We Are Once Again Confronted With the Outrage Hose

It feels, familiar, doesn’t it? It echoes. Reverberates, calls to mind. This was the way back in late 2016, and then early 2017, and then honestly for four full years after that, but especially in those early days when it was fresh and they had to make appointments and pronouncements and day-1 executive orders and such.

First one thing happens, and it sounds ridiculous and terrible and like the end of some particular corner of the world. And then another thing drops, and another corner dies, and then a third thing, and by now you haven’t exactly forgotten the first one but it has definitely reduced in volume, because how could it not in the face of those other things?

In these early post-election days, these outrages will almost universally take the form of appointments, each one more ridiculous than the last. As soon as one realizes what ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee might do, he of the firm and bizarrely widespread belief that removal of Palestinians from the area will help facilitate Christ’s return and, uh, Armageddon, one then has to confront the idea of a cable news host who doesn’t believe in germs might soon be in charge of the world’s biggest military.

But that can’t last long, because Tulsi Gabbard, of all people, has been tapped as director of national intelligence; she is seen so widely as a potential national security risk that even Mitt Romney has accused her of “parroting fake Russian propaganda.” Well that sure seems bad, but hang on a sec, Matt Gaetz for attorney general? The guy a House ethics committee was poised to report on and who has faced sex trafficking allegations and credible reports of having sex with underaged girls? (Side note: Just release the report even after he resigned! What’s the downside?!)

But even that needs to be put on hold for a minute, because Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has been tapped to head up Health and Human Services, which means a guy who basically wants to murder your children is maybe going to run the health apparatus in this country.

It was repeated endlessly eight years ago and through his first term, but this is too much for most of us to deal with; it’s a strategy in one sense, in that it does get harder and harder to fight some potential catastrophe or other when another lurks just beyond the next news cycle, but it’s also just a function of who we’re dealing with here. He appoints these people because he likes them, mostly for liking him, and because some sniveling policy lackey shoved a piece of paper in front of him with the nomination ready to go.

It won’t stop once the names are all in, either. Already there are reports of skipped FBI background checks for people like Gaetz and Gabbard — one might only hazard a guess as to why — and the early policy maneuvers are going to start trickling out too. There’s no particular response or solution here; it is simply exhausting!