Tuesday, January 17, 2017

TR*MP

I cannot remember ever having been so riddled with anxiety about the future of our country and the world. There has never been a comparable situation before this. We are on the eve of inaugurating a "president" of the United States--I use the scare quotes advisedly--whose unpreparedness for the office is monumental, who bursts with misplaced confidence in his own ill-advised and uninformed opinions, whose "policies" shift from day to day, if not from hour to hour, and whose mercurial temperament is a threat to everyone who dares oppose or criticize him.

Back in the day, when George W. Bush was first "elected" president of millions Americans by a vote of nine members of the Supreme Court, I was outraged; when he was re-elected after four years of disastrous leadership that included the rash, irrational and foolhardy decision to invade Iraq, I was dismayed and bewildered by the collective action of the American electorate. I stumbled into the blogosphere, in my bewilderment, and started "The Bush Diaries"--a blog in which I wrote a daily letter to the President, somewhat irreverent but not unkind in tone, to chronicle my discontent.

Now, today, I confess being beyond dismayed, beyond bewildered, beyond even outrage. As I say, I am riddled with anxiety. I lose sleep, imagining the chaos that Tr*mp can unleash upon the world. The thought of this man behind the desk in the Oval Office fills me with dismay. I find the prospect of his wife--God bless her, I have no quarrel with her--as the successor to Michele Obama unthinkable. I look at his plutocratic family and his plutocratic circle of advisers and I despair for those whose social circumstances differ from theirs and set them beyond their realm of comprehension, let alone compassion.

Tr*mp was not elected by the popular vote, but by an antiquated system that discounts the choice of an overwhelming majority of voters. His election was assured by the chicanery of a hostile foreign power and a cabal of those who hated his opponent. Before taking the oath, he has proved himself unworthy of the office in a multitude of ways, both personal and political. He has shown himself capable of truly despicable behavior, and utterly incapable of the responsible maturity required of what we take undue pride in calling"the leader of the free world."

And yet, though we all know this, though even his Republican Party must know this in their hearts... we are collectively elevating this unworthy man to a position of power unequalled in the world. If I believed in a God, I would be asking him to help us.

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