Sometimes I wonder if Trump’s total incapacity for decorum is part of what drew so many people to him in 2016. Granted, most of it was racism and bigotry and hate, but the entire institution of American politics is rotten to the core, and Trump, with his complete inability to not treat people like shit, had some level of “finally, someone had the nerve to say it”-ness to him that likely snared more than a handful of people (insert “you can forgive the racism?” meme here).
I’m absolutely not trying to defend Trump being a shitfaced turd-gobbler toward other people, nor am I trying to defend his base (or even the people who held their nose) for supporting him, but nobody else in contemporary US politics has ever been even remotely interested in calling a spade a spade, because they’re all spades in their own shitty ways (and let’s be frank, Trump just called everyone he didn’t like a spade, deserved or not, but stopped clocks and all). Circling the wagons around their fellow “esteemed colleagues” is the sort of thing that inevitably erodes trust and faith in institutions enough for someone like Trump to come along and, despite being naked himself, point out that the emperor has no clothes.
Any frank accounting of Powell’s career absolutely needs to focus on the ways that Powell fucked up on an international scale, but all we get from the media and pundits are hagiographies about a stalwart JCS chairman who broke barriers and loved his country.
I desperately hope Trump doesn’t get his wish about being valorized by the media when he dies, but I can already see the NYT ledes of “Former president Donald Trump, an often divisive but still beloved figure in American politics, passed away today at the age of [not nearly soon enough] while surrounded by family and loved ones.”
