The shit, my friends, is hitting the proverbial fan.
I’m ecstatic, needless to say, about Trump’s thumping, giddy almost. He’s the vilest and most villainous character I’ve met in fact or fiction; he makes Milton’s Satan a pleasant dinner partner by comparison (he’s witty, that Satan); scarier even than Polyphemus, who munches hapless shipwrecks for snacks.
To hell with him – the hell of humiliation and destitution, where, unlike his pal Jeffrey Epstein, he may moan long. Like a brutal parent, he robbed me of my hopes for humanity’s improvement, that we might learn from our mistakes and outgrow our growing pains. I used to believe (don’t laugh) the old malarkey about humans being God’s masterpiece, His capolavoro, His Sistine chapel or King Lear or B-minor mass, where His experiments conduced to perfection. No longer. If God created us, He should have discarded us as a disappointing draft. Trump and his sycophants, acolytes and greedy abettors taught me. Many of us, maybe most, given a choice choose wrong: greed over goodness, mischief over mildness, lies over truth. For a decade, Trump’s audacity has kept me amazed and aghast. Humans can’t be so obnoxious or obtuse, I’d bellow, they just can’t! I was wrong.
Trump taught me to hate. Younger, I blushed to hate, thinking it betrayed weakness. Real men don’t groan, they grin and bear it, stiff upper lip, etc. Now I know hate measures love. As fiercely as we love we loathe those who imperil our love. I love the American idea, our savvy Founders, the heroes who defined and defended it: that people can govern themselves and, however haltingly and painfully, learn to collaborate for the common good – that is among mankind’s brainstorms, a wow and then some, right up there with fire, the wheel, penicillin, and air-conditioning. Trump trampled the American idea, is trouncing it still, condemning truth, justice, decency, courtesy, respect. His daily disparagement of America makes democracy less tenable. So yes, I hate.
He also – inadvertently – supplied me a vocation. I love to write; Trump gave me reason to rail. Sometimes (puppy Henry points out) barking is a moral obligation, however hard on the ears. If the house is burning down, you don’t play Wordle. My monodies became monotonous, I know, it couldn’t be helped, for the threat ballooned. Maybe a little alliteration or Latinate lexicon might mask the absence of fresh thought.
Trump is not dead yet. He and his must be pummeled till we’re sure they are. His enablers must be disabled, every one. If Trump survives, democracy can’t. If we the people, knowing what we know, reelect this moral mutant, we’ll deserve our demise. We’ll have proven what tyrants assert, democracy is an impotent ineffective pipedream, doomed to collapse. We must empty our hearts and wallets to prevent such a debacle. Defeating Trump is the battle of my lifetime, my World War.
It won’t be easy. Humans get crazy when you steal their gods. Trump has been a god to many of his admirers, their identity and importance, in whom they repose their hopes. He can do no wrong. Any action against him is necessarily dastardly and unjust. The jurors and judge and unsympathetic observers of this hush money trial must be evil agents, colluding in a vast conspiracy to destroy their paragon. Trump’s devotees will have no choice, many will believe, but to give their all to defend their divinity, even their lives. There will be violence, perhaps deaths. The rhetoric will be bone-chilling. We’ll all feel panicky – yet persist we must – till November Fifth and beyond.
Our lives depend on it.