Go Outside

A place to visit, when the world goes mad

Getting this out of the way, since the Internet above all demands a position on the question: yes, Donald Trump is crazy. It was once possible to believe he was the tolerable version, a muttering-in-the-subway type elevated to the White House, but now he’s started a war, and not the unlosable, consequence-free type preferred by preening faux-toughs like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. We can say this for Trump. Unlike other draft-eluding presidents, he starts wars with truly unlimited downside.

Some say there’s method to his madness, that offering shifting explanations for mass death and destruction while also not planning for obvious early consequences like the clogging of the world’s oil supply is a 4D chess move, after which a fearsome regional belligerent will look clueless and humiliated, like we do now. After all, he assures us, we’re “the strongest nation in the world.” The whole point of being the strongest nation, though, is that we shouldn’t need 4d chess moves or madness in methods. We can just stay home and make waffles, take Italian classes, or to put it in terms Trump would understand, watch the UFC’s Octagon throwdown in Seattle this weekend. It’s a hard distinction, but I think the trick is avoiding crises, not starting them.

Instead, we’re at war. This aspect of the Trump experience is wild. The man was twice elected on a negative mandate, i.e. just don’t suck as much as the other guy (neither were guys, but still). My house has a “Literally” jar, into which my sons pay a dollar every time they use the oft-unnecessary word, but here it’s appropriate: Trump could literally have sat on his ass and done nothing for four years, and he’d have left office to parades. Americans would pay a cost equivalent to the Apollo missions for history’s biggest Live Model Cam sub collection, if it could keep the president from starting this kind of conflict. His exact mandate was “Not this!” He did it. In every situation where all he has to do to win is not do something, Trump does the thing. It’s uncanny.

Trump’s opponents are crazy too. When last in power they put a corpse in the Oval Office, scrambling when even amphetamines wouldn’t wake it up anymore. Now the opposition is organized around the same brand of Satanic pizzagate conspiracies Democrats once got in trouble for trying to censor. America is now a land of competing religions, none of which believe in courtesy, sanity, civility, or kindness. Many hate Trump, some hate Democrats or foreigners, some are convinced Israel controls the world, and no one is happy.

I spend more time outside now. People may have changed, but trees, frogs, and squirrels are the same. We have bears where I live. Bears are awesome. They eat garbage and hold up traffic. In about a month they’ll start swimming in my neighbor’s pool. They’ve got things figured out. Humans, not so much. The bear-to-human wisdom gap keeps growing. I’d suggest electing one in 2028, but why do that to them?

Racket is still a news site. We have something breaking tomorrow, and we’ll have a livestream (Michael and I were on the road in the last days). We’ll keep sharing things we find out, but it might be time to start thinking in terms of different types of answers, i.e. ones politics don’t provide. That’s just a thought.

See you tomorrow.