STORM CLOUDS GATHERING

Are you afraid yet? I sure am.

“At this time, we can see storm clouds gathering.” -- Jim Mattis

For the first time since our country was torn apart fifty years ago by the Vietnam War, I’m afraid for the future. Our President is a lunatic, unhinged from reality, and a danger to the planet. 

His bizarre and disturbing behavior is unconstrained by ethics, truth, reality, or, increasingly, by law. It is, however, predictable. No matter what inexplicable thing he does or says, look close enough and you’ll find what’s in it for our malignant narcissist President:  money, votes, power, and fame. Always, 100 percent of the time, it’s firstly about himself.

Our man in the White House will say and do anything to get what he wants. There are no limits to his amoral pathology. These are scary times.

I’ve always believed this about politicians: No matter how bad things look, they can always get worse. Trump broke my rule. I concede that even slimy Mike Pence would be better right now. 

That, however, is no option since Trump’s not going anywhere until the end of next year. We’re stuck watching The Leader of the Free World grow ever more detached from reality, erratic in his megalomania, and incoherent in his blather.

As bad as things look today at the end of summer, they are going to get a whole lot worse between now and the 2020 election. More Trump-fueled hate will inspire the spilling of more blood of innocents, leading to more “thoughts and prayers” and little else. More pollution laws will be gutted, more natural areas defiled. More farmers will go broke. Our suicidal race to climate-change catastrophe will accelerate. And all that could be the least of it.

What’s going to happen during the next fourteen months as reality crushes in, and Trump sees his reelection slipping away? What crazy shit will he try in order to hold onto power? Slash everybody’s taxes? Sue the New York Times? Launch the Trump TV network? Try to buy Cuba? (Or sell Puerto Rico?) Put tariffs on tacos? Find Jesus? Drop some bombs? Get Melania pregnant? Start a war?

And what, then, in November 2020 when, after all his madness sputters out, he still loses? Dispute the results? Cry foul! and fraud!? Refuse to get out of bed? Blame it on the Deep State? Declare a national emergency, delay a transition, and get the Supreme Court to find some excuse to throw or nullify the election?

Trump is nuts. He’s capable of anything.

I know, I know. “It can’t happen here.” But I keep picturing newsreels of pre-WWII Germany. The Nazi rallies; the slogans and chants; the charismatic strongman with his silly hair, lies, and jingoism; the throngs of adoring, ordinary people; the nationalism and racism; attacks on free press; violence against the “other”; and the cowardly silence of enablers and opportunists. That all seemed like ancient, Nazi history until Charlottesville, and those grainy, black-and-white images were replaced by neo-Nazis in hi-def color, marching with Walmart Tiki torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” “Fine people,” declared our President.

Trump is “The Chosen One” to his flock, proclaiming in the last days before the 2016 election that he would bring “the change you’ve been waiting for your whole life.” As if he were sent by the Almighty, he promised: “I alone can save you.”

He’s embraced by God-loving people as an answer to their prayers. Evangelical preachers fawn over him. This guy! The most self-centered, venal, mendacious, amoral, incompetent President of my lifetime. (And I lived through Nixon!)

That’s one hell of a Faustian bargain these Christians have made to get their judges appointed, and their freedom restored to once again be able to say “Merry Christmas.” Is there no limit to their fatuity? 

Their faith in their MAGA hero, however, is going to be stretched beyond imagining as his pace of corruption accelerates: more lies, scandals, incompetence, lunacy, broken promises, leaks, exposes, and worse.

Which is why Trump will lose in 2020. Badly. 

That’s why I’m afraid. What kind of damage can he and his inept and corrupt band of sycophants do in the meantime in a futile attempt to deny reality? 

History will not be kind to Trump. It will reveal him for his true, pathological self. It will collate his abuses and crimes, and his damage to our institutions. Like other disgraced, self-serving leaders who once were loved by their base (again, Nixon and Agnew come to mind), Trump will be forever reviled as a tragic aberration.

In the meantime, what can I do but speak what I believe. For to remain silent is to be complicit in the great crimes against our country and our ethos that now are underway.

As if warnings from Jim Mattis, Trump’s own Secretary of Defense for two years, aren’t scary enough, now comes Sheryl Crow (“Story of Everything”): 

“Sometimes I break down, these are surely troubled times, oh yes they are.”

My friend, John, tells me to chill out. That all this political mayhem is distant from our lives. That my hens’ eggs will be as delicious tomorrow as they were yesterday. He makes a very good point. It’s a reminder to savor the beauty all around us while it lasts, even as the sky in the East grows steadily darker.

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