In the past year or so the American
psyche has gone full schizophrenic, scattering paranoia across the rest of the
world.
The Trump Effect—abetted by a government
without expertise, experience, sufficient personnel, understanding, sanity,
sympathy, order, or any real plan—is pushing us all psychologically over the
edge in a maelstrom of cowering fear and dread.
What will the Orange Flufferbunny do
next? . . . we continually worry.
What norms will evaporate in the wake of
the strongman’s inner panic and Playtime in the Oval Office with Fox News and
Twitter?
Which nation’s skeptical leaders will be
paraded in front of the White House cameras as props for the president’s next
rant about Hillary Clinton and the millions of immigrants who illegally voted
for her in the November 2016 “rigged” election (by now, who can remember that
far back)?
How can a country raised on tabloid
language and reality television deal with the flood of runaway superlatives (“the
greatest,” “the best,” “disastrous,” “terrible”) that pepper Trump’s speech to
the near-exclusion of language that has any recognizable applicability? When
will the jackass in the Oval Office stop making transparently empty boasts
about having the “best words,” being the “greatest jobs president that God ever
created,” his “tremendous” appointments, or policies, or speaking skills, or
crowds?
How many AR-15 assault rifles will be aimed
at our children and their teachers while the gun lobby counts its profits and maintains
its stranglehold on Congress?
Which communities will cower in fear of
bankruptcy as tariffs on Chinese imports soar in Trump’s tit-for-tat world,
endangering millions of businesses and livelihoods in Trump’s Red America?
How long will it take for North Korea to
remind Our Dear Leader that it holds all the cards and will never surrender its
nuclear toys in the wake of empty bombast and threats from Washington?
How
significantly will Putin rig future American elections while Republicans are in
denial or—worse—in cahoots?
When will the American military be
deployed strategically to help America’s allies rather than marking time on the
Mexican border to prevent Latin American immigrants from entering the country?
How many military parades to tout the
glory of The Donald will wend their way down Pennsylvania Avenue to jeers and hoots
of derision?
Will the country ever recover from the
exodus of diplomatic, scientific, financial, economic, and military know-how as
the best and brightest scramble for the exits under an onslaught of insults,
leaks, disclosures, dismissals, and derisive backstabbing?
When will Congress grow a backbone to
counter its cowardice and greed?
How many more deadly floods, droughts, hurricanes,
tornadoes, polar air masses, historic tides, vanishing shorelines, wildfires,
blizzards, and nor’easters will it take to expose the ignorance and greed of climate
change deniers?
How can we teach our children kindness
and manners and recover our equanimity when the elected leader of the country
describes his own female aide Hope Hicks to her face—in the presence of two
Trump sons—as “the best piece of tail” her ex-boyfriend Corey Lewandowski will “ever
have”?
Can Americans imagine a time when we will
not cringe as Trump mauls the lessons of history, tramping around the globe
metaphorically, dismissively describing other countries without the requisite
number of gold-plated bathroom fixtures as “shitholes”?
How many more relatively sane
administration heads will roll and fearfully unleashed new hires embark on tearing
down the fabric of American life that took so many years to create?
Will there ever come a time when Trump
will climb out of our skulls and leave us to pick up the pieces of the American
Dream without his bloated, twisted, malignant presence?
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