How to train your president
What to do when your leader might be a dick-tator.
America, we’ve seen better days. The last year has dumped a lot of tough stuff on its citizens — the worst tax bill in history, the end of net neutrality, renewed threats against social security and medicare, immigrant families torn apart, and a resurgence of overt racism that would just blow the knickers off your grandma. But I have a plan.
Surely by now we know our president will never succumb to guilt, or even logic. We’ve tried to shame him, embarrass him, goad him into submission. Remember covfefe? We all thought the poor orange poof hovered on the ledge of a nervous breakdown. Didn’t happen. Sad.
The time bomb is still ticking.
Liberals and progressives have all done our fair share of hand-wringing. We just don’t know what to do anymore.
How do you deal with a president who can’t be shamed, intimidated, reasoned, or negotiated with?
BTW, Batman had to deal with this same dilemma in Dark Knight. Remember? Batman had to adapt. So shall we.
We don’t even know for sure if we can vote out the joker president come next election. Maybe we can. Maybe we can undo all the vote-hacking and gerrymandering that’s gone down in the last decade.
But maybe we can’t. Maybe we’re totally screwed.
We’ve described our president as a child for almost two years now. Sure, we meant that mostly as an insult.
But it’s actually good advice.
Think about what you do with a child. You see, I’ve been reading parenting books. I’ll be a parent soon.
Plus, I’m a teacher. I’ve been dealing with immature adolescents for a decade now. When you want to motivate a baby, there’s one great trick. It also works on pets, and circus animals.
It’s called positive reinforcement. Just one instrument in the handy tool bag offered to us by B.F. Skinner, long ago.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Our president is, like, 70 years old. Shouldn’t he know how to act like an adult? Yes, he should. But he doesn’t. You have to work with world you live in. Not the world you want.
