Remember When Obama’s Tan Suit Was A Big Deal?

The ele­va­tion of Donald Trump to the American pres­i­den­cy has demon­strat­ed just how quick­ly the estab­lished norms we have come to take for grant­ed can disappear.

President Obama, a man tru­ly con­ver­sant of the weight he car­ried as the first non-white pres­i­dent com­port­ed him­self with immac­u­late fideli­ty and class.
Additionally, his wife Michelle and their two daugh­ters, com­plet­ed the mod­el fam­i­ly image many are now look­ing back on with great nos­tal­gic emotionalism.

Barack Obama’s most griev­ous sin even after two bruis­ing cam­paign sea­sons and eight (8) years in the white house, was his wear­ing of the now infa­mous tan suit which Republican cultists harangued and cas­ti­gat­ed him for, with the medi­a’s full acquiescence.
You may also remem­ber how mad the right-wing nut-jobs were? Their non­sen­si­cal argu­ments were that it was­n’t suit­ably pres­i­den­tial, or some cocka­mamie rea­son they came up with for hat­ing it.
It was a sign to ISIS that the American pres­i­dent was­n’t tough,that he want­ed to go to a fundrais­er , Long Island Republican con­gress­man Peter King declared.

Obama’s sar­to­r­i­al depar­ture from the ho-hum of the tra­di­tion­al blue suit was all it took to get the igno­rant racist right all ginned up.
True to form, the racist right nev­er both­ered to read up on history(not that it mat­ters what col­or suit some­one wears, it’s their own damn business).
They group-think, and are prone to fol­low­ing the igno­rant­ly agen­da-dri­ven fringe ele­ments, like [rats behind the pied piper of Hamlin].

The truth of the mat­ter is that oth­er pres­i­dents had donned tanned suits before President Obama did, includ­ing Ronald Reagan the tit­u­lar deity of the polit­i­cal right.
As the nation grap­ples with the avalanche of mad­den­ing events today, it is impor­tant to dis­tin­guish what Republicans were hand-wring­ing about only three years ago.

The Press is under assault, dai­ly there are tweets from the pres­i­den­cy lam­bast­ing the free press. Refugees seek­ing Asylum are sep­a­rat­ed from their chil­dren and deport­ed with­out their chil­dren. People liv­ing in the United States for decades are sum­mar­i­ly round­ed up and locked up as well as deport­ed for minor infrac­tions com­mit­ted decades earlier.

Members of the press are barred from press brief­in­gs for ask­ing ques­tions they are duty bound to ask.
People of col­or are being gunned down in the streets by racist whites in police uni­forms. States purge mil­lions from vot­ers lists with­out con­se­quence, while unnec­es­sary trade wars cre­ate pan­ic and fear.
And yes, prices are begin­ning to rise as a result, even as farm­ers begin to see the results of these reck­less un-nec­es­sary poli­cies and ques­tion the votes they casted.
As the sky seems to be falling, those who did not vote for this look to Special coun­sel Robert Muller a (Republican) to save them, even as Trump’s col­lab­o­ra­tors in the Republican-con­trolled House file arti­cles of impeach­ment against Rod Rosenstein for refus­ing to hand over evi­dence to them which are part of an ongo­ing crim­i­nal and coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence investigations.

Nations which fought along­side America are now side­lined, while old foes are giv­en cre­dence and def­er­ence. Meetings between exec­u­tives of the American Government and oth­er nations, even hos­tile pow­ers, are held in pri­vate, with no doc­u­men­ta­tion of what was said and it gets worse.
The [régime], sor­ry I meant the admin­is­tra­tion, now decrees, it will no longer have read­outs of con­ver­sa­tions Trump has with for­eign leaders.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, this would not be tol­er­at­ed by the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, so whats dif­fer­ent this time?
Whats dif­fer­ent, is a sys­tem­at­ic and con­cert­ed assault on insti­tu­tions and sen­si­bil­i­ties, so exas­per­at­ing and over­whelm­ing, that we sim­ply tune them out.
Ladies and gen­tle­men that is how democ­ra­cies die. “[Remember what you hear and see hap­pen­ing is not what is real­ly hap­pen­ing”][sic].