Donald Trump Is Turning Us All Into Boring Pundits from an article in 2017

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/donald-trump-is-turning-us-all-into-boring-pundits.html

Over Memorial Day weekend, my wife, Alice, and a bunch of our closest friends rented a house in upstate New York with barely any internet, lots of beautiful meadows and mountains to look at, and a big living room where we could sit around until late at night.

These are not people I have any trouble feeling like myself around. Hanging out with them is always easy and always natural. I don’t ever have to worry that something I’ve said has landed badly, or that they’re not having fun with me even though they say they are, or that they’re thinking secret thoughts about me of any kind. These are people who know and get my natural registers. I am legible to them in my authentic state, and I like to think they’re legible to me in theirs.

The president’s arrival had an unmistakable and singular effect: In an instant, he would cause us all to stop speaking like ourselves. It was like talking about Trump made our voices come out of our mouths wrong—as if, in discussing current events, we were turning ourselves into parrots who generically repeated stuff we’d read in the papers, seen on TV, and heard on NPR.

A few weeks earlier, I’d had the following conversation with Alice while we walked our dog.

“I mean, is it time to start thinking about impeachment as a real possibility?” she asked.

“You would think, but then, the Republicans control all of Congress! It’ll never happen,” I replied.

“True, but even they will eventually reach a breaking point.”