I’ll admit it—I’m mesmerized.
Like a deviant caught staring at a disgusting
video, I’m drawn to this unproductive, dramatic, often calamitous, national
spectacle. To Trump.
Utterly spellbound, I can’t look away.
Since childhood, I’ve immersed myself
in books, always those which were exciting . . . almost all focused on the human condition,
full of conflict and drama. In every
case I couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t turn away until I saw how the story ended.
To me, as a child stuck on an isolated, heavily-forested ranch, those books
were more compelling than my everyday life . . . because how breathless can a
child remain over a lot of beautiful but quiescent spruce, fir, and pine trees?
Now, as an adult, I’m once more caught
up in an ongoing drama. But this one is real. This one matters. In some ways my well-being depends on how it
ends. (Will I continue breathing clean air, drinking pure water?) And so do the
lives, most of them more intently than mine, of millions of others. To these
millions the story’s ending will determine their ability to make a living, the nature,
good or bad, of their social interactions, and most assuredly, their level of
healthcare. At the fingertips of an
unpredictable narcissist lie decisions which can determine how long most
Americans will live.
It gets worse: the whims of an
ignoramus may affect the very survival of our planet.
From the story’s start I was both
amazed and repulsed . . . that so many Americans were taking seriously a possible
leader who reviled the press and all his opponents, who lied in every speech,
and who possessed zero qualifications.
Once elected, his goal was narrow,
disingenuous, and dangerous: because they weren’t his ideas, he vowed to undo
every beneficial ruling made by his predecessor—and also to appoint leaders who
would destroy the very bureaus they were chosen to lead. Scott Pruitt, of EPA, once
sued to rescind all efforts to curtail environmental pollutants. Now as leader, he tries to unravel every
beneficial rule. Betsy DeVos not only knows little about public schools, she heavily
favors charters. Now she heads the Department
of Education.
On a continuous basis, Trump has
cancelled Federal support for the Arts, for programs like Head Start, for Teen
Pregnancy Prevention, for Hate Group Opposition, for International Family
Planning, for Investigative Science. Forget big pharma: Only government
scientists like those in the CDC and NIH, have the resources and the will to unlock
the antibiotic that will curb the latest, uncontrollable pathogen. (A micro-organism,
by the way, that threatens to go on a world-wide killing spree.)
Look around: if the cause is exemplary,
Trump has taken away its funding.
So of course I’m watching, day by day.
Reading everything. Listening to all the words, Tamping down fear.
Who can look away for a moment—who can
fail to hope the story ends the way it should. That this . . . well, this unglued failure of a man continues
his steady deterioration. That he becomes so unthinkable, so lost in his own
ego, that he, or others, will ensure that he disappears from the White House
forever.
Only then will America return to a government that
is rational, objective, and qualified.
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