We’re having doors replaced at the front of our house. At one point, there was talk of tackling the job ourselves, but after yesterday, we’re glad it didn’t work out that way. We’re glad for the guy who’s actually doing the work—he appears to be something of a perfectionist and put in a long day prepping the opening and getting the main door installed and square before he went home.

Hanging a door is, I guess, something that can be straightforward and relatively easy when compared to other aspects of home building or renovation. But there is still a list of things one has to take into consideration and get right, including squareness within the opening—assuring that when one looks at the closed door a few days after installation, there is still equal amounts of light showing around the top and sides.

A shim here, a shim there, no small amount of tweaking. Details, details, but who wants to look at a crooked door for the next 25 years?

The official line is that Trump attended the game because he got invited by the Knicks owner, and he used to have courtside seats, and he’s always been a Knicks fan. I imagine this explanation to be somewhere in the ballpark of what Fox News and others reported.

The “fake” news of course offered a different take– that this was just Trump needing to be seen, having no regard for the upset he’d cause when it came to security protocols, including massive wait times, long lines, closing down blocks around the site, and shutting down the public watch parties outside Madison Square Garden.

I’d say that it probably leans toward the latter scenario, mainly because a sitting President had never gone to a Finals game before last night. Trump may have needed another thing to brag about, another distraction, he indeed needed to be seen, and he simply has no regard for anything other than what makes him happy or pisses other people off.

There were clips of his motorcade coming into town, him sitting in the owner’s box at the arena, and getting booed the whole time and smiling away, either putting on a good face or just reveling in the attention, whether the reaction was boos or cheers.

Probably more lingering boos than cheers, seeing that the Spurs ended up crashing the party and prevailing in Game 3.

He’s a bona fide asshole. And a bad luck charm, to boot. Sounds about right.

If all we ever get from our government are promissory notes and lies, and the only action we ever see involves an administration that’s constantly engaged in circumvention and cover-up, then we can be forgiven for lacking trust, and even hopefulness.

The Trump debacle has been a gigantic and shameful waste of time since the beginning, since 2016. Even during the Biden term, Trump couldn’t not be in the limelight somehow, couldn’t walk away and keep his mouth shut. He had to find ways to remain visible, to agitate his base, harp on The Big Lie, campaign for the 2024 nomination even as he was appearing in court and getting his very own mug shot.

My word, America! How much more of this shit show are we going to stomach?

At one level, society hums along and gets on with its day. But running in the background for the past 11 years has been this cackling voice and a person up to no good. Donald Trump is needy and useless, worthless as a leader and maybe even as a human, and he is doing his best to leave deep wounds and scars that are going to linger for a long time. He is sick, and damaged.

How can we stand for this anymore? He’s not good for the country. He’s a pox, a cancer, an aging pile of visceral fat taking up space. And it’s very difficult not to feel like he deserves every derisive, cutting comment we can summon.

It’s too late for rehabilitation. Or redemption. He’s burned too many bridges.

On the Newshour last night, Brooks and Capehart were asked about the Graham Platner conundrum in Maine, and all I could envision is a scenario similar to when Donald Trump put his name in the ring in 2015.

Back then, people started talking about how Trump was “refreshing’ and “not a stereotypical politician” and that they were willing to give him a listen and maybe even vote for him—because there was some logjam that needed to be broken; someone needed to come along who could “shake things up…”

I found myself resonating with what David Brooks said about the pool of people available to run for important office. His was more a lament that we couldn’t do better than Trump or, perhaps, Platner. Baggage galore in both instances, questionable temperaments, checkered pasts that are following them into the present.

Does Platner deserve a shot at redemption? Mainers will have to decide.

This all got me to thinking that our role in all this, our responsibility, is not to be taken lightly. We need to do our homework on these candidates, listen closely, take seriously our responsibility as voters, and not just settle for or rubber stamp people on the chance that they’ll work out, that we went to the polls and did our duty, and now we can wash our hands of whatever comes next. History has repeatedly told us that it doesn’t work that way.

As much as “evolution” may be a four-letter word for The Base, the electorate in this country would be better served if everyone who votes also works on nurturing their own intuitive hunches, their own spidey sense– some unavoidable feeling in the gut– that causes them to hesitate before leaping, to further evaluate and question before jumping on a bandwagon and electing the next ill-suited and disappointing candidate. Or, in Trump’s case, the next devious circus clown with creepy make-up.