According to NPR, most voters agree that the 2026 midterms are all about Donald Trump. And voters disapprove.

How can it not be all about Trump? How could it have ever been about anyone else since the campaign for 2016 began? We’ve been watching, in real time, the dismantling of our nation at the hand of a spoiled brat with daddy issues, and all we’ve been able to muster is a paltry, “Hey, he can’t do that.”

But then he does it– “It” being a million different things that have brought us to a point where he can unapologetically kick media reps he doesn’t like out of the White House Press Corps and then all but admit that he’s aware of what he’s doing. It’s a press ban, in full violation of the First Amendment, and what are we gonna do about that?

All we’ve ever been able to do about any of it is lean on good sense and lawyers and judges with a conscience, and demonstrations in the streets. But can’t you see, on the horizon, a moment when things are going to change quickly from voicing our dissent to fighting for our way of life with more than just words and signs?

Now is when we can expect the foreign influences, the Heritage Foundation and MAGA nuts and their minions—including Trump, because I refuse to believe that all that’s unfolded has come solely from the witch’s brew of spiders crawling around only in his soul—will really turn the screws.

Doesn’t anyone else have the feeling that when it comes to the lengths these people will go to jeopardize outcomes in the upcoming midterm elections, we haven’t seen anything yet?

That should tell us everything we need to know about their overall intentions.

Daily writing prompt

How do you write what people actually want to read?

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I write mostly about what’s on my mind and hope a few people take note and find it meaningful. I guess I’m less concerned with what people want to read than treating this outlet as exactly that– an outlet, most of the time, for what’s roiling around in my brain.

The Daily Writing Prompts help me focus a bit and provide a built-in variety of topics, which keeps me from writing most often about what’s happening on the political front in this country that has been slogging through an identity crisis since at least 2015 but most likely long before.

I’d love to have a thousand subscribers, which is probably a very modest number, but am doubtful that day will ever come. For better or worse, I think it’s always been more about what gets under my skin, or just gets my attention and gives me the opportunity to try and explain myself.

The show of solidarity is nice to see. I’m glad the folks at Fox News joined the boycott of White House coverage with their mortal enemies at NBC and such. But… isn’t there now a vacuum?

Is this another example of the MAGA “brain trust” anticipating a reaction, or did someone come up with Trump TV on the spur of the moment? In Donald’s mind, all Trump all the time probably sounds like a dream come true.

I guess on the other hand, it’ll be nice not to have to suffer through every speech and mindless remark from the guy who so adores the sound of his own voice. But who’s minding the store now? Is there a risk here? How long is this standoff going to last? I guess we’ll find out.

Off balance. That’s the condition MAGA Republicans and The Heritage Foundation want to keep us in. Always one or two steps behind. Reactive, distracted, not quite knowing which way to turn or which fire to extinguish first.

Never mind governing, never mind consideration of duties and responsibilities of elected office, never mind the expectations and needs of the people who put them there.

We’ve watched so many things get frittered away, programs and departments needlessly yet purposely gutted, rendered practically impotent and irrelevant. And the whole time, members of Congress are kowtowing, riding coattails and kissing ass.

I don’t know if we’re living in a constant state of shock, or just disbelief. We’re watching things happen that we may have never thought we’d see in a lifetime.

But there’s the thing—this attempt at a constitutional republic, at self-governance and relative freedom has never been a sure thing. It’s fraught with variables, vulnerable to assault from without and within, along with the still unevolved penchant of human beings to default to survival mode, to stay stuck in old thinking, to indulge our worse angels, to get lazy and give up on floating more boats than one’s own.

What’s been unfolding for the past 11 years or so is perhaps something we somehow still can’t believe is real. After all, how could someone so clueless, so self-absorbed, so driven by vengeance and base urges get elected—twice—to the highest office in the land? Someone so unabashedly and obviously unfit?

I don’t know. But it has happened. It is unfolding. And it seems highly unlikely that there is any change of heart in the offing. Besides, it’s too late for that.

Donald Trump is a sniveling, devious, dishonest 4-year-old who tells himself that he’s strong. So, somehow dangerous nonetheless.

We need more details regarding how we can be talking about the end of the human race at the hands of artificial intelligence. Are the warnings based on sincere concern, or just the next round of fear-mongering hyperbole done for some marketing purpose?

Logically, one might think that since AI began as an idea initiated by human intelligence, there would be certain safeguards in place to avoid such a calamity.

I suppose it isn’t far-fetched that such technology could reach a point where it thinks and acts independent of human control. It’s more a giant disappointment that we could let it get that far without a kill switch at our disposal.

Eggheads and scoundrels. Will there ever come a time when there won’t be so many of them? Will we ever see a day when all pretense is dropped, and everyone knows and names a jackass when they see one?

Currently, deception is a prominent theme. Gaslighting is all the rage, and Republican leaders appear to stand behind someone they must know is a disaster of a human being. They want a second chance to deliver on promises they can’t or won’t keep, and they constantly claim they are doing great things for America while most of the rest of us wonder what the hell they’re talking about.

Shamelessness abounds, lying is breathing, and power is the holy grail.

My wife brought home the first volume of John Lewis’s book series, March, and eventually went back to the library to get the other two. The three are all written as graphic novels and depict Lewis’s early life and the journey he took in the 1950s and 60s as he engaged in sit-ins and marches throughout the deep south, interwoven with scenes from Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.

The series brings home a remarkable period in Lewis’s life and in the life of the nation, as the deep south is brought kicking and screaming to a place where black people are given any seat on a bus, service in diners and restaurants, tickets at movie theaters, and most significantly the right to vote. The books depict the travails and dangers and sacrifices, the strength and courage it took to win the day.

This, in tandem with finishing the first—and only?—season of The Gray House, has opened my eyes wider to the penchant humans have for embodying tall tales and holding onto lies with a death grip. I realize the writers and producers of The Gray House probably employed a certain dramatic license, but the core of the message is a familiar and likely accurate recounting of the long slog, of what it took to bring an end to secession and slavery in this country. And how entrenched many were, how firmly they held onto a “way of life.”

Between the books and the streaming—and the current administration’s insistence on returning to the “good ol’ days” when people knew their place– what has become painfully obvious is that colorblindness is still a long way from a certain universality.

Though maybe colorblindness has never been the goal. Maybe it goes beyond that, to a place where we simply carry on without making a big fuss over our different hues. To where we simply, finally understand that our intrinsic value has always been more about the intangibles and way less about skin-deep pigmentations.