Just as this edition was posted this hyperbolic soap opera offered by the misadministration continues. So next week’s edition suggesting that path arrives on your doorstep early and should also be on this site. Called, “Congressional Investigation…”
What we rather loosely might dare to call an “issue” went on way too long. While the rest of the country seemed to move on, social networking sites still were all a blather about a low count Inauguration Day.
Everyone’s was arguing about the validity of pictures, attendance and the 
rather odd oxymoron spewed by a presidential spokeswoman, “Alternative ‘facts.'” Such rarely ends well, but right on cue the humongous mothership Mecca for anger non-management, defriending, ruining business relationships, splitting apart actual friends, sucking the life out of family relations, rewarding trolls, providing a platform for sock puppets, enabling to outright nastiness and elevating those %$#@ Methodists; Facebook, became the front in the rhetorical war over Attendance-gate.
Blazing Saddles humor aside, I must ask everyone, “Was it really that important?”
Can we get basic agreement on a few common sense observations? Donald Trump could have had only five in attendance and he would still be president. He and his appointees, and what is pretty much his Congress, will be able to pass and push a lot of their agenda through, especially if we spend so much time arguing over what matters so little. Where we go from here is far, far, far more important than how many attended.
Now, if we must focus so much on attendance-like issues, and they don’t evaporate in the unimportant status they deserve, there are a lot of questions to be asked. Two over and under pictures posted a lot by lefties: what time for each? Too early, too late, could make the comparison unfair.
If we must be stupidly stuck on this specific set of rhetorical railroad tracks, well, as I also mentioned, the angle matters. The over and under pictures: Trump v. Obama, are both from on high: the same framing. A picture posted by some on the right uses a different angle to prove the other picture was wrong. To me that picture simply marginalized what looked like may have been a huge empty area in the center. Like time, angle matters. Not that it all matters that much. It really doesn’t.
If we insist on staying stuck the train is simply going to run us over and move on. There are so many more important things coming our way. Time better spent planning on handling the opposition we’re sure to meet, or the heights we wish to achieve. All this is like know the necessity of climbing the Alps, but insisting on arguing about an ant hill.
The idea, at least to me, that this delegitimizes his presidency is laughable. Honest, at best, folks, it may mean, I repeat “may,” he has a lot of work to do if he wants to get reelected. And that’s possible only if our election system isn’t as screwed up as both sides have claimed. Frankly I think the nation should have started having an open, nationwide, examination of election concerns at least 20 years ago. As they use to say when I was a teen, “Let it ALL hang out.”
You think that that’s not as important as other issues? OK, certainly you can provide more than a few things more important than low attendance at an inaugural.
Keep fighting over suck insignificant “issues,” especially with oxymorons like “alternative facts,” and we’re only sinking our feet into unnecessary quicksand. And one thing about such quicksand: it does serve as a distraction from far more important things going on. Indeed, I have little doubt the reason some keep poking; no not the tiger, this weak kitten of an issue is it does distract. It distracts from events that have far more lasting consequences than an inauguration that had low attendance.
Please don’t try to send me proof it was well attended, or poorly attended. I really don’t care, except an occasional chuckle at some of the absurd claims like, well, “alternative facts” or “delegitimizes.”
Attendance being low in an election where one wins the popular vote, and the other the College, duh, what else might we expect? An election where there was so much demonization of groups is like spraying the scene with some human version of DDT called Crowd Off. And an election where both candidates certainly had as high negatives as positives would be like those oxymoronic “Free Speech Zones,” which are more akin to electronic fences we use to keep dogs from running out and biting someone, or getting hit by traffic. And sometimes become more like cattle prods aimed at those who might otherwise have attended.
Once again, possible low attendance? DUH.
What should be but a very brief, tiny, mostly insignificant, blip on the controversy, issue framing, radar has took on more significance than it was worth in the wider scheme of things. Such “issues;” if we dare call them that, do come up from time to time. My advice would be for one side to just let the others have their fun while spending that time on promoting their agenda. If it bothers you so damn much, well, it will go away a lot faster if you don’t keep turning it into something far more important than it is. For the other side, enjoy, but move on fast. There’s far more important, very hard, and damn near impossible work to do.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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