The Trump Era

"Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?"
         Skeeter Davis, "The End of the World," 1963

I find plenty to write about every day.

I don't think the end of the world is imminent, but the country is going through dramatic political change. It is an era. Historians will give it a name, like "The Second Great Awakening," or "Jacksonian Democracy," or "the Progressive Era," or "McCarthyism."

When one is in the era, it is hard to make sense of it. Other song lyrics from the same time as Skeeter Davis' capture that, including Bob Dylan's 1962 song:

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

The changes happening were out there in the atmosphere, hard to pin down, everywhere and nowhere. The wind. The zeitgeist. This may later be known as "The Trump Era." Or "The Great Unraveling." Or "The Pre-War Era." It will not be called, as was the time that James Monroe was president, the "Era of Good Feelings." Of that I am confident.

I write this blog less because I am trying to explain the zeitgeist blowing in the wind than because I am try to understand it. How do I know what I think until I read what I wrote?

Many readers of this blog also read Heather Cox Richardson' s near-daily blog. It is excellent. She has 2.7 million followers. 

New and less discovered is the three-times-a-week blog by a fellow Medford resident, Bruce Van Zee.

It, too, is excellent. I recommend it. Sometimes he writes from his expertise as a former physician, but more often from the point of view of a person angry and indignant over the corrupt, anti-democratic, cruel policies of Donald Trump. It is available to everyone without a paywall.

I will share a few excerpts.

January 14 post: Fascism
This ideology of Miller and Trump is most assuredly Fascist and represents the most serious threat to the continuation of our 250-year-old Democracy since at least the Civil War. . . . It is a rebuke to 300 years of Enlightenment thinking and human progress.

One would think that Christians would have serious problems with this philosophy because it is so lacking in empathy and compassion, virtues Christ taught. But, apparently, MAGA has managed to purge that kind of “blasphemy” out of Christian Nationalism. 

January 12 post: Graft and naked corruption
It’s pretty clear that early in his second term, Trump systematically dismantled the very parts of government designed to prevent and detect malfeasance and corruption . . . as well as most of the Inspector Generals and Whistle-blower apparatus within the government. And he did so to make it easier for his kleptocracy. But this is getting insufficient attention in large measure due to Trump’s skill at diversion.

You gotta hand it to Trump. With all the corruption and self-dealing, crypto deals, pardons for sale, transactions benefitting cronies or his family’s fortunes, lawlessness, and fraud; he still manages to distract with ICE raids, Venezuela invasions, plans for capturing Greenland, warnings of” invasions” of immigrants, and so forth.

January 10 post: Political violence

While on the subject of gaslighting, sorry – it should be called LYING! The White House published a new website a few days ago dedicated to its version of the events of Jan. 6. I need not tell you that it is an abomination of lies that any sapient human being who witnessed the abundant videos from that infamous day would recognize as such. It is simply unfathomable to me that anyone would believe this garbage.

January 8: Greenland

In the increasingly bizarre and unhinged world of Trump II, we now get this:

“White House reviewing options to take control of Greenland. Military force not excluded.”

Pax Americana--risks being trashed by Trump’s maddingly ill-informed, narrowly self-interested plans. And while he and his team are up to this nonsense, he not only antagonizes most of our traditional allies, but also ignores most of the population he was sworn to serve, the bulk of Americans who are struggling with finding jobs, affording essentials, losing their health insurance, etc. National suicide is an apt description.

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