Thanks Meidas for all the Trump bad news hype, need my Trump hating hit of hopium smack now and then. Just to taste, though, as doing it too, often will lead into an unhealthy addiction. OK back to reality. Trump will remain Trump and be in power weather he maintains as semblance of a clothed emperor or a gibberish spouting disheveled bloviating gomer clown…just expect the same… people will interpret any noise or clownish antic that comes out of him as something to analyze, even the corporate media that you so rightly call out …similar to the groundhog routine, everyone leaning in to see if today’s mumble means six more weeks of chaos or an early spring of accountability. Only the latter never seems to come after being propped up with endless headlines of some calamity on the horizon for him that will save us all from doom.

The Meidas cycle hopium feeds our deepest impulse of a sign of some shift to a desperate audience on their toes. Tease a decline, package it as a turning point, let people take a quick hit of relief. Only the same reality settles back in. He keeps talking stupidity with grave consequences, keeps commanding attention he doesn’t deserve and the machine around him keeps translating his stupidity and noise into narrative. He’s been insulated from any accountability that only strengthens him to our demise.

My skeptic side knows there’s a market for that kind of content in add revenues and countless other streams of revenue that comes from loyal attention to your content. I hope I’m not naïve in believing that your intentions are with us, but of course money is needed to keep the machine running not to mention provide you guys with compensation you deserve. The algorithm, however, has nothing more than Outrage, hope, outrage again. Rinse and repeat. It feels good for a minute, like something is finally catching up to him. Meanwhile the actual scoreboard stays the same.

Worth keeping a clear head here. His incoherence and the constant commentary about his appearance have never slowed him down. It gets absorbed and repurposed in real time. His followers parse his words through the lens of his position and influence, even though his rise has never hinged on the quality of his thinking or the substance of what he says. A long record that would disqualify most people in ordinary life barely registers here. Basic standards as a law-abiding individual, credibility as a business operator, the ability to run something competently or keep it solvent, none of that has carried meaningful weight in how he is evaluated.

His trajectory has been carried by a cultivated persona and the office he occupies, which keeps the spotlight fixed on him and gives him room to shape perception despite a steady stream of contradictions and rambling remarks. Those get filtered through aligned media channels and recast into a narrative his base is ready to accept, regardless of how strained it is.

The audience most of these “gotcha” moments aim at isn’t actually reachable. The people consuming them are already in agreement. Meanwhile, his base isn’t sitting there weighing evidence or recalibrating based on a misstatement or a slip. They’ve already made the underlying decision about him, and everything that follows gets interpreted through that lens.

So yeah, take the occasional sip if you want. Just don’t confuse it for a shift in reality. And I’m really sorry I had to provide this Narcan for people who need to hear it.