DONALD TRUMP NEVER THREW A TOUCHDOWN

It is draft weekend in the NFL, and I’m trying to get hyped. There is a vague sense of uneasiness gnawing at my soul these days, however, and I think I know what it is. The creeping sense that the war is over, that we lost, and that none of this truly matters anyway, tugs at the sleeves of my existence like a persistently nagging child demanding round the clock attention. There are the Kardashians. There are The Trumps. And then there is us. That is the way the cookie has crumbled, and I, for one, have no interest in picking up those crumbs.

Remember George W. Bush? My, how we miss him now. And who would have thought that in the final grizzled months of 2007? A time when there was still a shred of dignity in the White House, and we could still fool ourselves into thinking that it mattered. A time when we lived to pounce on some dumb utterance or egregious faux pas as it tumbled from George’s mouth, our eyes bulging and neck veins throbbing as we screamed ‘see? SEE?’ at the disbelieving hordes who still thought this numbskull cowboy was on Their Side. I used to like my politics to feel like a reality T.V show. I never actually wanted it to become one.

And that seems to be the crux of the problem. Attacking Bush was fun. I imagine attacking Nixon was fun. Attacking Donald Trump is not fun. The horrors pile up so thick and fast these days that there is no time to properly chew on them. No chance to savour them, mull it over, and really rip the bastard to shreds. Barely has one tweet upset gays and lesbians before another is promoting far right hate groups and a third is sticking its hand up some woman’s skirt to ‘grab her by the pussy.’ It is an avalanche of madness and debauchery, so much dumb brutishness that it just becomes the new norm. The Way Of Things. The Depressing Truth. You feel yourself becoming desensitised to it even as it’s happening. Oh look, another one. it becomes a struggle to raise an eyebrow at the whole sorry scene. It is like he is doing it on purpose. Which, of course, he is. And that is the reason I hate Donald Trump the most. He is so stupid, so arrogant, so brazen and so mindlessly, cartoonishly offensive, that he has made me feel sated and slovenly in the line of duty. I no longer care what the dumb bastard says. He has reduced the level of discourse in politics to an unrecoverable low, and the future of politics to ash. There is no bouncing back from this now. A mould has been broken. A line crossed. We are in with the rats and the worms and the ants now. There is no light or way out of here. We are in their world now. Get ready for President Kanye Omari West and First Lady Kim Kardashian taking naked selfies in the Oval Office and posting snapchats from the Lincoln bedroom on her Instagram feed, because that is where we’re headed. The game only gets sicker from here.

And speaking of games getting sick, the NFL continues to be on a drip feed, shambling around the hospital like some toothless old dementia patient with its ass hanging out the back of a gown. Like politics, it has become relentless gibberish. We watch it because it’s on. There are no great teams, few great players, and absolutely zero loyalty to the cause. Where once coaches would leave a team for vast sums of money, now entire teams are upping sticks and leaving cities in search of greener pastures. And when I say green, you best believe I mean that do ray mi. Money talks. What is this world coming to when you cannot even buy four years’ worth of loyalty anymore? Most franchises now resemble nothing more than a fat, lazy whore who will drop your sorry ass as soon as something better comes along, and never mind about the good times or all that you have been through together. That was yesterday, jack. Keep up.

In football, as in politics, the price of tickets keeps increasing.

I just don’t know if I have the stomach for much more of the show.