I think you’re right that there is shock fatigue crippling us now. It’s hard to stay surprised and outraged all the time. I guess I just wish there were Democratic – and for crying out loud, Republican! – legislators recognizing that a President blatantly profiting off his office is a horrible precedent. Laws to prevent this should be a plank of every Democratic candidate’s platform in 2018 and 2020 until such behavior is made illegal.
And don’t you know – and I’m being stone-faced serious about this – that the “unasked-for ‘trans ban’” and other such off-the-wall actions are intentional distractions orchestrated by staffers like Bannon? The particular distractions you mention were to keep media attention off of Bill Browder’s damning Senate Judiciary Committee testimony last week:
If you’ve read Browder’s account of how Russia works, you’ll see why team Trump would be terrified for average Americans to be talking about it (I didn’t even see an article here on BoingBoing about this, though I might have missed it). It’s pretty obvious that Trump is deeply involved in Putin’s gangster economy, and his people want us all talking about Boy Scouts and transgender soldiers rather than “real” news. Every time something important happens, he lobs a messy poop grenade at the media and they willingly let it explode on them.
