Donald Trump is such a menace that life under the heel of his boot will, apparently, resemble life under the boot of Barack Obama. At least, that's my takeaway from the last month or so.
Here, for instance, is a Rolling Stone story dated November 23, 2016:
What does this brutal regime look like?
Trump's victory came the week after a protester advance against the Dakota Access site – a poorly planned gamble that had provoked a crushing police response, with hundreds of officers in riot gear and armored vehicles firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd and arresting more than 100. The clash had brought more visibility to the protesters' cause, but at the cost of injuries and the loss of a strategically important camp blocking the pipeline. Cops forced activists so far from the construction site that people were suggesting approaching via rafts over the frigid river. Last week, things reached an even higher pitch as a police bottled protesters on a bridge while battering them in sub-freezing temperatures with water cannons, pepper spray, tear gas and concussion grenades – one of which seems to have "blown away" much of the left arm of a young New York protester, Sophia Wilansky, according to her father. She was taken to the hospital along with 26 others; 300 protesters in total were reported injured by camp medics.
Emphasis mine, since, you know, most of this bad stuff happened before Trump was even elected, and literally all of it happened during Obama's tenure. (He's still president, I guess? A mentally checked-out president is still president.) Here's another odd headline:
Was this really the "first of many protests to come in the Trump era" or "the last of many protests to plague the Obama era"? I dunno, either way.
Of course, we can all count on Donald Trump to radically crack down on press freedoms. Here's a piece in the Huffington Post about a reporter who made a joke on Twitter only to face questioning by the FBI. As a journalist who often makes jokes on Twitter, I find this to be kind of scary stuff! I think we all know, though, that Trump is the real villain here:
The investigation is ongoing. I hope it goes no further. As Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman, said, "When you have to guess whether it’s incompetence or something nefarious, it’s usually best to guess incompetence." But getting a call from an FBI agent investigating you is a big deal.
"This is the type of thing you might expect from a Jeff Sessions Department of Justice," said Miller, referring to Trump’s pick for attorney general. "But they’re jumping the gun. It’s unbelievable."
What we have here is a story about how the FBI under Obama is investigating a member of the press, a story that comes at the tail end of an administration widely regarded to be among the least transparent in history—and yet, the real worry here is Trump. Makes sense!
And then there's this masterpiece in doublethink from MSNBC's Joy Reid:
I mean, it seems to me that the "horrifying" thing happening in Aleppo is happening entirely under the watch of Barack Obama. I don't really know how things could get much worse under Donald Trump for the people of Syria! Whether or not Trump wants to "empower" Putin and Assad in their efforts to murder civilians is kind of irrelevant since, you know, they're already clearly feeling pretty empowered. I don't know what the answer to a horrifying situation like Syria is, but it is entirely unclear to me that Trump's hands-off approach could be any more troubling than the Obama administration's hands-off approach.
Look, it's possible, perhaps even likely, that the Trump presidency will be a disastrous eight years (you know he's going to win reelection, right?) and we can all discuss that when/as it happens. But, uh, he's not president yet! I understand that asking Barack Obama to take responsibility for literally anything bad that happens under his watch is anathema, but, hey, maybe try it on for size. Just for a little bit.