There was a time when politics felt distant.

Not unimportant, but distant. Something you checked in on. Something you argued about at the dinner table, rolled your eyes at, maybe even obsessed over for a season — but still something that existed within a recognizable frame. There were lines. There was decorum. There was at least a shared expectation that the president of the United States should sound like the president of the United States.

That expectation feels almost quaint now.

On Easter Sunday, while many people were trying to spend time with family, reflect, worship, rest, or simply breathe, Donald Trump once again reminded the world what happens when ego, grievance, and authoritarian swagger are allowed to sit behind the presidential seal.

And somehow, even after everything, there are still people who will shrug and say some version of the same tired line:

“That’s just Trump being Trump.”

No.

That is not an explanation.
That is an excuse.

And it is one of the most dangerous excuses in modern American life.

The Real Damage Is in the Normalization

What disturbs me most is not simply that Trump says outrageous things. He has always trafficked in spectacle, grievance, humiliation, and chaos. What disturbs me is how many people have been conditioned to absorb behavior that would have ended any other presidency in scandal, panic, and nonstop media outrage.

If Barack Obama had spoken this way, there would have been wall-to-wall hysteria.
If Joe Biden had posted something this reckless and obscene, there would have been immediate calls for cognitive evaluations, emergency coverage, and endless handwringing about America’s standing in the world.

But Trump has been granted a loophole no one else gets: the expectation of dysfunction.

He benefits from being so consistently unfit that people begin treating unfitness as background noise.

That is one of the clearest signs of political and moral decline — when the outrageous no longer interrupts the national conscience because the public has been trained to live inside the outrage as if it were weather.

This Is What Propaganda Looks Like When It Settles In

I keep coming back to the same question: how are so many people still not seeing it?

Some are exhausted.
Some are misinformed.
Some are too loyal to question what they have already decided to believe.
And some are getting a version of reality that has been softened, cleaned up, and repackaged before it ever reaches them.

That matters.

Because the danger is not just Trump himself. It is the machinery around him that keeps turning recklessness into spectacle, cruelty into confidence, and obvious instability into something people are told is strength.

One of the clearest examples of this problem is Fox News.

It presents itself with the language and posture of news, but so much of what it delivers is opinion, performance, and emotional conditioning dressed up as public understanding. That distinction matters more than many people realize.

Because most people do not sit down at the end of the day thinking, I would like to be lied to now.

They think they are being informed.
They think they are hearing the truth through a familiar voice.
They think they are keeping up with the world.

But when opinion programming is allowed to function as a substitute for honest reporting, people do not just become partisan — they become disoriented. They lose the ability to tell the difference between fact, framing, and manipulation.

And that confusion has consequences.

If your “news” keeps softening Trump’s instability, excusing his behavior, or redirecting attention every time he crosses another line, then of course his supporters will keep finding reasons not to see what is right in front of them.

People generally do not like being lied to.

But they can be taught to trust the voice that lies to them.

And once that happens, the damage goes far beyond one election cycle or one outrageous post. It reshapes how reality itself is received.

“Trump Being Trump” Was Never Harmless

There is this strange cultural habit of treating Trump’s behavior like a personality quirk rather than a governing hazard.

As if belligerence is authenticity.
As if incoherence is honesty.
As if theatrical aggression is strength.
As if public instability becomes more acceptable when it is familiar.

But familiarity does not make something safe.

A president threatening destruction in vulgar language on Easter Sunday is not a joke because it is “on brand.”
It is not less serious because he does it often.
It is not more forgivable because his supporters have grown used to defending the indefensible.

It is worse because repetition has worn down the national reflex to recoil.

The Double Standard Is Part of the Story

One of the ugliest truths in American politics is that the standards are not merely uneven — they are collapsing asymmetrically.

Democrats are expected to be lucid, measured, compassionate, coherent, and scandal-free. Republicans, at least in the Trump era, have too often been allowed to behave like arsonists and still be evaluated as legitimate stewards of public life.

That double standard has done immense damage.

It has taught millions of people that accountability is optional if your side keeps winning.
It has taught elected officials that cowardice is survivable.
It has taught media institutions that outrage can be calibrated by tribe rather than by substance.
And it has taught the public to confuse partisan endurance with moral seriousness.

Many of His Voters Were Conned Too

I am angry. Deeply angry.

But anger is not the only thing I feel.

Because underneath all of this is another painful truth: many of the very people now suffering under Trumpism were manipulated into helping build it. They were sold propaganda as patriotism. They were handed grievance in place of policy, performance in place of leadership, and fantasy in place of governance.

That does not erase responsibility.
But it does explain some of the tragedy.

Some people voted for pain they thought would only land on someone else.
Now the fallout is wider, heavier, and more personal than they imagined.

That is not redemption.
But it is a warning.

Disinformation does not just distort elections.
It colonizes trust.
It enters homes.
It reshapes judgment.
It teaches people to defend the very forces hollowing out their own lives.

Mockery Has Its Place — But It Cannot Be the End of the Story

And yet, I also appreciated the second video. Not because I think pranks will save democracy, but because mockery can sometimes puncture what reverence protects. The April Fool’s gag worked because it hit Trump where men like him are weakest: ego, image, legacy, vanity. That is part of why it felt so satisfying. The first video names the danger. The second reminds us that ridicule still has power when aimed at authoritarian vanity.

And honestly, I needed that laugh.

But ridicule alone is not repair.

Someday this era will end. Whether that comes through elections, age, legal consequence, political fracture, or simple historical exhaustion, it will end.

And when it does, this country is going to need more than relief.
It is going to need healing.
Real healing.
The kind that requires truth, memory, accountability, and a willingness to admit just how far things were allowed to go.

Because none of this belongs to Donald Trump.

Not the presidency.
Not the country.
Not our institutions.
Not our future.

And if America is ever going to feel like itself again — or maybe become something better than it has been — we are going to have to reclaim all of that from the people who treated public life like a branding opportunity and national trauma like content.

We Should Never Get Used to This

That may be the simplest thing I have to say today.

We should never get used to this.

Not the obscenity.
Not the instability.
Not the threats.
Not the narcissism.
Not the cult-like excuses.
Not the media failures.
Not the moral collapse of people who know better and say less.
Not the way entire communities are taught to distrust truth while worshipping power.

We should never get so accustomed to unfitness that we stop naming it.

Because once the unhinged becomes routine, democracy is already in deeper trouble than many people are willing to admit.

And maybe that is part of what hurts so much.

Not just what Trump is.
But what this country has been willing to normalize around him.

Healing will be needed more than ever — but healing begins by refusing to call this normal.