Cringe worthy moments indeed...

 

Warning…. I watched news this week…

 

Cringe worthy moments are a part of it all.  Let’s face it – we all have had them.  Some are so bad that they still make you sick to your stomach 45 years later… like the time you realize that you have offended your own wonderful mother and your sweet, kind mother-in-law by naming your two new Boxer puppies after them.  Huge mistake for sure!  I have more of these moments than I like to think about. In fact -- the episode of the naming of the Boxer puppies is autobiographical – as I am sure you guessed.  Oh my … 

The thing is that I am always thankful that my cringe worthy moments have not been caught on camera.  Wouldn’t it be awful to be famous – in the public eye all the time?  I would hate it for sure.  Anyway – when I think of this type of cringe worthy event, I can’t help but think of President Trump dancing to the music at his rallies – by himself.  It is like watching your parents dance for the first time – in public – where your friends can see them.  The thing is –The Donald and I are about the same age. (Well … I am a bit younger…).  He, perhaps, should know better – or maybe I am just a stick in the mud. Actually, in retrospect, The Donald is prone to cringe worthy moments of a variety of sorts… in my humble opinion.  Then again…

I have to tell you though – this bumbling, apologetic manner and the stage whispering that our current president is doing of late is more than just a cringe worthy embarrassment. I find it sort of frightening as well as unsettling and creepy. But there is more.  When he whispers into a microphone and then leans in even further to whisper to someone standing off camera to his right, “Was that Okay?”, well -- it is more than embarrassing or creepy.  It is unnerving. It becomes the ultimate cringe worthy situation. Why are there not more reporters who will focus, if only for one moment, on this type of behavior of the supposed leader of the free world?  Who is this person standing off camera to his right? I think we are entitled to know. It matters. Since when does a President of the United States have to ask permission to do anything – to ask whether it is okay to answer a question of a reporter or if he did okay? Then to add to the concerns – along with the stage whisper -- is his tendency to say that he doesn’t want “his people” to get mad at him. He has repeatedly made reference to what he is supposed to do or say … or even to question what he is about to put his signature on. Wait. What?  Remember him wondering out loud what he was signing while on camera in the Oval Office at the beginning of his Presidency?  Remember that large stack of Executive Orders? You know – the ones that affect all of us?  Who are his “people”? Who put the stack of orders on his desk? (Are they handlers? You know – handler in the sense of a person in charge of or training another…. You find handlers in zoos, for instance.) Cringe worthy for sure.  What is going on here?

Further -- was the current President of the United States joking about using nuclear weapons against his own people? (Why would anyone joke about that?) Are there not at least three dozen members of his own political party who recommended "on the record" that his unlimited powers over the “red button” be limited? As I recall the Speaker of the House was trying to legislate that before he was even in office and she specified more than once on camera that it was to be an after the 2020 election consideration. Currently the President has total power over the use of nuclear weapons.  There is nothing anywhere that says he cannot make this decision totally on his own. Is he alone? Or – once again - who are the people who seem to have a hold over him, the people he looks to for approval or permission? 

An even more unnerving thought -- is this the ultimate case of elder abuse of an enfeebled old man? (Even the word enfeebled is painful.) Is he the victim of some sort of “Pandemic Power Play”? Is an entire nation being subjected to the consequences of such elder abuse? Is our President merely a puppet to further the personal gain of unnamed, unidentified power-hungry elitists? Again -- who is standing off camera to the right? Sometimes an open microphone even catches their voices seemingly herding him to leave the room. Why do we see so little of him? Scary.  “You can bet your (sweet) bippy” that such control seeking people would not be the ones to suffer in the long run.  Oh – this is beyond cringe worthy.  This is beyond wrong.  The thing is – we all get to watch and to wonder. That watching and waiting is, perhaps, the worst of it all. I am sensing that there will be more to come before this presidential term comes to an end. It is all very sad … tragic really when you can stand to even think about it. Cringe worthy moments indeed. They do tend to make you sick to your stomach… and in your heart.

 

This type of ugly is why I go into news blackouts from time to time.  It’s a matter of self-preservation. Then again – there is really no escape. Denial does have an end… in my experience anyway.