How do you reason with the likes of Donald Trump? Is it possible? He’s gone off the deep end, or will shortly. He’s got evil in his heart, he’s got trigger-happy neo-Nazis eating out of his hand, waiting for marching orders.

We are not in a good place, and I think leaders in D.C. know this. Invoking the 25^th or impeachment will most likely mean violent reprisals all over the country. In the middle of a pandemic! But this is the price we pay—once again—for trying to hold onto the shining city on a hill.

I think I understand much better now how precious and fragile this attempt at democracy is. It doesn’t run on autopilot. It requires buy-in, commitment from its citizens to invest and trust in what amounts to intangibles—laws, restraint, respect. It demands vigilance and it can get costly. I just never expected the cost to be exacted in our back yards. Again.

It seems the Civil War is like the coal fire in Centralia- often out of sight, but still burning. And all this against the backdrop of a pandemic that has taken 4000 lives in one day for the first time.

Donald Trump and those who still defend him are the scum of the earth. The green film that covers stagnant water.

How on earth was it so easy for Trump supporters to gain access to the Capitol building and the Senate floor, among other places? It’s difficult to look at this and comprehend that it actually happened. Why were the reinforcements not already there?

And can there be any doubt about what kind of person Donald Trump truly is? He encouraged this. He egged them on, told the crowd that he’d be with them as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. Then of course he went home.

There’s a split coming in the Republican ranks. There will be the Crazies and Opportunists, and Those Who Still Have A Head On Their Shoulders And A Heart Beating In Their Chests. We might have a third party at long last, though it may not be anything to write home about.

All this insanity happened on Mitch McConnell’s watch. Though the roots of this unrest began growing centuries ago, McConnell ratcheted up the bad blood 12 years ago, when he proclaimed that Job One for Republicans was to make sure Barack Obama was a one-term President. Who, in his position, would say such a thing? To whom did he think he was appealing? Who did he think was listening when he made such a stunningly polarizing statement?

We all saw this coming. None of it has come out of left field. The writing has been on the wall since way before 2015, when Donald Trump descended that confounded escalator and really started feeding the beast, tearing America apart with his inflammatory, deprived rhetoric.

If they can arrest him, they should take Stephen Miller along, too. The dead-in-the-eyes sub-human, Trump’s muse.

January 6, 2021 was an Epiphany of a different sort.

A big day in Congress today. A substantial number of Republicans are going to object to Biden’s victory. And Trump supporters are ready to make one last stand in the streets of our nation’s capitol.

They’d likely have zero interest in election integrity or performing these stunts if Trump had won.

What are Ted Cruz and the rest trying to do? What’s their motive, their strategy, their end game? Still kissing the Base’s ass, I guess.

Donald Trump lost the election by 7 million votes. He lost the Electoral College by 74 votes. How is it possible that he has any influence whatsoever over the Republican Party? I mean apart from his mystifyingly loyal base?

He’s not a Republican, he’s not a Democrat. He’s merely an opportunist, in love with the power and limelight. He doesn’t give a damn about America. Surely many must know this, especially after the year we just limped through. Yet even after January 20, the Trump shit show will continue in some form.

Have we ever seen anything like this in the history of our nation? Such childishness, pettiness, immaturity. Trump’s not a winner. He just never learned how to lose. We may not want to make a habit of it, but everyone needs to learn how to lose, or at least learn how to move on from a loss. You can’t win ‘em all, man. It’s about time you learned that lesson.

If all you want out of life is to say you never lost, then you are among the most selfish, deluded people in the history of people. If it matters to you how you’re remembered, well, it’s way past time you shut up and walk away. For the good of everyone.

But you won’t do that. The part of you that knows to leave well enough alone is ill-formed. Or it was never there to begin with.

Psst! Donald… your base doesn’t really love you. You just happened to be the one who fed their insecurities, gave them permission to hold onto their ignorance and hate. That’s all.

Quite the legacy. Worthy of the vision you’ve never had.

Some amount of catharsis should be in order, but most of us know that nothing changed at the stroke of midnight. And to heap blame on what many consider an arbitrary number is pretty silly.

Still, there was something nice about seeing the ball drop and watching a new number light up. 2020 is over. The promise of something new and better at least exists in our imaginations for a time now. Trump is still President, but only for 19 more days. Mitch McConnell still mumbles edicts, but his reign will end eventually. And because we as a nation seem not to be able to muster the organizational and coping skills, the will required of us, Covid-19 will continue to be a scourge probably well into this new year. But at least 2020 is over, even as we continue to treat it as a scapegoat for a while.

Biden and Harris have their work cut out for them. It’s time to make something hopeful of the year just begun.

I can see it now: people congratulating each other, patting themselves on the back for weathering the storm that was Covid-19. Commiserating, dramatizing, making way more of the struggles and hardships than warranted. Noting how so many “rose above,” gave 110 percent, shined a little light in the midst of all the darkness.

It’s already happening on the nightly news and elsewhere- people featured for doing inane things that are held up as important and life-changing. It’s understandable, but no less saccharin or tough to watch. Even some of the pleas from healthcare workers who take quick selfie videos and cry into the camera. I’m tired of those, too, because they often sound more like whining than the visible face of anguish and frustration trying to convey the gravity. It’s the same theme every time. Starts to feel like people just jumping on a bandwagon.

I’m not getting at the essence of what bothers me about this. There’s something about it that’s missing the mark. It feels contrived, and not necessarily newsworthy or impactful anymore. Maybe it’s that people need to be noticed doing something- anything- good. We do good things so we feel better. It’s not about a calling, or an obligation or the act of helping, in and of itself. It’s more that we get to feel better about ourselves, and we get our 15 minutes.

High self-esteem is a good thing, but at some point we cross a line from that into something that looks more like bravado and hubris, and neediness. Lately, it feels like air time being filled, and not much more. Maybe it’s my own lability of affect, a certain desensitization setting in.

And since I’m digging myself a hole, please tell me why people are so quick to incorporate the phrase “war zone” into their description of things that aren’t war zones at all. Have they actually been in a war zone themselves? What are they comparing it to? Maybe it boils down to insufficient processing and hardly ever having the right words at our disposal. Settling for hyperbole. More a matter of a limited vocabulary than anything else.

One can understand the fascination with religious faith, Christianity in particular.

Think about the ramifications, the implications of the offspring of the Creator of the Universe making an appearance, for a short time, on earth. It’s mind-blowing, really.

I so want to believe it is true, but it’s not easy to keep the faith. The journey from belief to cynicism, from faith to doubt, is not necessarily a long one.

The closer I get to calling it a day in this line of work, the less patience I have for people and God. Many people don’t try hard enough, and God seems, more often than not, to be a construct, a crutch, a fabrication born of fear and unknowing. I realize I’m not the first person to think or say these things, but apparently it’s my turn at the moment.

“I believe. Help my unbelief.”

NE Patriots haters must be loving the latest travails of the team. They suck this year. Cam Newton will be gone after this season.

Though I wouldn’t get too excited about what Tom Brady was able to do against the Lions last week. Detroit was without a number of key starters. A good game for Tom, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what he does against a really good defense.

It’s difficult to grasp just how inept and half-hearted the U.S. pandemic response has been.

Forget about the record-breaking vaccine development. Trump will want to take credit for that, but the foundation for the rapid development was laid long before he took office. Forget about the months-long efforts of doctors and nurses who are way beyond bone-tired by now. Let’s talk first about herding cats, trying to reason with stubborn, “patriotic” people who have chosen not to listen. Or think, for that matter.

The toll on this nation is immeasurable, except as we catch glimpses of the suffering and grief, the soul-crushing fatigue and fear and unanticipated poverty. The cabin fever and isolation didn’t have to last this long. We could have been on the downside of this if we had taken it more seriously and listened to the right people.

As it is, millions chose to place their bets on their President, their fearless leader who they believed, for some strange reason, had their best interests at heart. Half the country got taken to the cleaners and it affected everyone else in the process. It’s a fucking mess, way beyond shameful.

In retrospect, people may view it as criminal, if they don’t already. Purposely downplaying the severity, the absence of a plan, outright deception and lies, just to protect the economy, Trump’s perceived lifeline to re-election that ended up tanking anyway. Thousands of small businesses gone. Millions unemployed. Three hundred thirty thousand lives lost, and many more to come. A very dark chapter. A lost year, in many ways.

Oh, of course we learned some things along the way, and people came together, made lemonade, blah, blah, blah. Spare me. You can always find a silver lining if you look hard enough. But there’s no getting around the fact that this could have played out very differently if the leadership in Washington had been motivated by something other than self-preservation and obfuscation and preying on peoples’ gullibility. They had a chance to lead, and they decided not to.

They decided–consciously chose— to ignore reality, and placed minimal value on human life. It might be about the economy, stupid. But you can’t have a healthy economy without healthy people. The reality is that not enough people wanted to make the necessary sacrifices—relatively short-term sacrifices– in order to stem the tide of this virus. Enough among us were led to believe that such measures were unnecessary and even un-American.

A well-conceived testing program and contact tracing, wearing a mask, washing our hands, and keeping a safe distance were all turned into polarizing issues, just too much to ask or expect. How sad is that?

I think I have some grasp of the dilemma small business owners, particularly those who own eating establishments, are facing as this god-forsaken pandemic drags on. This is their job, their means for providing and procuring the necessities of life.

To a certain extent, I understand their rebellion, their decision to stay open, though I’m having a more difficult time squaring that with the disparagement of Governor Tom Wolf. He’s just trying to do his job. Making tough decisions based on actual data, and trying, despite the pushback, to keep people safe. The indignant barbs and charges of overreach seem to me to be an over-reaction, a not-so-faint echo of partisanship and the bile and sewage that has been seeping from the Trump administration since the beginning of all this.

The virus isn’t a hoax, quarantining and precautions may be perceived as infringements of constitutional rights, but we’re in a pandemic! Extraordinary measures and sacrifice are called for. And the governor isn’t a merciless overlord intent on taking away our freedom.

What doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough is that the federal government has had a role to play all along the way, and they haven’t played it very well. If Uncle Sam was engaged, then small business owners might be less fretful right now. They might have some assurance of financial support for them and their employees that would help them weather a period of shutdown, and give them hope for a light at the end of the tunnel.

Instead, it’s a whole lot of not knowing, of fear and baseless accusations, needless exposure to the virus, and parroting an administration in Washington that decided early on to go with herd immunity and obfuscation, in some ways treating the whole pandemic response as if there was no pandemic.

One of these days, maybe, that reality will sink in.