Europe suffered through a blazing hot summer with wildfires galore, Iguazu Falls is running high, Nevada is keeping an eye on a stressed dam and people are facing flooded streets and dwellings, the Outer Banks and other east coast spots are assessing damage after a massive, lingering nor’easter unleashed strong winds and dumped massive amounts of water.

I suppose it could all be coincidental. After all, droughts happen, heat happens, this is the season for tropical wind and rain, along with clashing warm and cold fronts at the change of seasons. But let’s leave some room for the likelihood that this collection of instances of excess is something more than coincidence, that there’s rhyme and reason to it.

Maybe the increased volatility and strength of some of these systems is indeed because the atmosphere continues to warm at an accelerated rate, as it has since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and more strikingly since the 1950s.

In the long—or maybe not-so-long—run, we won’t be able to handle it. The water will keep getting deeper and reaching places it previously never reached. The heat will reach a point where crops won’t grow and there will be no place for us to hide.

The current administration is acting as if none of this is real. Donald Trump conveniently and ignorantly calls it all a hoax, as do other elected officials beholden to Exxon and BP and oil sheiks everywhere. We should be incensed by this purposeful neglect. Besides not deserving one more vote, maybe it’s just time to put our faith in the private sector and concerned citizens who know a problem when they see it and apply themselves to finding solutions. While they still can.

I realize there are no perfect people, and it supposedly takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round. I’m not enamored of that tired, maxed-out cliché anymore.

There are some people—Donald Trump, for example—who go out of their way to be worthless. To be the center of attention, to be the loudest voice in the room or in the media, but nothing more. That’s it. That’s all they can muster, all they’re good for.

I’m all for someone who can show restraint, who keeps whims and urges in check. Trump isn’t built that way. All that matters to him is that all eyes and mics are on him anywhere he goes. Imagine that.

No thought given to actually doing his job, no consideration for tending to the traditional responsibilities of the high office he’s been handed for an unfathomable second time. All he’s done is embarrassed us, rendered us a laughingstock among nations, and he’s viewed by many as a bloviating failure unfit for any supervisory role at any level.

He’s wasted 11 years of this country’s existence, indulging his anger and selfish tendencies, cozying up to the world’s top human rights violators and despots, and skewed visionaries here at home. His negligence and incompetence are the only truly legendary things about him, certainly not anything to be proud of.

Seventy-seven million people, many knowingly, voted for a horrid human being to speak for them, to maybe work on their behalf, and almost certainly indulge their own fears and hatreds. Now, finally, maybe, they are beginning to regret their choice.

Is this the pattern we need to be aware of?

A week or two ago, the Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a supposed defeat when they ruled against him on the mail-in ballot question. But yesterday the court gave Trump a win by allowing him to use some sort of controversial voter verification system.

And the question becomes, “Was this the plan all along?” Throw the general public a bone, make it look a bit like they’re not in Trump’s back pocket, and then lower the boom a short time later?

The fact that we need to be suspicious of the Supreme Court is a sad and dangerous place to be. Yet this is what we’re in for leading up to November 3. I’m sure there’s more aiding and abetting, more sabotage to come. In fact, this latest ruling may come back to haunt us when the angst-ridden lead-up to 2028 commences on November 4, or shortly thereafter.

Trump will have to have a go at the midterm results first– you know, the usual litany about rigged elections and hoaxes and fake news and such.

Something I’ve never understood is why Trump gets away with what he’s been getting away with. There may be several reasons: he’s done a better job of surrounding himself with sycophants this time around; the media, though less so lately, have treated him as an anomaly, a fascination. And there must be an aura around the office of POTUS itself.

It seems that people have an almost innate respect for the office and pay less heed to whoever is holding the office. But how can this be the case here? How can the Justice Department and the Supreme Court and other agencies and leadership not consider who is currently sitting behind the Resolute Desk?

Is their loyalty born of respect and admiration? How is that possible?

It’s as if there is no thought given to the possibility that the majority of voters got it wrong in 2024. Like it’s more a matter of working with what we’ve been given and making the best of it?

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.