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What a whirlwind. An information overload. An insane blitzkrieg of activity, if you will.
As some may have read, I am a big fan of a newsletter called Tangle. Tangle is dedicated to trying to provide an impartial view of the latest news. And even though I feel its readership has made a sharp pull to the left in the past several months, I still feel the newsletter and its fearless leader, Isaac Saul, are doing a bang-up job attempting to keep everything balanced and intelligently presented so as to not unfairly bias the readers.
Tangle has four regular issues every week, each dedicated to one topic. I really enjoy attempting to guess what the day’s topic will be. Just a matter of week’s ago, the task was fairly easy. I would consider the news topics most trending at that day, coupled with the ones with the most controversy and room for different interpretations. I would also factor in whether there was enough smoke settled so the news wouldn’t change drastically before publication.
Then Trump Rolled In
And then Donald Trump stepped into the Oval Office for his second round, and I’d say about 75% of the time I have absolutely no idea what that day’s newsletter will be about.
One of the greatest wishes of mine is that Israel will be in the international news as little as possible. If it makes it there, either there’s something serious happening regarding war or terrorism, or some other tragedy that will cause the world to point angry fingers in our direction. I once heard a lovely little joke: Israel should be blessed to be as boring as Canada. Yup. Let that sink in. When do you ever see Canada in the news? Or Greenland, for that matter? Well, lately they come up a bunch. But not because of anything actually happening in either location, but because of things uttered by America’s brash, controversial leader, President Trump.
Israel, sadly, was plastered all over the news for much of the past year… while simultaneously it felt like the United States was taking a break. And why did it feel that way? Because America’s aging and tired president was a bit of a slow mover. This is not a criticism, just a fact. It felt like Joe Biden did in one year what Donald Trump attacks in a week or two.
And it’s overwhelming!
Which is really the point, and what I want to write about today.
Donald Trump’s Blitzkrieg Approach
Blitzkrieg is a type of warfare popularized by Nazi Germany. In its simplest form, Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, is when you throw everything out all at once. You try to overwhelm the enemy, giving them no time to prepare or react, and hope for a quick and decisive capitulation.
And Donald trump is running the country with a full-on Blitzkrieg approach.
He is tackling massive issues aggressively, such as illegal immigration, fentanyl spreading across the country, the war in Ukraine, and government waste. But he is also addressing issues that aren’t even issues, such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico and the making sure the United States finally has an official language.
The average American can’t keep track of everything that’s happening, since our lives don’t center around politics. If you work a full-time job, have a family, and hope to both eat and sleep, odds are you’re going to miss some of the many changes happening constantly. By the time you wake up tomorrow, it’s possible there will have been another dozen things to catch up on. And who has time to keep track of it all, let alone do a deep dive to properly understand the decisions or to monitor the results of things to see what kind of outcome they’re having?
Who Has the Time??
Nope, at best you’ll probably just hear about two or three things on Facebook from your normal echo chamber. You’ll get pissed off or excited alongside your online comrades with similar beliefs. And before the smoke clears, and before you really have a chance to read up on anything, you’ll already be worked up about the next major (or minor) topic that caught your attention.
And I believe that’s really the whole idea.
Perhaps Donald Trump really cares about the name of a gulf. Perhaps he couldn’t care less. Maybe he’s just putting up a flag to see how people react to the decision in order to gauge loyalty and capitulation.
Or maybe it’s all just a smokescreen. We’re so caught up in the details, we don’t have time to consider the things that are truly important, or to properly understand everything that’s happening.
President Trump’s Blitzkrieg approach to running the country is chaos with a purpose, if not many purposes, and it’s hard to really fathom what things will look like when all the smoke finally settles from this bombardment of executive actions, crazy statements, and loud and aggressive attempts to shake up the world.
I’m both fascinated and terrified. I’m excited, but watching through my fingers as I cover my eyes, nervous that if we shake the snow globe a little too hard, it’ll slip from our hands and shatter everywhere.
Explosion of Newness
I don’t know what will be. And I think anyone who confidently predicts how the United States will look in four years is full of crap. There’s just too much happening to have any clue how things will look when it’s all behind us. By then we’ll be able to take a nap, wake up, and evaluate what we just saw.
Will the war in Ukraine finally come to an end? What will America’s relationship with the rest of the world look like? Will political division in the States grow wider and wider? If the biggest wars in the world get resolved, will Trump get any positive recognition for this? Will the economy go up or down? Will we all have more money in our pockets or less? Will the word look more different or more similar to how it does now? Is all the insanity we’re experiencing going somewhere? Will this pace of change be kept for all four years of Trump’s presidency?
I’m exhausted just thinking about all this.
And again, I think that’s the point.
Trump’s running the country like a bull rampaging through the government. Some things will get broken along the way. Others will improve, get replaced, or just sit there in a world of everlasting confusion.
I have no idea what will result from the explosion of newness. But I’m certainly damn curious.
