I’m Tired of Thinking About the President

All of the presidents.

Photo by Henrikke Due on Unsplash

I remember a time when I only thought about the President of the United States once every four years.

And even then, it wasn’t a subject that required a lot of thought. I always voted for the same party, because the parties weren’t really all that different and no matter who I voted for, I knew the country would keep chugging along, subject only to the drama of other people’s wars and the vicissitudes of the world economy, which we, as mere humans, can’t do anything about anyway. Not even the president.

I knew that I lived in one country, with one people, who all, no matter their subsets, thought of themselves as “Americans”. I knew that we basically agreed on what the big problems were, and that we were all working together to solve those problems.

And then, somehow, the presidency became part of the entertainment industry.

How many people said, “Oh, he’s not really like that. He’s just acting.”?

Maybe we should blame reality TV. That’s when we started to feel free to intrude on our neighbors’ lives and voice an opinion. I mean, it’s there on television for everyone to see. That means I can tell those people what I think about them, and once the internet came…