Their Operation Overload, our inadequate defense

Bear, or if you like bare, with me, I’m going to get to this guy.

I forget who, I recall only the thrust of his remark. He never read newspapers — his objection: Absorbing and thoroughly contemplating the contents of just one edition would demand a lifelong effort.

To those who see themselves as scrupulous news consumers, the observation was disturbingly true. Just one day’s news from Gaza or Ukraine — to say nothing of a paper’s hundred other news items — would require years of research and study if a person were to exhaust its full, current and historical context.

The same holds for any to-the-absolute-bottom comprehension of the many monstrosities of Donald John Trump. (More accurately, Donald “the John” Trump.) He commonly displays his lurid morbidities in full spectrum on any given day. Penetrating each to its bottommost scum would first compel at least eight years of postgraduate work in psychiatry.

All this struck home this morning after reading a brief online piece, dropped overnight in my inbox, that covered a breathtaking spread of newsiness: what some call the John’s “foreign policy,” the government shutdown, the East Wing’s destruction, Democrats’ fury about it and the White House’s trolling of Dems.

I’ll insert the following pre-news, pre-history before proceeding:

Anger over the East Wing’s utterly bonkers demolition will seem mere whimpers of national discontent relative to the body politics’ thermonuclear explosion when Trump detonates its warhead by ordering Interior to order the National Park Service to permit an invasion of jackhammering goons to carve the ugly face of his sheer unAmericanism into Mount Rushmore.

I have no doubt that Trump will do just that. Because it’s there. Because he can. And because he’s a sociopathic, sadistic narcissist of the very highest order. Boy will this ever piss ‘em off. Oh the joy.

I know my labeling of but three of his grave disorders is accurate on all counts. But to categorically understand them? If such a gargantuan feat is even possible? To my regret, I haven’t a handy eight years available nor the immense capital necessary to work my way through the terminus a quo of university boot camp for psychiatrists.

As the author of “Civil Disobedience,” the famed 1849 essay against laws unjust, Henry David Thoreau was perforce an aggressive news consumer — notwithstanding that in works such as Cape Cod he despaired of newspapers’ shallowness, their lack of deep context, and despite his popular image as the disinterested intellectual of Walden.

Yet his pond sojourn was rather limited; a solitary stay of a bit over two years devoted to more than nature strolling and the study of terra firma’s magnificent bounty. Thoreau engaged an intense embrace of his soul in the hope of amplifying it. He meant to proportion his life, roughly equal parts of social intimacy and what modern America has reduced to a “mindfulness” catchphrase.

And now I must exercise a small portion of Mr. Thoreau’s pragmatism. For as I was blowing up a few hours of laptop work yesterday via the genius of my techno-imbecility, the front right tire of my car was slowly hissing and exhaling in its windswept little parking spot. Which I discovered this morning, and need to redeem or replace.

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Cross-posted in Substack.