I’m tired of the coarseness and the arrogance. I’m sick of the sycophants, weary of the fog and rain clouds and oil slicks– all the ways Trump has maligned the office and dragged the nation down.

I’m trying to understand what could possibly be attractive and inspiring about him, and all I can come up with is that it’s less about him and more about an irrational fear and distrust of anything Democratic. It’s about having one’s understandings and beliefs affirmed by somebody, anybody. It’s mostly about winning and being right, even when you’re wrong.

What bothers me about the campaign rhetoric is that, while they’ll do their share of Trump-bashing, the Democrats will at least use reasoned and thoughtful words, while Trump will be almost as effective simply by spitting and steaming and spewing. He’ll try to appeal to a blind and unformed sense of patriotism. He will vilify, spread rumors and untruths, send out Tweets in all caps full of bitterness and unadulterated blather, and in all other ways simply go low and try to take everyone with him. It all betrays an astounding immaturity masquerading as nefarious strategy.

He will lash out relentlessly, accuse unendingly, all the while offering nothing of substance– no vision, no plan, no ideas reflective of any forethought or attempts at reasonableness. He has next to nothing, and what he does have is awful. His acceptance speech next week will be someone else’s words and ideas. He’ll be energized merely by the opportunity to be the focus of attention. He’ll get caught up in the moment. He will claim victory and progress on many fronts. It will be as if the pandemic and the economic downturn never happened. But when all is said and done, he’ll still be an empty suit, a wind bag, a puppet.

Trump has dredged and expanded the swamp, and those around him have emerged from it. They are the ones whispering in his ear and trying to temper his melt-downs. They’re the ones writing speeches and filling his head with delusions of grandeur and their own poisonous venom.

With Donald Trump, there is nothing at all about which to be hopeful. Except his possible exit from the scene.

Trump is taking advantage of unspoken norms that include a respect for the office he holds, as he knowingly runs rough shod all over it. Maybe this explains why he’s able to get away with so much. It’s not that people are afraid of him. It’s more that he, simply, is the POTUS. There is power inherent in the office. And Trump has abused that power, bigly. He’s also being played.

I can’t say for sure that he is rotten to the core, but there isn’t much worth saving. There are times, though, when he evokes a certain sympathy, but only because he appears to have missed out on so much that would have made him more fully human.

“Make America Great Again.” What a cheap, lazy, empty slogan.

The latest twist of the knife is an attempt at gutting and neutralizing the USPS. It’s hard to fathom what we’re witnessing. There are wildly different understandings of what makes for greatness, I guess.

I want to know who thought it was a good idea to throw support behind Donald Trump in the first place, to even consider allowing his name on a ballot. People couldn’t have mistaken him for someone else. The power brokers apparently thought they had someone they could control for their own purposes. They couldn’t have seen a virtuous, upright figure. It was more that they had someone who was weak and malleable.

They had to have done their vetting. Trump was a known quantity, most likely with many skeletons in numerous closets, yet party operatives and enough of the public in general thought it appropriate to throw their support behind this genuine slimeball, this reality TV host. Do they really despise the Democrats that much?

If we can trust what our eyes are seeing, then we have to question the judgement and intentions of anyone who stands with Donald Trump.

It’s time for a palate cleanser, time to seek some beauty in the world.

I guess Rachel Maddow could be considered part of the fake news corps, perhaps sensational and alarming. I find her honest and refreshing and smart. The stuff she’s been featuring lately is unsettling, to say the least. But also thought-provoking.

The latest news about what Trump is blatantly trying to do to the USPS is case in point. He’s not even hiding the fact that a denial of funding to the post office would help his cause. He’s abusing his power in the light of day, he’s laying the groundwork for manipulating and contesting election results. And it seems he’s daring somebody to stop him. What else does he have up his sleeve?

He’s also desperate to stay in office for at least four more years, because if he loses the election he knows what awaits him either later in the day on January 20, 2021, or the next day. He just may be indicted, and headed to court as a defendant.

A transformation of our government is happening before our eyes, and we’re too preoccupied with fallout from the coronavirus to really notice or care. All the talk about this coming election being about the heart and soul of America is not hyperbole. It’s a referendum on a criminal who appears to have designs on being President for a lot longer than 8 years.

Just four more years of Trump and we will no longer recognize our system of governance. These will be the good old days, virus and all.

Imagine that.

Platform and philosophy aside, another reason I detest the Republican party is because Donald Trump is its poster child. The party’s policies, its stances on many issues are onerous to me, but what makes matters worse is that Trump stands as the figurehead. He, of all people, is the one with the high profile, the same one who makes guttural noises and attempts at pontificating, who treats his office as just another conquest, another “win.” He embodies the selfishness and ugliness that are poisoning this nation and driving it into the ground.

Trump is like a kid in a candy store who gets big eyes when he sees something he wants behind the counter. Except he doesn’t ask if he can have it– no matter to him if there are some things he can’t have. He just breaks the glass.

How can anyone be proud to say that this pretender, this over-sized child, is their President? What remains his appeal? He traffics in fear and deception, and he banks on peoples’ gullibility. He’s as shallow as they come, and he couldn’t care less about the people who support him.

Who would aspire to be like him? How is it possible that he commands anything approaching respect?

Woe to all of us if he can muster enough support to prevail in November. I don’t see how that is possible, apart from some shady dealings.

“Vilified, threatened with violence, and in some cases suffering from burnout…”

So begins a recent AP article describing conditions for a number of state and local health officials. Apparently, an unknowledgeable, misinformed yet always opinionated slice of citizenry, along with politicians, are giving these weary public servants a hard time and a piece of their mind concerning the “restrictive” nature of masks, among other things.

The mind-blowing thing is that when we need these officials most, they are being threatened and leaving their jobs or being fired largely because they’re not offering the politically proper advice. People who don’t know their ass from their elbow are denigrating and marginalizing public health officials who are just trying to keep the public safe.

Sounds about right, par for the course.

Let’s see, what else might we expect before the year is over… Trump wins/steals/otherwise finagles another term; a 9.0 earthquake rocks a location previously unaffected by a single seismic disturbance; the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts; murder hornets fly through the eruption and migrate eastward; locusts invade; a shortage of coffee develops; schools in red and blue states open then close until 2022 because nearly a million students get infected with covid and spread it widely to teachers and relatives at home; the SEC decides to play football with spectators and no precautions, with the added stipulation that stations be provided where people can inject themselves with the virus; the entire populations of Meade, Pennington, Custer, Butte, Lawrence, Haakon, Ziebach, and Perkins Counties in South Dakota are walled off after 3000 local residents test positive for the virus following the Sturgis motorcycle rally; not one biker in attendance contracts the virus, but Mt. Rushmore somehow does and is later blown to pieces by a group claiming to want to put it out of its misery (and that Trump’s bust would be added “over their dead bodies”); the entirety of Greenland’s glaciers melts, and the Great Lakes dry to a trickle.

But lobster is still available at Red’s Eats, and life goes on largely unaffected for one small Maine town near the Canadian border.

The winners write the history, which doesn’t mean there aren’t other legitimate perspectives to be considered. History gets rewritten. Filled out.

I’m not sure what to make of the story about the end of WWII with Japan. For the longest time, we’ve been told that the a-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki hastened the end of action in the Pacific theater. But now there’s a growing voice claiming that Japan was contemplating surrender before the bombs were dropped, when it looked like the Soviet Union was going to join the Allied effort, which would have been before August 6 and 9, 1945.

This sounds like an attempt to criticize the US for having an itchy trigger finger and using the bombs when it didn’t have to, especially if it had known that Russian entry into the Pacific conflict would have been enough to convince Japan to surrender. It seems there is growing support for the view that dropping the bombs was inhuman and unnecessary.

Is this just the latest attempt at revisionist history, or instead the result of finally hearing other voices who weren’t consulted when the victor’s draft was being written?

The current volume of disinformation is a telltale indication of just how many gullible people there are in the world. And a disproportionate number of them apparently live right here in the USA.

That being said, how can this not be considered a criminal act, given its sole purpose of sowing confusion and casting doubt on legitimate, perhaps lifesaving information, specifically in the case of aiding the public in its handling of the pandemic? What is this if not predatory and diabolical?

This is beyond dirty politics. This is hateful, intentional, counter-productive, malicious deceit. It’s the mad lunacy of angry lost boys like Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.

It’s enough to make one’s blood boil– that instead of finding remedies, people look for ways to make matters worse.

See, this is the thing… athletic directors and coaches can tout all they want the safety plans they have in place for the resumption of Fall sports. They can vilify governors and health officials and other “naysayers” until they’re blue in the face. But looming in the background of all this bravado and “life must go on” can-do spirit is a certain ignorance of the unwelcome reality: the virus will likely find a way to mess up their best-laid plans.

Futility abounds on many levels, and patience is in short supply. Chances are most of us are tired and frustrated with having to live with the restrictions of the last 5-plus months. But a forced and rushed return to some sense of normalcy and equilibrium isn’t going to be of much help. Our half-assed response to the virus will continue to prolong the agony.

As much as it may be the desire and goal of many educators, parents, and politicians, doesn’t getting kids back in the classroom in the midst of a pandemic sound inherently risky and ill-advised?

Is it being attempted simply because Trump wants it to happen? That’s the worst reason of all.

Even the other reasons– parents aren’t equipped to do the teaching, finding day care is a nightmare, inequitable access to technology and bandwidth, parents need to go to work, kids need the socialization– all of this would seem to pale in comparison to the obvious risk of exposing our kids and teachers to a deadly virus.

We’re growing increasingly comfortable with huge trade-offs and gambles. Preserving life seems not to be the first order of business. There’s a strong hint of desperation and undue economic pressures.