The following drivel is Matt "the Johnson's" latest edition in his ongoing and never-ending "I Hate Trump" mini series.

And this bastard's the opinion page editor?

It's no wonder the community blogs were eliminated over there.

If there's one thing a dedicated leftist just can't tolerate it's opposing points of view.

Anyway, I thought I'd share it so you guys could have something to laugh at while we wait for Safe's hard hitting blog tomorrow morning...

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This is an open letter to anyone who really, really doesn’t want to read another article about President Trump. I hear from you almost every day, and your criticism has started to sound something like this: “Your hatred for Trump has become an unhealthy obsession. Aren’t you capable of writing about anything else?” Well, yes. I’ve spent most of my adult life writing about other subjects. But Trump is a singular phenomenon — probably even a once-in-a-generation phenomenon — and it would be ignoble and unwise to avoid this fact (even for a second).

Make no mistake: the ascendancy of Donald J. Trump is the political story of our time, which is why it’s absurd to think every article with the word “Trump” in the headline is about the same thing. Each one could be about a vast range of subjects: nuclear brinksmanship, health care, the media, immigration, the weaknesses in a democratic system that allowed an erratic, unprincipled opportunist to assume the highest office in the land. Next time you think, “Ugh, another article about Trump,” just remember it could be about anything from his fondness for McDoubles to a tweet about Snoop Dogg to the nuclear annihilation of a few million people on the Korean Peninsula. That should really be enough unpredictability to warrant a click.

But what about everything else that’s happening in the world? Isn’t the nonstop Trump coverage leaving other issues underemphasized? In a recent interview, the British author and journalist Douglas Murray complained that, even in his country, Trump has become all-encompassing: “After almost everything that happens in the U.K. — in the last year or so — (people) say, ‘How will this affect Donald Trump?’ Stop talking about Donald Trump. Allow other things in the world to exist.”

This point is so easy to make because it’s palatable to almost everyone. Even the people who cover Trump for a living or criticize him often will usually acknowledge that doing so can be exhausting. He has become such an inflated, oxygen-sucking force in our lives that you probably can’t even remember the last time you went a day without hearing or seeing something about him. Whether it’s a tweet or a breaking news story or a comment from a coworker, he’ll push your other priorities and thoughts aside as effortlessly as the prime minister of Montenegro at a NATO meeting.

In other words, I get it. Arguments about Trump can be simultaneously savage and tiresome — not exactly an endearing combination to many people. But there are a whole lot of good reasons why these arguments must persist (the good ones, anyway).

One of the strangest unintended consequences of the Trump presidency has been its stimulation of healthy debates about foundational issues. For example, when Trump exalts Vladimir Putin, questions the value of our NATO alliances, denigrates international institutions, etc., he forces us to justify certain assumptions about the sustainability of the post-World War II international order. Why does the principle of collective defense matter? Why should the preservation and expansion of human rights and democratic norms be core objectives of our foreign policy? Why is nuclear nonproliferation a good thing? He did the same with trade: What impact does globalization have on American workers and consumers? How can we mitigate its harmful effects (such as lost jobs for low-skilled workers)? Do our existing free trade agreements make sense? How do they work?

From climate change to immigration, Trump has catalyzed debates about first principles and called political orthodoxies into question. But here’s the thing: he has generally done so by accident. He’ll make some absurd suggestion (we should impose a 45 percent tariff on China, permit more countries to develop nuclear weapons, slash the State Department’s funding by 32 percent, etc.), and this will be the impetus for a wider discussion about nonproliferation, free trade, foreign aid or whatever else he’s blathering about. Trump is a common denominator for many of the most important issues we face.

But here’s the more depressing reason why the exhaustive coverage of our president must persist: discussions about Trump are discussions about the character of this country. We elected a man who mocked a disabled reporter on TV, insulted Sen. John McCain for being a prisoner of war, boasted about grabbing and kissing women without their permission, slapped his name on a fraudulent “university” that swindled vulnerable Americans out of their savings (and forced the victims into protracted legal battles when they tried to get their money back), and insisted that our first black president couldn’t possibly have been born in the country.

The horrible thing about this list is how abbreviated it is.

Trump’s presidency is built around a bleak portrait of the United States and a desolate view of humanity. Imagine if you listed all the scapegoats Trump has cynically maligned since he announced his candidacy in June 2015 — our country would look like the most paranoid place on Earth. He described undocumented immigrants as “rapists” who are out to displace American workers and defile their communities. Journalists are “enemies of the American people” who invent sources and dump page after page of “FAKE NEWS” on their readers. China is “humiliating” us, “ripping us off” and costing us “tens of thousands of jobs.” Meanwhile, the most effective tool to counter China’s economic rise — the Trans-Pacific Partnership — was a “continuing rape of our country” that other countries wanted because it put the United States at “a very, very big economic disadvantage.”

Everyone hates us and we hate them! And Trump doesn’t just want to turn Americans against…well, most of the world. He wants to turn us against one another. That’s why he constantly appeals to our basest tribal instincts by making inflammatory comments about polarizing issues: flag burning or student protests at Berkeley or the “alt-left” in Charlottesville or NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.

Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, Trump has exposed our alarming tolerance for dishonesty. He lied about the size of his inauguration crowd. He lied about the “millions” of Americans who voted illegally. He lied about his comments on climate change (which he called a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”). He lied about his plan to create a registry of American Muslims. He lied about President Obama’s “wiretap” of Trump Tower. He lied when he said the murder rate is “the highest it’s been in 47 years.” He lied when he said the U.S. is the “highest taxed nation in the world.”

I’m not surprised that Trump does all of these things — he’s a self-obsessed demagogue who doesn’t care how much damage he inflicts on our norms and institutions. But I’ll never understand why so many Americans let him get away with it, and that’s what I intend to keep writing about.

Contact Matt Johnson at (785) 295-1282 or @mattjj89 on Twitter.

Kevin McGinty