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“Take Him Seriously”

Rodney Clough
4 min readNov 14, 2024

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Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash

‘Forty-seven’ appoints Chiefs of Staff.

November 11

After listening to today’s prewash political commentary from Ashley Parker of the Washington Post, I clutched at my skeptic shawl. I am in the next to the last stage of grief over the 2024 election outcome — incredulity before acceptance.

As in, what just happened?

A campaign chair and a message coach were named to lead in running the new administration, presumably, for the next four years.

“We should believe he’s going to do what he says. We should take him at his word. We should take him seriously.” -Ashley Parker, Senior Political Correspondent, The Washington Post, November 11, MSNBC.

But I thought I was ‘taking Trump seriously.’

But then, doesn’t it always sound as if Trump doesn’t have a clue? He evades, obfuscates, shows off, tells a story about how intelligent he is. It’s all of a piece. I don’t believe it. Like garden variety dictators, Trump doesn’t construct reality, he manipulates audience.

Frankly speaking, it’s exhausting to feel serious about what Trump says he is going to do, because he is incapable of assuring that he can manage other than what is a collective delusion, aka belief in a constructed reality, what I call “shiny pennies.” A wall that Mexico, our…

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Rodney Clough
Rodney Clough

Written by Rodney Clough

Refuses to nap. Septuagenarian. Cliche’ raker. Writes weekly.

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