Last night, I was watching an interview on PBS Newshour with the trade minister or some official of the EU who was being asked questions about the tariff agreement worked out between Trump and EU officials earlier in the day.

It was telling. She was doing her best to put a positive spin on developments, but it was obvious she was trying to show restraint as she wrestled with words that wouldn’t set off the Toddler-in-Chief and force him to reconsider the terms.

She kept talking about “certainty” in terms of countries at least having a better sense for the numbers they’ll be working with. But one could tell the spin cycle was in high gear. Without saying as much, the best she could do was to put some lipstick on a pig, all the while needing to suppress other emotions. The Dealmaker-in-Chief had struck again.

He must feel like he’s on a roll.

Savor it, Donald. The Epstein thing hasn’t gone anywhere.

I came across a Facebook post the other day that cuts to the chase, with regard to how I feel about Donald Trump. It’s a summation of what has really been at the root of my disgust all along.

The sentence that really resonates is one that I almost shouted “Amen!” to: “It (this person’s opposition to Trump) has everything to do with my identity as a decent person.”

I’m no angel, and my intent is not to put myself on a pedestal in place of Trump, but I also reject… “the bigotry, misogyny, and racism that permeate his rhetoric and actions; and his obnoxious and thoroughly disgusting demeanor that does not embody the principles, values, or true spirit of America.”

That’s it. That’s what, perhaps, so many of us feel is at the core of our collective angst. It’s all about who Trump is at his core, and the very troubling fact that he has ascended to the pinnacle of public life in this country. He is who the world sees. He is the one who so feebly and often embarrassingly speaks for America, represents us on the world stage. He is not who we are, or who most of us aspire to be.

Donald fucking Trump, of all people, has railroaded enough public sentiment to bamboozle his way to a return to the White House, and now he gets to try to finish what he started the last time he was there!

Cue the head in hands and the gaze toward the heavens, because most of us are still waiting for some sort of divine intervention, and Trump ain’t that.

Message to Donald Trump and the rest: we don’t want what you’re selling.

There’s a reason Stephen Colbert’s attitude may seem biased. It’s because he knows a rat when he sees one, and he has every right to call it out. It’s a choice he apparently made a long time ago. All those right-wingers who take offense and are glad he’s getting the ax and feel he had it coming apparently forget that the horse they’re backing is a human anachronism, a navel-gazing loser.

They don’t have to watch Colbert—surely they can find something more user-friendly on Fox or OANN. Trouble with that is, a right-wing comedian is hard to come by and would probably be hard to watch. He or she can’t really be funny—they don’t know how. A world view so tainted by self-righteousness, paranoia, anger, and moldy thinking isn’t exactly fertile ground for comedy.

So, what department or service has been downsized or shuttered while the country gets dragged into the sordid Jeffrey Epstein saga? What have we been distracted from noticing while the media go down this latest rabbit hole?

This administration is useless, spending all its time litigating, and extricating itself from tight corners. It’s a preponderance of jokes leveled at a public who’s yearning for competent governance and expecting results and relief and answers, but instead getting salacious drama and a constant diet of vapid excuses and misdirection.

What, exactly, is their end game, and do they even have one? Somebody must– right, Kevin?

America really is in love with celebrity and in-your-face crudeness. Witness our Commander in Chief. I have trouble celebrating this.

Larger than life people—by virtue of appearing on a TV or movie screen— get eulogized for several news cycles, or revered as if they were the Pope, somebody who dealt with real life, who improved the lot of humankind beyond an ability to entertain or allow us to momentarily escape our perceived mundane existence; who created an advancement in medicine, or invented something that made life better and safer and easier, or wrote or spoke words born of life experience and acquired wisdom that inspire us.

Celebrity is subjective, shallow, unsubstantive, fleeting, ego-feeding vanity.

Still, better to be rich and famous, it seems, than to have left one’s mark as an innovator or inventor or peace-seeker or, more simply, a thoughtful, decent human being– most of whom spend their lives flying under the radar, away from the limelight.