Enough, already!

Please, spare me any more jokes and Facebook memes about Sharpies!

The tendency of both President Trump and the press to blow something way of proportion has been demonstrated once again.

The president could have admitted he was wrong–blaming his "mistake" on bad information received from an underling–and that would of mercifully been the end of it. But he never makes mistakes, as he has told us so often, and he never, ever will admit to a mistake, as we have seen just as often.

The press–particularly organizations like CNN and USA Today–could have chalked it up as another awkward Trump misstatement, and let it go at that, but they continue to beat their drums about it. And the more they talk about it, the more he pushes back about it. Who knows how many words have been written about the presidential Sharpie?

There are, of course, serious issues behind all of this hoop-la.

For starters, President Trump, unlike most more-ordinary human beings, is never wrong. In order to prove he is right when he has been found to be wrong, he is willing to twist any agency of the government he can get his hands on participate in his mistake. That's a problem because it makes him sound like every self-obsessed dictator in human history.

But it's a problem for the press as well. Focusing endless attention on a relatively small matter, the press mostly ignores the major damage being done at the same time by a government bureaucracy accountable to no on but President Trump and his tweeted whims. This distraction from what really matters, from what is really eating away at our national psyche and health, is no doubt well-planned.

Which leads all this being our–the American peoples'– problem. The more we are chew on the silly and the ultimately inconsequential, the less likely it is that we will recognize the deadly poisons which government of, by, and for the people is being fed every day by the Trump administration and a Republican Party that has lost its way.

Thanks for reading. Now, please put your Sharpies away.