Just because Trump is a reality TV star and this palace drama feels like a dramatic series doesn't mean this is a television show, and that feeling is incredibly dangerous. 1/
Because reports of White House drama, rotating characters and tensions, continue, this has taken on the air of being a passive entertainment instead of a very, very serious situation. 2/
Fire & Fury was important in order to highlight dysfunction, but we need to make sure we don't start looking at this as some sort of tabloid bonanza instead of representative government. 3/
When we consume this as if it was passive entertainment we make the mistake of forgetting that we can affect government as it's there to serve us. 4/
In this case, we get addicted to the Trump drama, it becomes another soap opera, another series like The Americans or Mad Men, etc. 5/
That mistake makes it all feel like it's beyond our control, like we're not in charge of correcting it, bending it to our will as an electorate. 6/
This has already happened in part because of the dramatics created around politics, the creation of DC as a soap opera on the networks replete with characters who have rises and falls in primetime. 7/
Eventually, it doesn't feel like a representative government but another reality beyond our agency. Unfortunately, we're past that already, and we need to repair the damage. 8/
The truth is, if we wanted Trump gone, we could mass in DC as a massive protest and remove to move until he was gone. The media would change the narrative. Politicians would eventually cave. This is how it works in active democracies. 9/
But the more we buy the lie that this is just a fiction that occurs for our entertainment and to spike our fear, the more we forget that the populace has the power to affect change. 10/10
