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Donald J. Trump is officially our president, and he's wasting no time laying waste to the nation.
He's already addressed undoing the Affordable Care Act, banning immigration from Muslim countries, and building his infamous wall. He's vowed to lift federal prohibitions on drilling, thus reviving the Dakota and Keystone Pipelines, and has continued making baseless claims that voter fraud cost him the popular vote.
He withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement negotiations, signed a memorandum prohibiting federal agencies from filling vacant positions or creating new ones (with the exception of military, public safety, and public health jobs), formally submitted his controversial Cabinet nominations to Senate, and threatened to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities. He also plans to end the "catch and release" policy and has undone Obama-era mortgage rate reductions.
Additionally, Trump's administration has instructed federal agencies to halt external communications, attacked even the mere mention of "climate change," and is actively working against reproductive freedoms by reinstating Reagan's "Mexico City Policy." And all of this is without having announced his pick for Supreme Court, an upcoming decision that—in true Trump fashion—The Donald tweeted should be announced in the next few days.
There's no guarantee that Trump will be able to follow through on all of his executive orders, but in less than a week, he has successfully set a foreboding tone for what these next four years might look like. And Trump did all of this before his first weekend in office, presumably because he wanted to clear his schedule for Saturday night so he could relax on the couch, drink a bottle of merlot, watch SNL, and masturbate to Alec Baldwin: a scene only made more disturbing by the image of Melania sitting next to her husband in terror-stricken silence as he climaxes to a comic caricature of himself.
I have mixed emotions about Trump's presidency. As a citizen, I am embarrassed for my country. As a person who supports women's rights, I'm angry that female reproductive freedoms are under attack (or, at least, moreso under attack than usual). As a man of color, I'm scared for my family's safety (although, only slightly moreso than usual). But as a pessimist, I've never felt so good in my entire life.
I was right, you guys! People are bad! The glass is half empty! Democrats don't actually accomplish that much! Republicans vote against the interests of the people, which is a bummer except for that the people are honestly pretty shitty! March goers who post Instagram protest selfies are fair-weather advocates who never pass up the chance to turn a selfless act rebellion into a selfish opportunity to promote their own personal brand! Colin Kaepernick hasn't done a damn thing! Checking into Standing Rock on Facebook was completely unhelpful! Solidarity is not a synonym for progress! Standup comedy, folk music, and art in general does not, in fact, enact vast societal change in a timely manner! All of our hashtags, infighting, and performative outrage has amounted to a Trump presidency, and our nuclear codes are now in the hands of a reality television star who lives in a gold plated tower and cums to hookers' piss!
Everything is the worst, more and more liberals are buying guns, and the noodle-armed leftists who've spent years saying that peaceful nonviolence is the only ethical option are celebratory whenever a Nazi gets punched in the face. The end is nigh, everyone's a hypocrite, and I have never felt more vindicated.
Now, one could make the argument that any change, no matter how miniscule, is worth the greatest amount of effort; though the people who most commonly make that argument tend to do so because they enact the least amount of actual change. Also, because hope is so vague and ambiguous, literally any social issue could ameliorate by even the smallest margin at any given time, and we'd all get to say that we participated in making the world a better place. As the old adage goes: Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. And not the cute, redheaded kind of orphan who sings about how the sun will come out tomorrow or the Dickensian kind of orphan who commits petty theft alongside the Artful Dodger. Just a regular, unloveable orphan.
I certainly hope the best for myself and my fellow Americans. I love this country, and I hate to see her once again fall into the arms of of such prejudicial zealots.
But, at the end of the day, there is one truth that burns eternal: You suck. I suck. Everyone sucks! Morality is a lie, and there's never been a better time to be a cynic.
To read more of Curtis Cook's column But Why Tho, click here.
