tells us he’s pissing on us. He brags about pissing on us. But when confronted with his pissing, he tells us he’s never peed in his life. His lies are bold and obvious.

He crashes through the norms clumsily and brazenly. He contemplates war on twitter instead of in the situation room. But is that any worse than illegally funding revolutions in South America with money gained from selling drugs to minorities? Because that’s what Reagan and Bush did. They just didn’t tell you they were doing it. We found out years later, after crack destroyed a generation of black families. The perpetrators are dead or dying now. Their legacies are celebrated and whitewashed. They are remembered as heroes and great men, because they were able to carry themselves presidentially.

Trump doesn’t care about being presidential. He’s not concerned with appearances. His disgusting behavior is on full peacock-like display. Clinton grabbed ‘em by the pussy . . . he was just too ashamed to admit it. Trump is not encumbered by shame or morality. He doesn’t have time for that crap. He’s got babies to put in cages and Muslims to threaten.

Trump is the side of politics and governing that rarely sees the light of day. And maybe we needed to finally see it. We all knew it was there, but we lie to ourselves and fall in love with the next slick-talking devil who promises us a better tomorrow with a wink and a nod to their buddies in the financial district.

I probably sound like I’ve lost hope and it’s because I have. I miss the days of blissfully believing Obama was going to fix the world and pave the roads with gold. I miss suspecting George W. Bush was quietly racist but having at least an ounce of doubt. Maybe he was just an idiot. I miss the plausible deniability of it all, the ignorance of believing my vote and mind wasn’t shaped by memes from a Russian troll farm. I miss being lied to more gracefully.

The only hope I have left is that the shattering of our political naivete will result in real change and future accountability. That we will see through the bullshit and elect men and women vastly different than the ones that have littered our past.

But we’ll probably just elect Joe Biden.