[USATODAY] The activists, academics, politicians and journalists whose frantic daily search for outrage in something someone said somewhere have left us a presidential campaign focused on menstruation and reports that Fox News chairman Roger Ailes called Donald Trump to whisper sweet nothings in his ear. It's like the boys' locker room in middle school without the air of sophistication.So it's little wonder that a good chunk of Americans think something is wrong. Our country has real problems that we far too frequently put aside so we can revel in public floggings delivered by our linguistic morality police. If they don't deliver solutions, they at least deliver ratings.
So, as the grievance-industrial complex profitably fills its prisons with the latest arrestees, we're stuck in a crisis that will never end. The world is stuck with a sad reality: Donald Trump is not alone. Politicians, celebrities and big business bosses, just like actual people, say stupid and insensitive things.
The landfall of Hurricane Trump couldn't have come at a better time. For Americans who'd like Washington to focus on reality and not the pointless controversy of the moment, the flippant billionaire seems to be a source of the problem, but they have it all wrong. He's the solution. With Storm Donald and his whirlwind of offensive comments now blowing by at 140 ratings points an hour, there might be some hope that, in the chaos, our farcical national debate
... an expenditure of personal wind at the national level that leads to face-making and other histrionics but can't be shown to have ever solved an issue ...
might change.
That certainly won't happen anytime soon and certainly not because Trump himself will turn the conversation toward substance. No, the change will come only after the storm blows itself out, leaving in its wake a more substantive debate among more credible candidates. But before the tempest stills, Trumps unique combination of ego and bluster might turn the speech police into the laughing stocks they deserve to be.
Maybe last weekend's blood feud between Trump and Megyn Kelly of Fox News won't turn our self-appointed language guardians into a punchline, but just wait a day. TV anchors, opposing politicians and the social media mob can't get worked into a good frenzy before another Category Five Trumpism flattens the next taboo. By the time the tut-tutting morality police show up, Hurricane Donald's path of destruction has moved on to another state or another network.