Freak Out Friday – August 4, 2017

I could do my usual thing of itemizing Trump’s insanities/inanities. But you probably have heard them discussed on CNN or supported on Fox or destroyed by comedians.

Instead for this week I’d like to take a broader view.

It’s just that I’m looking at the state of the world. The Russians obviously tampered with the election because they hated/feared Hillary that much. The Senate’s strike back at them was signed into law by Trump because he had no choice; they could have overridden his veto. This obviously infuriated Putin who retaliated diplomatically, which means we are teetering on another Cold War. Meanwhile North Korea continues to test missiles which can reach as far as California, DC, and New York, and I don’t think anyone remotely believes that Trump is capable of handling NK’s dictator if the hammer comes down.

And what I keep coming back to is this:

Let’s say five years ago, someone wanted to tell an end-of-the-world story. Governments have broken down, diplomacy has gone out the window, and lunatic nutbags are running things. If the storyteller wanted to provide a shorthand to establish how things could have possibly gone so wrong, all he would have to do is have a newscaster talking about “President Trump.” Because five years ago, the audience would have snorted and said, “Well, sure, I totally believe that if this country was stupid enough to put Trump into office, then it makes sense that the entire world is falling apart. Hell, we probably deserve to be nuked out of existence if things have gotten that bad.”

Writers do that all the time. Alan Moore made sure that Richard Nixon was still president in the time of “Watchmen” because you could totally buy into the notion of Nixon overseeing a steady but inevitable crawl toward atomic destruction. In the episode of “Supernatural,” The End, Dean Winchester of 2009 is transported forward into 2014, where mention is made of President Sarah Palin while the world falls apart. It’s a nice writing shorthand to establish a reality on the edge of total destruction.

Except that’s fiction.

And this is fact.

The fact being that we have a man in office whose mere mention in a work published or shown five years ago would have viewers buying into the notion that we are all effectively screwed.

Am I the only person to whom this has occurred?

PAD