E.J. Dionne writes in this morning's Washington Post that, despite the constant firehose of scandals and outrages perpetrated by neo-fascist sociopath Donald "The Chosen One" Trump, that journalists must be inspired to sort out the chaos produced by them, and cut through the "herd immunity" response produced by his countless outrages:
"We could all spend a lot of intellectual energy debating whether President Trump’s failures are due primarily to corruption or incompetence, but it would be a waste of time.His use of unidentified Federal paramilitary units to create chaos in our cities, to divert attention from the pandemic response he botched, and to signal what he's prepared to do in the months ahead to maintain power, is his latest monstrous abuse of power. We can't afford to develop "herd immunity" to his authoritarian "virus."
Understanding that his incompetence flows from his corruption should animate the arguments against his reelection and inspire the work journalists do in making sense of the chaotic mess Trump has made of our government.
It won’t be easy. Trump has been involved in so many scandals and says so many reprehensible things that our country has developed a kind of herd immunity to the outrage that just one of his actions would have called forth in any previous administration. We have allowed Trump to fend off one scandal with . . . another scandal.
The key is seeing that Trump’s entirely selfish approach to the presidency has a measurable and material impact on the lives of citizens and on the policies he pursues — to the extent that he is interested in policy at all. He cares above all about his own finances, his ego, his ratings and escaping accountability. Everything else falls by the wayside." (our emphasis)
(photo: Trump proclaiming at the 2016 Republican convention that "I alone can fix it")
