the miserable moment when you do not know who to trust
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“I never knew it was possible to be so miserable in so many ways.”
―
Amie Kaufman
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Well.
Trump shares classified information in a moment of braggadocio <does anyone really believe he would do so ‘strategically’? — no>.
That is the thought … and the moment … which we are all faced with today <again it seems>.
We are faced with a headline which, anonymous sources or not, on the face of it is believable.
No one … not even the ones with their heads so far up Trump’s ass they can only see darkness … can say it doesn’t have a hint of believability given everything we know about the man.
He said something while boasting. He was just being the non-thinking loudmouth we have watched for decades.
Well.
This is when the birds come home to roost for all the despicable ‘fake news’ and ‘alterative facts’ and all the other lying bullshit.
This is the moment we wanted to have someone from the White House step up to the plate and say, unequivocally with no word parsing, “not true” and we would all breathe a sigh of relief and say “whew, okay.”
But we are past that point.
We are now at the miserable moment when you do not know who to trust.
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“He doesn’t really know any boundaries. He doesn’t think in those terms.
He doesn’t sometimes realize the implications of what he’s saying. I don’t think it was his intention in any way to share any classified information. He wouldn’t want to do that.”
Anonymous White House Advisor
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You want to trust the journalists … and, yet, you don’t really want to <because if they are we have more proof our President is an incompetent asshat>.
You want to trust the only people left in the administration who actually seem trustable <Tillerson, McMaster> … and, yet, their words ring a little hollow.
You want to trust the president because … well … he is the president … and, yet, that train has already left the station.
To be clear … what Tillerson and McMaster said in defense of Donald J Trump are not quite lies. They are just incredibly well parsed words expressing either truths which are not really the issue at hand or half truths about what the real issue is <but it does not really matter because within 12 hours Donald J Trump just partially undermined what they said anyway>.
To be clear … what the Washington Post wrote is most likely quite truthful. They offer incredibly parsed words expressing thoughts run through a paranoid filter that “we better not be wrong.”
<note: Does that mean Washington Post never gets things wrong? No. But a story this big this means an editor is going to be extremely careful before running it. I would suggest the reason to trust the Washington Post, and other major journalists at other papers, here is twofold <1> they have high journalistic standards that lead them to being accurate much more so than other media options and <2> they know if there is something wrong in their reporting, other reputable news sources will be all over their shit in a second>
But, to be clear … what I may think doesn’t really matter … because echoing across America today is a basic feeling of “yikes, this sounds bad, but I do not know who to trust.”
That is what Trump hath wrought.
Some very good people <Tillerson, McMaster, maybe even Spicer, some prominent politicians, etc.> have had their reputations tainted by the Trump slime – enough that people of seemingly good character are being doubted.
We have reached a point, a point which the current Presidency is desperate to offer some honesty & truth to slow down the downward spiral … a downward spiral in which we realize that not one of us can assume that any one of them is going to say some simple truth.
The only truth we know is that once having manipulated the truth, once having misrepresented the truth, once misdirecting us from the truth … that person is most likely to do it again.
You need not lie as colorfully and openly as the President to be seen as someone not to be trusted. His depth & breadth of lying offers little room for his associates to do the typical word parsing they may be accustomed to.
Journalists have realized this dilemma and the real journalists are rising to the occasion seeking to limit parsing and innuendo and offering as much starkness as possible <that is a path to success>.
I could argue that we are having a crisis of character but at the moment I woke up today realizing we are in the miserable moment when you do not know who to trust.
I have spent months telling everyone Trump is not competent to be president, I question his competence as a business leader in general … and that good CEO’s do not act this way.
But today? Today I can only sigh … and think about what a sad world to live in where when you trust no one you end up believing everything & nothing at exactly the same time.
This is a sad time for the United States of America.
Bad.
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