The Trump stuff is just too much to wrap a brain around. The man speaks like a spoiled ten year old but is the most powerful person in the world. One moment he thanks past presidents for being there and speaks of how gracious Obama was… and then he switches to what an utter failure has occurred in the United States for the past twenty plus years. So he basically threw all those past presidents under the bus. And then to be wasting time trying to convince people that the press mislead the public into believing his inauguration was not as well attended as others?!?! It just solidifies the spoiled ten year old example.
And even the woman’s march stuff. I believe it was done with just cause… and I think the numbers who attended and how there was no arrests at all were both great things. But the hats? Really? Just being present isn’t enough? Rosa Parks simply refused to move to the back of the bus. Ghandi fasted. Even Kaepernick just took a knee.
Everybody knows what Trump said about women. But lets say Sarah Palin was the new president (shudder) and she had spoken about grabbing men by the crotch. Hundreds of thousands of men marching with Big Bird hats… or peacock hats… or some other such thing… would simply come off as silly.
It takes a serious matter and makes the people who were insulted look juvenile. I mean I just keep imagining what future historians will think of this generation. A hundred years from now they’ll look at news footage of our time and wonder what on earth we were doing. Just in the last few years… we have millions of video clips of people dumping water over their heads for ALS (and future historians will ask “was water not more valuable than that? Weren’t there droughts in that time?”)… We have hundreds of thousands of those memes going around where people throw random quotes on top of an image of Meryl Streep or Gene Wilder (and future historians will ask “Did that one person say all those things? Actually, upon further research, it looks like they didn’t say any of them. Did people know this when they shared these images?”). And now we have the pink hats (and historians will ask “Why were they all wearing the same hat?” And one wise old historian will start the story… “well you see, President Trump spoke of grabbing women by the…” and they’ll be interrupted by the younger historians “Ok, never mind I asked, moving on.”)
I sort of feel about the pink hats the same way as I feel about the footage of the Nazi getting punched as he’s interviewed. Nobody likes the nazi. That goes without saying. But do we need to make it glorious to run in and sock a guy? I guess I wish the good people in the world were more up on the idea of being better than that. Trump speaks like a crude moron and we use that as an excuse to become moronic in return. A nazi stands for all that is horrible in this world and we use it as an excuse to get violent. I miss class.
Plus, in the case of the nazi, it’s dangerous. How many more people will now feel emboldened by that footage and want to rush in and attack other nazis… or KKK members? And how many of those groups will now want to take the fight to the regular people?
It’s kind of like having been cut off by a real aggressive jerk while driving, being behind them at a red light, and deciding to get out and take a baseball bat to the hood of their car. Yes, it may feel good and may put that jerk in their place. But what if the jerk has a gun in the glove compartment?
So when we should be saying “just walk away”, we’re instead setting the clip of that punch to all kinds of different songs and sharing it with hashtags and enjoying ourselves just a little too much.
Really, it shouldn’t be so surprising that Donald Trump is the American president. The western world has been steering clear of class and sophistication for quite a while now. It’s become a society of spectacle. And Donald plays right into the times.
On a lighter side, nostalgia can make the heart go soft. Cause it was kind of nice to see George Bush at the inauguration, fumbling with a rain poncho, and laughing at himself as he did it. George was a pretty bad president… but after eight years of being largely out of the spotlight, and seeing the ridiculousness that is Trump, you sort of want to go running up to Bush, give him a playful slap on the back, and say “hey, how’ve you been, man!”
Maybe if Kevin O’Leary becomes Prime Minister of Canada, I’ll feel that way about Stephen Harper? Ummm, probably not.
Onto a completely different subject, the third annual Florida March trip is taking shape. It will basically mean I’ll go into April (the month when they replenish our vacation time at work) with absolutely no time left to carry over.
But that’s what vacation time is there for, and two weeks visiting mom, dad, Ruby and Lee in the sunny south will be a welcome change to the tail end of winter.
So the flights are booked, and yesterday I bought the baseball game tickets for a few games. And like each of the last two years, it’ll be one game in Lakeland and another in Dunedin.
It’s funny how I see preseason hockey as a complete waste of time and have no desire to actually watch any of it… but the idea of a March Florida trip with some preseason baseball is one of the highlights of the year. In fact, I enjoy the idea of going to Florida to watch preseason ball more than the thought of going to Toronto for regular season action.
It’s the combination of things that does it. A small, minor league, ball park is always a treat. It’s much more intimate than the big Major League stadiums. Then you have the warm, sunny weather when you know that your home is currently cold and still snowbound. So you sit with a hotdog and beer, in t-shirt and shorts, watching big league ball players for a fraction of the cost while palm trees sway and ospreys tend to nests in the light stands.
The only worry about the preseason baseball games is the possibility of a rain out. First two years of these trips have been fine on that front, but fingers crossed… cause in Florida in March, a rainout is always a possibility.
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