Despite the fact that I am not a writer, some things must be written, so as to hang around long enough for others to take note and do something about them.
Take Donald Trump … please … as far away as possible.
It’s abundantly clear that Trump is a narcissist, delusional, self-centered cretin. He makes things up (lies) out of whole cloth, expecting everyone to believe what he says and love him for it. And people do!
That’s what I don’t understand. How can anyone take Donald Trump seriously as a candidate for the President of the United States?
That fact that tens of millions of potential voters express support for this buffoon, indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong with the people and culture of this country. Despite the fact of intelligent, charming and capable opponents in the coming elections, recent polls show a toss up for the outcome of the next election!
I just don’t know what to do about this. On the one hand I want to shout from the roof tops about the absurdity of this political situation. On the other hand, I want to crawl in a hole somewhere and pull the lid in after me. On a third hand, I’m glad we live in California on the Left Coast, where, at the very least, a Trump victory, or even loss, will have minimal effect on me and my wife. Not no effect, but at least minimal.
Since we don’t follow popular culture, don’t have cell phones, don’t watch TeeVee, walk and bicycle everywhere, don’t go shopping, cruise shipping or air planeing, we’re unaffected and mostly unaware of the vicissitudes of popular consumer culture. It’s out there, we bump into it now and then, but we find it repulsive and unattractive, and we just avert the eyes and walk on by.
When I was born in 1949, Harry Truman was President, not that I was aware of it in my infancy. The first President I was aware of was Dwight Eisenhower. I wasn’t aware of politics until I was in high school in the 60s.
My parents were divorced when I was 14, and and we moved back to Chadron, Nebraska where I was born. My mother worked as a nurse to support me and my brother and two sisters. We had a nice house, a car, a television, a console stereo, a piano and we lived a block and a half from the high school, six blocks from downtown. I delivered the Omaha World Herald and the Chadron Record, shoveled snow and mowed lawns in the neighborhood.
When I graduated from high school, I went to Chadron State College, the later alma mater of Tim Walz.
I lived a normal midwestern life, mostly unaware of strife in Iran and other international problems reported in the World-Herald. The memory of the Kennedy assassination faded, state and local politics were calm and unmarked.
Things political started to get weird with the disgrace and resignation of Richard Nixon, unto the unfortunate Jimmy Carter presidency, when his sage and thoughtful policies were attacked and belittled by a resurgent right. Things have never been the same since. The Reagan Republican victory set the stage for the insanity we experience in today’s election cycle.
I like to think that this too shall pass, but I wonder. Trump and his minions could do and have done so much damage to the government of the United States, even if he is defeated, again. There is such a widespread preponderance of ignorance, apathy, violence and inhumanity, fueled by advertising, social media, ubiquitous mobile phone distractions, and technological acculturation, I don’t know that what I think of as normality can ever be restored.
I suppose everyone reaches this stage in their 70s and 80s, when the world we grew up in slides into oblivion, down the porcelain parkway of social memory. We either struggle to maintain and promote our values and ideals, or we just let it go and step off into the abyss.
I won’t let it go.