Cry Baby.

We miss the jarring pain Trump created. 

He was the super-sour candy that makes your mouth squirm with sweet pain.

Today's Guest Post by Herb Rothschild observes that Americans on the left were addicted to Trump.

Trump was a blunt instrument, who spoke in plain English. Putin called him “brilliant” by which he meant “vivid.” Trump, being Trump, interpreted it as a comment on his intelligence. I liken Trump to the candy that fills a small niche in the grocery store aisle, those “Sour Apples,” or "Red Hots” I remember from my youth. The more explosively sour or hot, the better. One's mouth cringes with the jarring intensity. This isn't an accident. They are made to taste like that, and people buy and rebuy them. It feels so good when the hurt stops.

Trump did that to us.

Many Democrats fell into the trap of using Trump as a compass pointing due south, driven by the outrage they felt over the crudeness, vulgarity, narcissism, selfishness, and partisanship that underlies his apparent motivation and language. That is a mistake. 

He wasn't always dead wrong, although it is hard for Democrats to admit it amid the distraction of Trump's "brilliance." He was right to criticize China for being slow to alert the world about COVID. He was right to observe that blue collar workers felt neglected by the elites of both parties. He was right to take a fresh look at our multinational agreements. He was more alert to the restlessness Americans feel about immigration than were the leaders in either party. So far at least, pushing vaccine development at "warp speed" seems to have been a risk worth taking.

Now it's Joe Biden's turn in the White House. Biden is doing it his way, seeking bipartisan comity. I am trying to lay off the extra-sour bubble gum of political discourse, although Marjorie Taylor Green makes it so tempting. Herb Rothschild is a retired English professor. He lives in Southern Oregon and is active in the politics of justice and peace.

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild

                              "Addicted to outrage"

It wasn’t just to his devotees that Trump’s continuous flagrancy gave an adrenaline rush. Many of us to whom his behavior was insufferable got a payoff from our outrage. He was the staple food of the MSNBC as well as the Fox diet. It may not have been wholesome, but it could be swallowed whole and easily digested. 

      Herb Rothschild

Political work is inherently complex. Achieving the best understandings and adopting the wisest policies in most areas of our shared lives are fraught with uncertainty. To varying degrees there are usually competing claims that merit consideration and require choices that never feel entirely satisfactory. For the most part, serious political commentary has been marked by acknowledgement of complexity and a hesitation to make blanket judgments.

Trump relieved us of that hard work. For him every political issue was simple. If the way he addressed it—such as saving U.S. manufacturing jobs—didn’t work all that well, he simply claimed that it had been a big success. And if he discovered that something was too complicated for him even to conceive a course of action—such as a health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act—he simply stopped working at it and moved on.

Trump’s simplification of politics afforded his opponents as well as his supporters the luxury of certainty in areas where there is no certainty. I attended a rally in Medford’s Vogel Plaza to protest his appalling treatment of asylum seekers on our border with Mexico. Appropriate to the occasion, all the speakers combined moral outrage and human compassion. Yet, none of them seemed to have in mind an alternative to Trump’s policies other than an open border, fear of which was precisely what Trump had capitalized on politically.

Well, with Trump’s passing political commentators will have to re-shoulder the burden of complex thinking. It will be harder and, if we’re honest with ourselves, less entertaining.