So, I’ve been thinking about Donald Trump WAY more than I ever desired, more than my heart and soul can bear, and for that reason alone his victory is a dreadful, dreadful thing, a kind of assault, a violation.

And yet, there’s something that rubs me the wrong way about the coverage of Trump’s behavior on Twitter.

As has been widely reported, he is an avid Twitter user. But, unlike President Obama, who has a professional on staff who Tweets on his behalf, Trump tweets on his own, in all his buffoonish, goonish ugliness.

Saturday Night Live has thankfully been relentless in their lampooning of Trump, thanks largely to Alec Baldwin‘s genius impersonation, but their latest stab, a skit specifically about Trump’s use of Twitter, didn’t make me laugh.

Why?

Because I found it WAY more disturbing than funny.

As much as I feel justified in demonizing Trump as the demon that he is, it must also be pointed out that Donald Trump is the product of American culture, not its creator. Notice how the SNL skit is about Trump retweeting the nutjob tweets of others. Not that Trump doesn’t post enough of his own nutjob tweets, but he’s engaged in a wider culture.

It’s one thing, trying to get one’s head around the fact that this one dangerous man-child will be ascending to the most powerful position on the planet, and another thing entirely to consider the bigger picture, the Petri dish from which he emerged, a dish festering with materialism, celebrity worship, and reality TV.

How many more Trumps-in-the-making are out there, and who is talking about the paradigm shift needed in America in order to stop the production of them?

The former question is too scary to spend a lot of time thinking about.

The latter, well, as the 12-step programs say, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

America, we clearly have a problem.

Filed under: Fish & Bicycles Tagged: Alec Baldwin, America, culture, Donald Trump, politics, Saturday Night Live, SNL, social media, Twitter, U.S.