Astute Observation

From a reader.

Trump on mars

This comes from

Kenneth E. Harrell

, I liked it enough to post it here:

What we have to keep in mind is that Trump isn’t your average politician. He doesn’t follow the rules of decorum, and honestly, he doesn’t even seem interested in the same version of reality the rest of us are living in. He operates in a space that feels disconnected, like he’s improvising everything in real time with no filter, no script, and no concern for how it lands. Trump was elected not because people thought he’d behave properly, but because he wouldn’t. He’s the bull in the China shop, yes, but more than that, he’s something far stranger. He’s like one of those unstable elements that appears for a fraction of a nanosecond in an atom smasher. Something too volatile to last, too reactive to predict. But for that brief moment, when the element exists, scientists get a glimpse of something new. They learn something they couldn’t have learned otherwise.

Trump, in that same way, is a political anomaly. Something that probably shouldn’t exist in the normal structure of things, but because he does, we’ve been forced to re-examine how everything works. His presence has stirred up waters that would have otherwise remained still, probably for years. He’s reintroduced people to the system that governs them. Not because he teaches it far from it, but because his behavior has thrown it into such sharp relief that people can’t help but start asking questions.

How does a bill become law? What does the 1st Amendment really say? Can a president do that? Wait, who actually decides how elections work in my state? These are questions that in a more stable, more predictable administration, most Americans wouldn’t have bothered with. For better or worse, Trump’s unpredictability has pulled people into the process, sometimes against their will, but often with a strange urgency. There’s a kind of civic awakening hidden beneath the noise. He’s not eloquent like Obama. He’s not warm and grandfatherly like Reagan. He doesn’t wrap things in stories or uplift you with his words. He’s brash, unpolished, often contradictory.

Trump, in this way, is the salt in the muffin batter of America. I know, it feels wrong at first. Why would you put salt in something sweet? But that pinch of salt, as strange as it seems, sharpens every other flavor. Without it, the whole thing tastes flat. That’s what Trump has done. He’s introduced a jolt of contrast, and in doing so, he’s forced a lot of people to wake up to the machinery behind the curtain. Whether you love him or hate him, the conversation has changed. People are paying attention, and that kind of attention can be powerful, even if the reason it started is hard to stomach. In the end we may very well end up with a stronger, more engaged, more politically proactive America.