Is the Trump presidency as good/bad as you expected?

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

he's from New Jersey so that's two strikes against him.

[crazy canuck]

he's from New Jersey so that's two strikes against him.

Ok, three

[Admiral Yi]

he's from New Jersey so that's two strikes against him.

Who the fuck are you?

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

he's from New Jersey so that's two strikes against him.

Who the fuck are you?

Also, no cropping.  Just for you.

[Ancient Demon]

Democrats and the left in general have been an unmitigated disaster, combine impotent rage & cringe with the lunatic spookshow politics of the last three years and I'm left scratching my head.

Totally agree.

[The Minsky Moment]

The Bush administration did some really awful things, but they always had reasons why they did those things.  Usually they were terrible reasons, but in retrospect there was some reassurance in the fact that at least implicitly they accepted that actions and policies needed to have reasons to back them; that reason was still a basic currency of political discussion.  If say a John McCain dissented and said that maybe torturing people wasn't such a good idea, and not in accordance with American values, the Bushies didn't just shout him down or mock him but they made arguments why they thought he was wrong. The arguments were wrongheaded, even sometimes offensive, but they did assume the form of arguments.

We are so long past that now that it even that thin veneer of reasoned argument almost seems as antiquated as Ken Burns' Civil War letters or the debates in the Federalist Papers.  What's left is the shrill, deafening noise of Trump's inane shouting nonsense; continuous and unending.  What's left is the spectacle of Republican Senators and lawmakers going through the daily pretense of accepting  the rabid foaming of a confused, egotistical dolt as pearls of wisdom.

Whatever I expected, there is no way to imagine the experience of living through it.  You can imagine it happening but not the experience of it . Impeachment, election, divine intervention, whatever, it just needs to stop.

[mongers]

The Bush administration did some really awful things, but they always had reasons why they did those things.  Usually they were terrible reasons, but in retrospect there was some reassurance in the fact that at least implicitly they accepted that actions and policies needed to have reasons to back them; that reason was still a basic currency of political discussion.  If say a John McCain dissented and said that maybe torturing people wasn't such a good idea, and not in accordance with American values, the Bushies didn't just shout him down or mock him but they made arguments why they thought he was wrong. The arguments were wrongheaded, even sometimes offensive, but they did assume the form of arguments.

We are so long past that now that it even that thin veneer of reasoned argument almost seems as antiquated as Ken Burns' Civil War letters or the debates in the Federalist Papers.  What's left is the shrill, deafening noise of Trump's inane shouting nonsense; continuous and unending.  What's left is the spectacle of Republican Senators and lawmakers going through the daily pretense of accepting  the rabid foaming of a confused, egotistical dolt as pearls of wisdom.

Whatever I expected, there is no way to imagine the experience of living through it.  You can imagine it happening but not the experience of it . Impeachment, election, divine intervention, whatever, it just needs to stop.

America needs some smoke filled rooms.