The animosity between parties since Trump took office is not your garden variety animosity. This feels different, more sinister, more elemental.

Rudy Giuliani has been in Ukraine on assignment, allegedly digging for evidence that would refute the accusations regarding quid pro quo, etc. This is never going to end. Or this chapter will end with Trump being acquitted by the Senate and benefiting from the backlash.

Meanwhile, sixty-six million of us will go on living in a twilight funk, feeling like something is definitely wrong and incredulous at so many not feeling the same way.

There will be no moment of awakening for many, no changes of heart. People know what they know and are sticking to it. Myself included.

Once the impeachment hearings end, Trump is going to be in hyper-revenge mode. So fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. Or find a place to hide. Because it’s gonna get loud and ugly and even more painful to watch, about as far from the shining city on a hill as we can be.

We ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

Overcoming one’s fears is so cliche.

I’m weary of people dispensing advice as if it is gospel. Or law.

Do we really need another billionaire in the race for President? Did Michael Bloomberg’s kindred souls on Wall Street push him to run so they can improve their chances of avoiding an Elizabeth Warren candidacy?

Just what we need… another out-of-touch billionaire.

We’re so focused on beating Trump that we will settle the way the Republicans settled for Trump himself in their hysterical need to “cleanse” the office of a black Democrat. 

It’s not about the person with a vision and heart and actual smarts for the job. In this case, it’s more about finding someone who can take Trump down, no matter their qualifications.

Maybe qualifications don’t matter. Have they ever mattered? How perceptive and astute has the electorate ever been? Do we vote with our heads and hearts, or has it more often been about the pocketbook or someone’s charisma? 

It was fifty-six years ago, to the day, a Friday. I was in 4th grade, in Mr. Braley’s room. Mrs. Kreuger was crying. Usually she made us kids cry. The flag was flying at half-mast. The multi-purpose room was quieter than normal as we waited for the bus at the end of the day. We might have been dismissed early.

A long, sad weekend, puncuated by more deadly violence broadcast live on national television on Sunday.

The end of Camelot, people would say. The end of the innocence.

The Sondland testimony might could possibly maybe seal Trump’s fate. Nobody knows for sure.

Trump claims all of it is just playing into his hands, so there’s that. He’s so polished at deflecting the damage, or just acting like nothing is going on. I hope at some point it all catches up with him and he either explodes or spontaneously combusts. There have been few people easier to root against. And he’s brought it all on himself.

He is a privileged, spiteful mooncalf who’s just loitering.

Haven’t really been following the impeachment hearings. My day is better for not having listened to the Republican sound bytes and their insistence on covering Trump’s ass.

What happens happens. We’ll muddle through, life will go on in some fashion. We’ll continue to complain and disagree about the direction the country should be heading. Hateful people will continue to be hateful. Trump will continue to be Trump. And the flat-earthers will emerge as a consequential political force. 

So, all is well.

Maybe it’s too much to ask, more than what we should rightfully expect– that a person who gets elected POTUS be someone a clear majority of us actually voted for and truly respect. Someone who brings an air of integrity and sincerity and humility to the office. Someone strong yet honest enough to admit that he or she won’t have all the answers.

Someone without a messiah complex. That’d be great.

Even ardent Trump supporters should see that their man is the wrong guy for the job. Right for those who, for some strange reason, like him. But terribly wrong in that he makes no effort to cross the aisle. He just fans flames. All bluster, little substance, a person of questionable motivations.

With a little effort, the Republican party could come up with a better option than an entitled blowhard from Queens.

Sometimes it seems that way- that all the attention being paid to the Ukraine issue is really just the latest attempt by Democrats to pin something on Trump, hoping it will stick.

Not that I hope it doesn’t. I hope they pin his ass to the wall and he ends up being impeached. It’s just that pretty much everything said and done over the last 3 years seems to be in reaction to the election results. All-consuming. The focus hasn’t been on legislation and working for the electorate. It’s been a balls-to-the-wall effort to dig up dirt on Trump and his circle of ugliness, or defending the same. Late night folks and others pick on Trump’s less-than-scholarly use of the English language, his misspellings, his hair, his posture. The kind of stuff one might expect from lesser critics, though not surprising coming from people who try to get laughs for a living.

On occasion they zero in on something substantial, something that exposes the whole administration for the domestic axis of evil that it is. I wish they’d expend more energy on these stories than the ones about covfefe. Those are nit-picky, easy targets that don’t get to the core of why so many people find Trump and company so troubling.

For me, it often comes back to Trump himself. Sure, I don’t know him personally, but I know his type. He reminds me of a kid who used to come to our house for piano lessons. A real self-important stuffed shirt, a poster child for entitlement who thought more highly of himself than he had reason to. I remember one of his lesson days when we were out in the back yard and came upon a harmless toad making its way through the grass. He picked it up and found great sport in throwing it in the air, smugly grinning as it hit the ground.

This is who comes to mind when I think of Donald Trump. He’s just your garden variety bully, terrified of picking on somebody his own size, afraid of his own shadow. He has zero business being President of the United States.

We have to reexamine everything.

We have to stop what we’re doing, take a deep breath, and figure out a better way to live. There is no collective agreement, no consensus- no plan, currently- that reflects a comprehending grasp of our situation: there are a few grains of sand left in the hourglass. The planet we call home is in the process of chewing us up and spitting us out, yet we carry on in defiance, or in blissful ignorance. Or out of pure selfishness and in a hellbent pursuit of “progress.”

We stand by as the empty gravy boat in the White House proudly withdraws us from the Paris climate agreement. Then 11,000 scientists issue a stern warning to WAKE UP. NOW!!, but we still have to watch and see if, maybe this time, our leaders get the message.

We could take matters into our own hands, but our elected representatives must be on board. This will be an effort that dwarfs anything that has come before it, because it must involve all the citizens of Earth rallying around a single cause. No undue drama here. Not a hint of hyperbole. It’s what it’s come to.

Even as the snow begins to fly.