Shards, Threads, and Nails

I. Whatever Trump Loathes, We Love There are many odious things to despise about Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, but they didn't catch the attention of the general public outside Alabama much until the diminutive Senator starting appearing at Trump rallies during the campaign, a stiff MAGA hat contrasting with his elfin visage. Who was this ranter? Is this 1958, and is there a bus boycott happening somewhere? His brand of barely veiled race-baiting and extreme positions on immigration made him an instant hit on the pro-Trump, alt-right circuit, but a pariah in his own chamber, the august Senate. Many assumed he was committing political hari kari as one by one, never-Trumpers in his own institution, including Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, were the vanguard of a general distaste for Trump's chaos and spectacle. It didn't take long, after the infamous Access Hollywood GrabberGate for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to distance themselves from the Donald at all costs, without...

On Sunday morning, many of us woke up, fired up the internet, and confronted the spectacle of Donald Trump body slamming and pummeling a man in a suit whose head was the CNN logo. Wait. What? This has to be a hack, right? A parody account? Alas, no, this was the Twitter feed of the “real” Donald Trump, and even though it was taken down less than an hour later, the storm of indignation it provoked confirmed its authenticity. After the hue and cry that emerged after the Mika Brzezinski disaster, even from some Republicans, many assumed that Trump would cool it for a bit. Why do we keep assuming there is some threshold after which this man is going to stop? Do we really expect him to come on TV, surrounded by flags, and apologize to the nation for his abhorrent behavior? What we on the left fail to see is how tweets and speeches play in Trumpland. Breitbart, Fox, Info Wars, and most certainly Facebook groups that are the mirror image of RISE and Indivisible see Trump’s beha...