Whatever Happened to D.G. Connelly?

Remember me? It’s been a month since my last op-ed appeared in The Richfield Patch. Usually I try to post three different essays or editorials each month, but when May rolled around I just couldn’t. I’ve been so bewitched, bothered, and befuddled by life in Trumplandia that I haven’t been able to post anything.

Like most people under the reign of POTUS #45, I just couldn’t keep up. I would begin writing, but by the time the latest news was broadcast, what I’d written would become obsolete. All kinds of new information made it impossible to come up with any well-written postings. TMI! TMI! TMI!

Tell me, gentle readers, have you really been able to keep up with the adventures of Donald Trump during the past three weeks? If you have, I’d really like to know how you did it. Just when I was still processing the firing of FBI Director Comey who was investigating Trump for wrongdoing, all this other stuff came out. Like, who’s the nut-job and who’s the real nut.

Or, has life in these United States gotten so nutty that you just can’t tell anymore?

For starters, Flynn, the ex-military general who had worked in the White House for only 18 days, was also being investigated by other government agencies. But Trump liked him, he really liked him. So Flynn didn’t get fired again because Trump let him resign. But now it appears Flynn not only misrepresented himself but was actually lying to numerous officials — and also getting paid by the Turkish government to be their official liaison and “booster” in Washington. Now that he’s been asked by Congress to turn over information and documents, he’s decided to plead the Fifth! And that’s just one guy who spent a little time in Trump’s administration.

But that’s just one guy.

During the past three weeks, so many other guys have made news with their antics that I’ve gotten an ice cream headache every time I try to understand what’s going on.

My problem is I’m not like Donald Trump. He reacts emotionally, then twitters. I don’t. When I react, I wonder and think about what caused my reaction. Then I try to process the cause of my wonderment. Then I write about it. But before I post what I’ve written, I check facts. Then I edit, revise, rewrite.
And then, finally, I post what I’ve written.

The big downside, of course, is that it might take so long to write my op-eds that I only get a few written each month. The big upside, however, is that I don’t perpetrate propaganda or fake news. So I’m not like Trump — and that’s a good thing.

Stay tuned for more thoroughly researched and detailed writing in the upcoming weeks. Because we live in such interesting times, it’s tempting to just tune out. It’s tempting to just shut down and shut out all the incoming information that doesn’t make sense to us. Not thinking about what’s happening, though, is the worst thing Americans could do. If we want to uphold our democracy and keep it going, we’re going to have to keep processing and thinking and complaining.

When information runs amuck, we need to exercise our freedom of speech — not shut up and surrender to apathy.