A day later and it can seem light years away, but try and recall that until he ducked out early yesterday morning, we did indeed spend 4 years with Donald Trump in the White House. He may have ended much the way he began - in chaos, disarray, and like a thief trying to get away with something - but if there's one thing we came to learn under Trump, it was that what you see is what you will always get.
A day later, it's hard to ask just what we got, since we want to pretend, as we often do, that nothing at all matters before yesterday. By noontime, with the assembled guests in their usual spots (or something like it, under Covid) we once again paraded out an Inauguration, hit the reset button, and gratefully welcomed the return of normalcy. You know, where you can't leave your house, masks are required at the store, and vaccines are impossible to find. That's okay, stay home and watch another chorus of randos sing that song from Rent you didn't need for the umpteenth time. Liberalism means never having to apologize for the theater kids.
A day later and we have our sense of humor back, our divisions, our obstacles to progress as firmly in place as ever... and that's good, isn't it? Isn't it swell, isn't it? Well, it's heaven, nowadays (sorry, I was those theater kids, once)... but we may, by day three, already feel deeply disappointed watching Democrats in Disarray. Because why change anything, when all we wanted back was our same old, familiar narratives?
Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and by the end, Trump was nothing if not familiar. Even on his way literally out the door, stopping to harangue the reporters, dutiful as ever, gathered at their rope line for one final word. And then, sharply dressed wife at his side, he toddled off (Melania swapped her severe black Chanel for a colorful caftan on her arrival in Palm Beach, and literally never looked back as she got in her car to head into private life). It's remarkable, really, that Trump seems to have exited the national stage in a way similar to other ex Presidents, could we be that lucky? I think not... but it's hard to tell what outlet he would have available to pop up on, even if he wanted.
It's hilarious, this game we're playing of treating Trump as He Who Shall Not Be Named, just one day after he leaves the presidency, whether because it serves Joe Biden's "let's move forward" storyline, or the Republicans' need to pretend they never heard of him, or our own sense that if we just don't talk about him it will be like this never happened. It's another piece of family dysfunction after all - not talking about the bad stuff. Pretending everything is fine. They paved Paradise, and put up a parking lot... but it's fine if we just agree it's nice to have the extra space to park.
The reality of course is that it's not that simple, or that easy, and pretending won't make this go away. Trump will linger in our culture, whether we determinedly try to exile him or not, whether he tries to force his way back onto the stage, or not. Trump may be relegated to the interior pages of scandal sheets and gossip rags, the story may move to lawsuits and investigations and financial failure... but he won't just be gone. Even today, Republicans are grappling with one last piece of political mischief, as they try to tamp down his "I could start my own political party" - an idea so half baked and deviously destructive, we can only hope he sees it through, Surely, it's the best next long con he could possibly have created, a grift that could make him millions long before anyone realized it was a complete sham.
Then, too, there's Impeachment, a trial to be held that apparently is the magic key to figuring out how the 50-50 Senate will finally set up shop and get down to business. Because no one is "concerned about ending the filibuster" - that won't happen and doesn't have the votes to pass, anyway. But the timing of a trial, the need for Republicans to get rid of Trump without angering the base... there's no real answer about when a trial could be helpful, or what verdict brings actual justice (at least, not for their side - we know he's guilty as sin). The struggle is real. The answers are elusive. And it's only one half of an entire branch of government that gets held up trying to figure a way out.
Good luck with that, I figure. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone? I don't mean Trump = we knew what we got, with him. No, what we haven't begun to face - in our perfect, don't talk about the dysfunction way - is all the other stuff we got. From literally getting sick to all that's been broken, to all the disarray in putting our government back together, all the aftermath we have yet to unpack... and on and on. We are remarkable, as Americans, at all the things we can refuse to face when we out our collective energy towards it. We put him on a plane, we sent him away... a big yellow taxi came and took away our old man. Can't we just enjoy the Tree Museum and that shiny new parking lot?
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