I apologize for lingering over this, but it is ever-present in my field of view, and it’s growing increasingly infuriating and unacceptable. I feel like I need to write until I stumble onto the exact proper turns of phrase, somehow capturing the essence of my anger and dis-ease.

In simple words, It’s Donald Trump. In addition, it’s the apparent willingness of most Republican members of Congress to back him up, to go along with his insidious emptiness and have the temerity to double down on embracing the mob boss chic.

It has been difficult to shake the feeling that Mike Johnson and the rest are morphing into biblically illiterate zombies, on some sort of mission to remake America into a place where no sane person would want to live: an isolated dystopia, an ecological disaster, a bleak, miserable landscape characterized by poverty and prejudice and negligence, ruled by a handful of owned, misguided fish out of water and an angry, judgmental God.

How hateful and un-American are they willing to get? We appear to be on the road to find out.

Who the hell can be excited about celebrating our 250^th birthday? What is there to get excited about, right now? What are we celebrating? Will we be told what we should be celebrating?

Who, and what, are we?!

Even if it’s all an act, what good is it? Is this what people aspire to, the role model that provides inspiration?

A POTUS worth his or her salt won’t behave this way. Period. There’s no 3D chess, no strategy other than what will lead to financial windfalls for him and his family, and implementation of Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation.

Everyone should stop holding out hope, waiting for the moment when confirmation arrives and Donald Trump is proven to be the genius his followers and TV network mouthpieces claim him to be. That’s not, nor was it ever, going to happen.

I’ve never found the comments people make about his hands and skin and hair to be in good taste. Pretty cheap, easy targets. There are much more substantive blemishes on which to focus: he is a walking, talking conflict of interests, he’s not a patriot, he’s not a true leader. He’s just a grifter, a damaged soul with a big mouth and a truth impediment. He’s tone deaf, arrogant, needy, vengeful, and socially awkward. He doesn’t care that he burns bridges. He prefers to go it alone, but lacks the tools needed to attempt such a course of action.

He quashes dissent, never learns from mistakes– because in his mind he doesn’t make mistakes. In his own head, he’s the best thinker, smarter than doctors and scientists and diplomats and generals.

Only an ignoramus thinks this way. Or maybe a teenager still wet behind the ears.

I always end up arriving at the same conclusion: Trump is a really bad joke. He’s POTUS, but it will always be astounding that he’s POTUS.

Making fun of people, coveting— then receiving —someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize; a train of thought that’s mostly focused on tributes to himself while the country is being disemboweled, limping towards an uncertain future.

He’s neglectful, blind, and corrupt to his core. He’s irresponsible, perhaps unredeemable, a real-life caricature of hollowness who continues to be propped up by an army of sycophants just along for the ride.

Sometimes it feels like a bad dream from which we can’t awaken, or an untenable situation from which we can’t extricate ourselves. It often seems like everything is fuel for him. He is maddeningly efficient, alert when he wants to be, able to convert praise or criticism into something that motivates and energizes.

He is endlessly vengeful, entirely self-involved, and very pliable. Feed him a compliment and he’ll be your puppy dog. Until he can’t use you anymore.

He’s a sad, sad, somehow dangerous man who needs to be relieved of his duties. The whole world knows this, but everyone else has their problems, too.

And let’s face it: some players on the world stage are feeling like they have us right where they want us. They’re in no hurry to see him leave. He’s perfect for the job.

If, someday, we get to speak of the Trump era in the past tense, will we harbor any regrets, or anger? Or will we be in a rush to move on, as if it never happened—like people who have experienced some level of trauma?

Personally, I have done enough handwringing and reflecting and verbal lashing out to fill what feels like several lifetimes, but it somehow hasn’t been enough to scuttle the nagging feeling that this nation and much of the rest of the world have been grievously wronged and deceived, mishandled and ignored, and led down a path strewn with the grievances of a deprived nitwit, a lightweight, out-of-his-element numskull with anger issues who somehow got elected twice to the office of President of the United States.

Donald Trump is the most visible target of our disdain, but of course there are many others: the ones who enabled him and perpetuated the lies, the fellow impostors and sycophants he nominated for high-profile jobs, the people at the Heritage Foundation who were probably only too happy to have such a needy narcissist in place to mold and shape and feed off the bottom for them.

At numerous points along the way, we should have seen and heard enough to discount any hint of seriousness he might have been able to muster. It’s not like there weren’t signs of trouble from the beginning, when he made his grand, over-the-top entrance. That in itself should have been a tip-off. Maybe even enough to dissuade.

Instead, then came making fun of a disabled reporter, the “shithole countries” commentary, along with the misogynistic pablum about how celebrities can get away with all sorts of stuff. And he somehow still managed to achieve sainthood among his loyal base.

It’s been all downhill ever since, not unlike the direction of that f*#!ing escalator.