TGFT

The Citizen voted for Harris/Walz, and against Trump — anyone but Trump, really. But he got Trump, and he immediately noticed things changing. The first was that there was an exaggerated speed-up of events, almost like he had emerged from a relaxing nap only to find himself falling off a cliff.

Then he noticed in Google News that some of the news items had a byline “WHITE HOUSE,” so though appearing as news reports these were actually what used to be called “press releases,” and they had the florid language of party propaganda, describing Trump’s supposed great accomplishments.

As the administration leveled lawsuits and other punishments on traditional news organizations, the coverage of Trump from these companies changed, became noticeably more favorable. Reporters who insisted on exposing the companies’ owners to Trump’s anger found themselves swiftly unemployed, and they set themselves up on Substack, where they languished nobly, impoverished and with few readers.

Brand name news orgs tried to seize some sort of moderate ground — presented with an outrageous falsehood a reporter might write that Trump asserted black was white, and then balance this by quoting someone/anyone who thought that black seemed to them at least very dark. Of course, this made their stories bulky and boring in comparison to the billionaire-backed news and social media sites that rolled out hundreds of flashy, exciting, single point-of-view rumors and lies, all dressed up as bold truthtelling.

So the Citizen’s opinion was haphazardly formed in a process similar to democracy, where the majority point of view wins, and then he gradually began to see the world differently.

Presented with unending reports of world leaders and their public making fun of or ridiculing Trump, he began to think “but what of the billions we’ve spent in foreign aid over the years, what about our military aid?” or it is more accurate to say those thoughts were given to him whole.

As many disasters occurred, the majority of reports blamed them on terrorists or Democrats, with Trump reported as rising to the challenge, tirelessly fending off horror after horror, until one day the Citizen had a thought he never imagined he’d have — “Thank God for Trump,” and before long on his car he put a bumper sticker (that matched the sticker on his neighbors’ cars) that read “TGFT,” and everyone knew what it meant, because everyone shared much the same opinion.