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Breaking Down Trump’s Recent Press Conference (For Healthy People)

I got ya — I will make this as painless as a sinking ship.

Carlyn Beccia
7 min readJan 8, 2025
The Sad Parting, a 1912 illustration | Public Domain

The country is divided.

Not between Left vs. Right, Democrats vs. Republicans, The rich vs. the poor, or MAGA vs. Musk. The country is divided between healthy people and masochists like myself.

The healthy folks? They’ve shut out the chaos. They know to survive the next four years, it’s best to seek refuge in quiet places free from constant news pings. I liken these folks to the musicians on the sinking Titanic. Their attitude is, “Well, the ship is going down, so we might as well go down singing in a suit.”

The news consumption masochists like myself are clinging to the lifeboats, screaming, “Save me! Save me!” and driving their friends and family crazy with their constant news updates. (Sorry. Sort of.)

Oh, and there might be some rich billionaires hogging all the lifeboats in this metaphor.

Either way, we are on this sinking ship together, so we must find a healthy equilibrium between news overload and denial. As Plato once mused, “If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.”

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Carlyn Beccia
Carlyn Beccia

Written by Carlyn Beccia

Award-winning author of 13 books. My latest: 10 AT 10: The Surprising Childhoods of 10 Remarkable People, MONSTROUS: The Lore, Gore, & Science. CarlynBeccia.com

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