I am so damn sick of Donald Trump. He is a giant gold dirigible hanging over the nation, blocking out the sun. He is stuck in all the water pipes like a glistening, flaking layer of toxic goo. He is a hangover made flesh and put on our television screens.
We could do it, you know. There would be details to work out, and nuances, and complications, but there's no reason we as a nation or as a species couldn't decide to get together and, just once, have a day in which we do not have to mention Donald Trump.
We could just pick a chosen day, and say no: On this day, we are not going to say the name of Donald J. Trump. We are not going to talk about him. We are not going to report on what he said, or get hurried translations from a crack team of experts about what he actually meant to say, or assemble a bipartisan panel to debate whether he knew the idiocy of what he was saying at the time. We could just ... not.
It would require some doing. The creature would not like it; every fiber of his being would be itching with impatience, and he would do something, anything worth talking about. But we could just not talk about it until after that midnight had passed. He would line up a team of surrogates who would all promise to say ridiculous, incendiary things, but for the span of one mere day maybe we could simply not book them. They would still be there tomorrow. They would not turn down the later invitation.
Perhaps the reporting could go on as normal, but we would just leave the space blank. Presidential candidate _______ said today that if elected, he would declare war on the moon. Everyone would nod; everyone would know who was meant. There would be no information lost, except for just one day his name would not appear everywhere, in every format, in every country in the world.
Perhaps he would be enraged; perhaps he would set fire to his tower. We would have to mention that. We would have to say where the fire was. But we could pick a codeword, in advance. Tragedy struck today at Mothra Tower, the networks would intone, as grainy footage showed a pixellated figure tossing a dozen pressurized bottles of hairspray into a ground-floor campfire made up of flaming caps and t-shirts. It was the biggest, hugest, most tremendous fire Mothra ever set, and we promise to cover the resulting arrest and eventual trial—starting tomorrow.
It could be a movement. It could be a national holiday. It could be a recurring thing, like Christmas or Labor Day or National Cheese Awareness Month. Happy Mothra Day, revelers wearing anything-but-gold would cry to each other a hundred years from now, long after anyone was left to understand ore cared what the codeword meant or why, exactly, we needed one.
But maybe that is too ambitious. Maybe we could just have the one day. The one, single day.
We could do it, you know. Just for the day.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Bush begs at "irrelevant" UN:
How irrelevant is an organization if you go before it and grovel?
Bush spoke at the United Nations today. Of course he didn't apologize for the mess he created. Of course he didn't apologize for the middle finger he gave the world body. Of course he didn't apologize for lying to get his war on.
"The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction. It used those weapons in acts of mass murder, and refused to account for them when confronted by the world," Bush said.
What's funny is he trots out these same tired old lines, knowing darn well everyone knows they are lies and exaggerations.
Ties to terror? Weapons of mass destruction? This has all been disproven time and time again, and the diplomats at the UN aren't idiots. They know what the real evidence shows. They know that Blair is under intense pressure in the UK for his lies. They know the US public is abandoning Bush in droves.