I’m not a mean person. I don’t wish misery, but this morning, after a night of terrible dreams searching for ways out of crumbling places, after reading this mornings news – The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, NY Mag, The Atlantic/Republic/Vanity Fair, after following David Frum on Twitter, listening to his interview on National Public Radio, following the Lit Hub link to Rebecca Solnik. I wished Donald Trump off the face of the planet in the most humiliating way possible.
Yes. Let it be broadcast on CNN.
I’m reading Symphony for the City of the Dead: Shostakovich in Leningrad. The city was brought to its knees by its own leader, clearing the path for the German army to finish it off, to break its neck and snuff its soul. I used to think of Trump as Hitler, but that was selling Hitler short, for wasn’t Hitler the genius manipulating Stalin to purge his military and weaken the people? Which Stalin proceeded to accomplish, out of his narcissism, his flaming death love, his cultural stupidity, his lack of curiosity, his arrested development – thereby weakening his people and his army? Is this not stupidity? Trump,we have just been told, is not stupid, for he has correctly identified a picture as that of a camel; he can draw a cube and a clock face set to a particular time. Wow. I bet Stalin would have done well, too.
But is Trump dangerous? America in 2018 is not Russia before WW2. We have never been oppressed under Tsars; we have always been the oppressors. The government hasn’t starved out the opposition, vanished millions of people, executed by decree, commanded people switch professions, ghettoize entire communities, forced confessions, closed off the borders, made the press the enemy of the people. Except for Native Americans, African Americans, Jews and Italians under former immigration quotas, women. Muslims, Mexicans, and children (by ruining the public school system.)
Dogs however are doing well, although we have to be watchful as Trump doesn’t seem to like them.
Witness the packing of the courts, the erasure of the opposition, the equation of truth with fake news, gerrymandering districts, voter restrictions, demonizing minorities, encouraging the far right, erasing regulations, stripping health care, denying science, ruining our coasts, denying aid for the poor…But our people aren’t passive. We have Our Revolution, the ACLU, Indivisible. We have mayors and corporations taking the place of our country at the Paris Accord. We have Barack Obama, bless him forever, in the best of shape.
Meanwhile, Trump, get out of my life.