How Trump is viewed by the ordinary folk on the ground
One of the odd things about the US is that over six months into the Trump presidency, the country is still standing. Or just about. I’m currently in Boston visiting family, and given the state’s Democratic leaning, the people of Massachusetts might have been expected to have given up. This is especially so given the latest instalment of Trump-Mooch related madness at the White House.
But they haven’t given up – quite. So how are they coping? Partly, by the simple fact that life goes on – lives are still dominated by kids, school, work, holidays. Trump, a media obsession, is not necessarily their obsession. As a policeman at North Station in Boston put it, “You just keep working”.
Adopting the “tell me when it’s over” position has helped others push Trump to the sidelines. One student said: “I’ve got to a point where we live in this world and have to take it for the next three and a half years. Life goes on.”
Not everyone is able to shut Trump out. Abigail, 33, a university administrator, is consumed with backdated gratitude: “Tuesday I sat in traffic and just thought, man, remember when the leaders of our country outraged people when they spelled potato with an e, or invented words like ‘strategery’? Now I wish for that. I miss the day of the potatoe.”
A sense of the surreal is helpful to others. Marlene, an accountant, said: “Everything that has transpired is so ridiculous it doesn’t seem that it can possibly be real.” Eleanor, a stay-athome mother, refers to the presidency as the “biggest satire” and “joke” – admitting she mostly just blocks it all out (a baby is time-consuming).
Meanwhile Robyn, an AfricanAmerican student, calmly (yet scathingly) observed that Trump is just running the country like he’s “at a business meeting”. Finally I asked Leo, a 76-year-old parking attendant, what kept people going about their daily lives, seemingly as normal. “Another three years – that’s what. Because we know this too shall pass. If we don’t like them, we can get rid of them.”