Jimmy Kimmel's brilliant little Jujitsu act on his show Tuesday night to troll people into signing up for the Affordable Care Act is as much a lesson in human psychology (at least the Homo Trumpus Insapiens kind) as it is a PSA to get Americans health-insured. What it shows is that Trumpublicans will literally risk their own, their families' and their fellow citizens' lives because of the name on the health care program (that they themselves cynically concocted).
Kimmel didn’t crack many jokes during his pitch. In fact, he was quite sincere about it as he described the program’s many benefits and urged people to sign up during the open enrollment period. The only change was the name, which Kimmel justified by noting that the Trump administration was now in charge of the program.
What a difference five letters can make!
In this case, the reasons for Obama Derangement Syndrome are not that hard to explain (look no further than the birther-in-chief currently squatting in the oval office), but it begs the question of how other irrational wedge issues that shouldn't be controversial could be similarly repackaged to avoid triggering the panic button in the modern conservative's fragile ego.
In the case of climate change, you'd think that shifting policy and conversation towards the economic benefits of clean energy would be the ticket, but as recent reports of federal jobs retraining program sign-up rates in coal country below 20 percent show, programs like that alone won't do.
What it will probably take is for Trump's cynical promise to bring back coal jobs to go up in flames like the foolhardy repeal attempts of "Obamacare.” At that point folks like Jimmy Kimmel can start rebranding the federal retraining programs instituted under Obama into “TrumpTraining” or something.
Likewise, the U.S. would rejoin the Paris Accord but it would be called the “Trump Accord.” The Iran Nuclear Deal will be the “Trump Nuclear Deal,” and Comprehensive Immigration Reform will be “Trumpigration.”
However, TrumpRussia will always be TrumpRussia, so once this blowhard goes down, the names on these common sense policies will have to be replaced with whatever reactionary flavor-du-jour comes next.
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