Over the past four years, we’ve become addicted to the Orange Menace. Whether you hated or loved him, he was our national — international — soap opera. No longer did we need to wait for an event or calamity to occur. We had our own political climate changer who was sufficiently deranged that we never knew what was coming.
Cover from “The New Yorker”
At first, it was almost funny and somehow, we thought he’d disappear. We waited for the impeachment. Oops, that was a no-go. Which meant we’d have to un-elect him. Couldn’t he just have a simple physical issue? Maybe something related to his eating disorder because no one can live on MacDonald’s hamburgers without having something wrong. All that animal fat? Yuk.
Meanwhile, while we awaited deliverance, we had an insane, nonstop stream stuff happening. Calamities, catastrophes, caged children and eventually, COVID-19 which became a full-fledged pandemic. Add that to all the events, embarrassments, idiocies, and madness all of which were squatting in the White House. Television reporters became celebrities. The previously shrinking news business grew exponentially because we had a crazy person as our President who claimed all news was fake except when he said it was real. The Don’s tweets became an endless stream of “reportable” events. Was it really news? Who knows?
The Orange Menace will be moving on soon down the long, lonely road where old politicians go to tell everyone that they used to be someone. It won’t be soon enough for me, but still, it will be soon.
What does it mean? Are television news stations and divisions going to start letting people go? is everyone going to stop reading newspapers and start trying to get all their news from social media? Isn’t that how we wound up in this awful place? Are we all going to go back to the same level of stupidity that got us into so much trouble or did we learn something from this experience? My guess is that we haven’t learned anything and we are just as stupid now as we were before. But that’s just a guess and I would like very much to be wrong.
From The Washington Post:
We knew it couldn’t last. Eventually, the producer in chief would have to leave the Oval Office and the media would have to scramble for news as in the days before a wheeler-dealer handed them diamonds before breakfast. If Trump wasn’t the media’s favorite president, he was surely their favorite fake wrestler. A pugilist with small hands and a commander in chief with fallen arches, The Don was concurrently a nightmare and a dream-come-true for pundits and headline writers.
He was simply easy pickings, by his own choosing. His verbal antics and Twitter frenzies were often served up for particular time slots and news shows, which he reportedly watched for hours throughout most days while on the taxpayers’ clock.
Celebrity, meantime, has grown exponentially for the erstwhile ink-stained press corps. Thanks to the country’s train-wreck infatuation with Trump, many mere correspondents have become major attractions themselves. They should wear black to Biden’s inauguration in recognition of their brief time in the NFL — which in Washington means Not For Long.
This brings us back to the Biden communications staff, which, in addition to making choreographed history, is sailing toward treacherous waters. Even before Thanksgiving, all was not peace and tranquility in Biden world. Unnamed campaign staffers complained to Politico that former Obama officials were snagging top jobs and expressed fears that they might not get spots in the new administration. “People are p—ed,” said one Biden adviser. So it has been in administrations since the birth of the Republic.
It’s hard to even remember what the nightly comedy shows were like before the Orange Menace appeared. I know there was humor. I remember laughing. I just don’t remember what we were laughing about. This has been such a grim year. It has been hard to find something genuinely funny. Even stuff I normally would laugh at has not seemed terribly funny. I never imagined anything could really drain my sense of humor. Humor has been my last stand when everything else in my world is crumbling and all I can see is disaster looming.
Breaking news! Film at eleven!
Now, while the news business tries to figure out what news is with the passing of the Menace, I have to figure out how to relax and enjoy living. That isn’t going to be easy. It has been a long year and it ain’t over yet. Not nearly.
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Categories: #News, #Photography, Cartoons, Events, Political Cartoons, politicians, Politics, President
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
I’m immensely relieved. Now, maybe we can start talking about things that really do matter – like climate change. By some reckoning, we have just seven years to start turning the tide. I’m more than happy to have those conversations again. Of course, we have to get over Covid first. 😦
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I’m so worried that we are already too late. I know we need to get rid of COVID before we can move on, but I feel like every day we don’t do something to fix the climate is more time lost. It was 65 degrees this morning and it’s December. It got colder and it’s supposed to snow tomorrow, but how much is going to stick on such warm ground. We had no meaningful snow last winter and I wonder if we’ll have any this year. New England without snow?
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Australia doesn’t really get snow, but the heat has certainly ratcheted up. And the bushfires. Opposite ends of the same awful coin. 😦
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I’m not afraid of much, but fire is a big one. Fires and earthquakes, so I suppose I’m not moving to California. Actually, I think I’ll stay here, bad weather and all. It’s snowing now, but it’s wet, slushy snow that probably will melt off before lunch tomorrow.
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lol – I’m scared of earthquakes too. Every year about now I start thinking about moving to the suburbs where bushfire threat is something you read about, or hear about on the nightly news. But then I remember last summer and realise that the people worst affected by our bushfires were city slickers who went to the country for their holidays…and had to be rescued from the beach by the navy.
Like you, I’m staying put. I have roof sprinklers and all sorts of protections. I’m better off here. Let’s hope we finally do something about climate change before we both have to have a radical rethink.
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My biggest worry is that be the time we all wake up here, it’ll be too late.
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Our national govt has been denying climate change for over a decade because coal is such a big part of our export economy. The one sign of hope in Australia is that the state premiers – like state governors – have started to go their own way on climate change. They’re going green and leaving the federal govt in the dust. I believe California is already doing that. I think a lot of your states will opt for the same way out of Covid. There is hope, I think.
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I think Massachusetts is doing much of the same. Almost every house that gets any sun at all is covered with solar collectors. We aren’t because we live in a woods and the oak trees shade us almost entirely from spring through late fall, so it seems pointless. But we switched a year ago to all green energy and we have a lot of solar farms. Wherever there’s a big plot of relatively flat land, it’s covered with solar collectors. Not much wind energy. Too many birds and we have a lot of protected species too. Because New England overall is more than 70% trees, we have a lot more birds than most places and very little hunting except for deer in the fall. If we didn’t hunt the deer, they would die of starvation. I’m not a hunter, but I understand that there’s only so much food for them and since we don’t have wolves (coyotes don’t hunt deer), they will keep reproducing until they strip the land.
Some states are doing better than others. Most of the states on the Atlantic coast are doing the best they can as are the states on the Pacific coast. Inland, it’s more problematic. You bump into a lot of idiots who don’t seem to understand that there really IS a climate crisis.
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Ah hah! I’m thrilled to hear that your side of the country is already doing what it can as well. The middle is a problem. I don’t understand the mindset that seems to be prevalent there, but perhaps if enough individual states start changing things around, the up tick in economic activity from all the new industries will finally force the middle to follow.
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Trump isn’t going to go away gracefully — or maybe at all from a media perspective– and certainly his adult children will keep reminding us that they exist and want attention and power. But already Trump’s relevance has shrunk. He will continue to throw bombs, but from the sidelines rather than from the White House. It can’t come soon enough.
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I don’t think there’s a graceful bone in any of the trump family members. They are such ugly people. Under the pretty people exterior is a mean, ugly interior.
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There was news before “Agent Orange,” and there will be news after. Ironically his attacks on the news media is what kept them alive, despite the loss of jobs et. I, for one, will not be unhappy when he ceases to be “headline” news. “The King Is Dead, Long live the king,” or maybe “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is more appropriate.., something to that effect?
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I just be glad when we get back to the work of making this world a better place. We don’t have a lot of time left before this planet is not inhabitable for us.
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It’s been a long FOUR years and until Trump fades into oblivion, he will continue to sow discontent, discord, and chaos among his brain dead lemmings.
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I hoping that some new crazy person will show up and they will follow someone else. A distraction. Of course, we don’t need to encourage anyone else to follow Trump’s path. But someone will. Maybe more than one someone. There are plenty of nutters out there. He’s are biggest or at least most famously bloated crazy, but there are plenty more. Jim Jones was not small potatoes either.
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The Orange Menace has given me the subject of a dozen articles here and a dozen more I wished I had written. Quite frankly I was just exhausted from this fool who fleeced America for four years. I could not sit down and research one more story on this orange pandemic that has lasted so long. Unfortunately, he will not go away quietly. Worse yet, the cult still believes his lies. I will be happier when he is out of the office and off the front page.
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Most of us will be. Even a lot of his supporters are just exhausted. I swear he spent four years trying to kill us, figuratively. Of course, it has been more literal for the past year.
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That New Yorker cover…..and he keeps on with “Make America Great.” I just don’t get it…..
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I think “great” and “rich” mean the same thing to him and his pals. All they want is to wring any money available out of every American. How much money does anyone really NEED before they start to give some back?
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Did you read how much he raised to help his ’cause’? That’s insane!! Oh, yeah–he’s not giving back. We know that for sure!
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Our world will never be the same as it was pre-Trump or pre-virus. Young people will adjust and carry on. We will, too, but it will be harder because we have all those memories of how it should be. Time to gird those loins, grit those teeth, and survive.
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I had so hoped we might get a break … even a few months. I guess not. I’m pretty well girded by now. And so tired.
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