by Jerry Davich
Since the day President Donald Trump took office, readers have repeatedly asked me why I've been more amused than outraged, more fascinated than offended.
My response, at first individually to each reader, and now in this space, remains the same: The United States deserves Donald Trump as its president, its symbolic figurehead, and its hot-tempered Tweeter-in-chief.
I've thought this since the billionaire braggart started picking up steam in his march to the White House as a dark-horse, even laughable candidate. And I continue to think this way 10 months into his presidency. His administration has proven that power is more crucial than truth to many Americans, and that belief is more compelling than facts.
Trump embodies America like the Marlboro Man embodies cigarette smoking. They're both marketed with lies, dangerous to our health, and may end up killing us. But darn it, they're both highly addictive, brilliantly advertised and a dead-on representation of who we are as a country. Or at least who we aspire to be.
We are a bronco-bucking cowboy from a dusty era of whitewashed nostalgia. We're drunken on our own swagger, blind to our faults, and convinced we are better than the rest of the world.
I'm not talking about Trump. I'm talking about us. Tens of millions of us anyway. Possibly you. Maybe me, too.
Sure, it's our ugly side, the one we only show when we're around like-minded blowhards, but it's still a part of our national character. It's just as much chiseled into our international image as the faces of four previous presidents are on Mt. Rushmore.
Oh, how I wish they could break their stone-faced solemnity to speak about our current president. Would they be proud and tight-lipped about Trump's first year in their former position? Or outraged to the point of causing a landslide?
Me, I'm amused. This reaction has angered or disappointed many of my readers.
"Jerry, how can you be amused and not furious?" asked Stacey K. of Valparaiso.
"Don't you care about our country and where it's headed?" asked George L. of Gary.
Yes, I care. But I'm more furious or disappointed with our country's people than I am with our president, who got into office fair and square. I feel more outrage on a daily basis over Americans' actions (or inaction) than our president's actions.
I have no hope or loyalty or confidence in President Trump. But I do, at times, with the American people.
Trump is everything I expected him to be once he got into the Oval Office. He's stubbornly arrogant, defiant, quick-tempered, self-serving, inarticulate, and narcissistic. These same attributes, I believe, define a large populace of our country, including me at times.
It's no coincidence Trump was elected. It's more of a comeuppance for our collective laziness and apathy regarding a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
I understand that those Americans who voted for Trump would have likely voted for any other candidate than Hillary Clinton. But, by now, such lingering loyalty to the billionaire businessman must surely be dissolving. Only Trump's most fervent base of fans is still defending his every action, no matter how embarrassing or outrageous.
The rest of us can only shrug or scream at the television set or computer screen.
For instance, when the president of the United States smugly tossed rolls of paper towels to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, it was as if he were shooting basketballs at an arcade game. How insensitive. How clueless. How unpresidential, I thought.
I didn't snarl. I shrugged.
-CT
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