If an Orange, Fat Tree Slams Into a Forest, Do We Care Anymore?

Democracy, of course, dies in darkness.

Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.

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Howard Dean recreates his “Dean Scream.” (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Two words: Dean Scream.

That’s all it took for Howard Dean, Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, to be forced out of the presidential race. A “scream” in which he shouted too enthusiastically at a rally in Des Moines.

Today, a story came out about a woman accusing Trump of groping her when Jeffrey Epstein took her to the former president’s Trump Tower apartment in 1993. I can’t, you can’t, we can’t begin to count the number of such accusations that have been made against Trump in the last decade. Do we even notice them anymore?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If the past eight years have anything to say, then no, it doesn’t. Not even an orangish, fat trunk slamming into desiccated, tired ground. Aka the news today is not a story about a candidate for president’s nth time allegedly sexually harassing a woman, but a story about complacency and the fall of an empire. Dust may be kicked up, but it will settle quietly and quickly. At the extreme end of the response, there will be silence. Before that though, there is willful ignorance on the part of Trump’s supporters.

I’m not convinced that there is any way to sway anyone’s vote at this point. Likely, our country is doomed no matter who we elect: With about 50 percent of the American republic supporting a fascist candidate, whether he wins or not, where are we headed, and how do we come back from it? I’m not sure we do.

Democracy, of course, dies in darkness. And these are dark times. This is exactly the conservative right’s MO: obfuscate everything and debase education until there is no clawing our way out of the lies.

With today’s news about Trump, the less the press reports on it, the less the public knows about it. And even if they/we do, the press and the public are both so used to this (allegedly disgusting, wrong, illegal) noise that it is hardly newsworthy anymore. (Aside, I’d pay to be a fly on the wall of the ad salesrooms of newspapers as these stories pop up.)

This story breaks the same day that The Washington Post has announced that it will no longer be endorsing a presidential candidate. The Post’s slogan, adopted in 2017, that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” has never been more absurd or more applicable than it is today — a day on which yet another woman has come forward to report how Trump allegedly degraded her and violated her body, and a day on which the public barely listens to her story. The Benjamin Button of it all is exhausting. It may as well be 1924 for all our “progress” counts as we wait for Trump, a convicted felon, liar and sexual abuser, to (possibly) be voted back into office.

There is no room for ambivalence in this country right now, and the press must act as the fourth estate as it long has. It must continue to be a check on the “other” three branches of government.

Shame on The Washington Post.

Shame on this country.

We should all be screaming, no matter how insane it sounds.

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