Well, someone must be thinking that everything is going swimmingly—maybe Kevin Roberts, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, J.D. Vance, John Kennedy and the rest of the yes-people in Congress?

Is there anything quite as skin-crawlingly awkward and repulsive as the obeisance and ass kissing that goes on at a Cabinet meeting or in a Fox News studio, where everyone gets their turn to praise Trump and stroke his ego before launching into their rosy reports of how great everything is going? What world are these people living in?

Trump and the rest of the Heritage Foundation foot soldiers are dismantling everything, and the sycophants have to dole out compliments, then, straight-faced and with gusto, tell the public that all is well, that the Stable Genius is two moves ahead and the world is beating a path to the negotiating table, in search of that good deal.

We have 1,379 days left of this disastrously amateur attempt at governance. If we’re lucky. What’s gonna be left?

China is roughly 16 times older than we are. Its culture goes back 4,000 years. We’re coming up on 250, maybe a bit older if we go back to the Mayflower or the first settlers in Florida or on the west coast. I suppose if we look at the indigenous cultures on this North American continent, then we might be in the same league or even older than China. Technically, the Peoples Republic of China wasn’t founded until 1949, so… And now we’re in the weeds.

Anyway, if Trump wants to go toe to toe with China, we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of holding up, because Trump has no appreciation for history or civic pride or cultural heritage or sheer brain power. He doesn’t have the patience for diplomacy, for sitting at the table and hashing things out. He merely figures it’s all about the art of some deal, about talking tough and expecting everyone to bend the knee.

China’s not going to bend any knee. In fact, Xi and the rest probably look at Trump and the U.S. as unruly adolescents in need of a good talking to, in need of a good whoopin’. It seems unlikely that Trump is the one playing chess.

Ah, the downside of looking for cheap labor, coming home to roost. And the downside of having a clown sitting at the Resolute Desk.

Will we be ready this time? Will we have learned anything from the disaster in 2020?

Given who’s back in office, I’m gonna go with No. The decimated HHS is run by RFK, Jr., and Trump himself has never seen the use for preparedness or research or anything that might make sense to most rational human beings.

The next pandemic—respiratory or hemorrhagic—will likely not take us by surprise but will nonetheless find us shamefully unprepared, and largely because of a mind-numbing, inexplicable lack of a sense of urgency.

Vaccine hesitancy—if there’s even a vaccine available—will once again rear its ugly head, fueled by Fox News and other outlets—not to mention the head of HHS himself. We’ll argue about “freedom” versus precautions, we’ll all be expected to ignore the man behind the curtain, the elephant in the room, in the form of a total abandonment of reason in the face of ongoing threats.

We’ll have little in the way of defense to depend on, including enough knowledgeable nurses and doctors and other staff, because they fled the fields after the Covid nightmare and have not returned. A shortage of PPE would be the least of our worries.

America has been commandeered by a collection of misfits and impostors motivated by profit margins, quack philosophies of governance, and blinding self-interest. The way forward looks fraught with blind spots. Our fall looks to be precipitous.

I suppose for many the jury’s out on Sam Harris. In some circles, I imagine he’ll always be the devil incarnate. I used to feel that way, but not anymore. I saw a clip the other day of Mr. Harris explaining what’s going on with Trump’s penchant for lying, and it clarified some things for me.

I’m sure many have known or suspected all along that Trump has always been a lying son of a bitch, but Harris offered an insight that makes total sense with regard to developments since Trump elbowed his way onto the scene: Trump lies on purpose.

He lies in ways that are clearly not meant to deceive anyone. His lies are transparent and serve more as a loyalty test, Harris maintains. Lance Armstrong, for example, lied about doping in hopes of getting away with it. Trump doesn’t care whether or not he gets away with it, whatever “it” is. His lies serve a different purpose.

He may not be able to help himself, but the purpose for the steady stream of bullshit that exits his mouth is to create a climate, to confuse people and wear them down. As Harris explains, anyone can go out after Trump brags about one of his buildings being ten stories taller than it really is, and count the floors for themselves, which will confirm that he’s lying. But in today’s climate, in these days of influence from the Heritage Foundation and fears of fascism, the purpose of the steady barrage of falsehoods is to get us to throw up our hands in frustration and to give up on ever being able to know for sure what is real, or whose opinion we can trust.

Harris quotes Hannah Arendt, who observed that the purpose of this particular brand of lying is not to get people to believe the falsehoods, but to get them to believe nothing, to declare “epistemological bankruptcy,” to shrug their shoulders and declare, “who knows what’s going on in the world? I’m just gonna keep quiet and keep my head down…”

This, Harris maintains, is where authoritarianism, where fascism, always leads.

Trump is a puppet with authoritarian tendencies. Why else, one might wonder, would a 78-year old man who will have served his Constitutionally mandated two-term limit– at which point he’ll be 82– not rule out running for a third?

I seem to be a glass half empty guy when it comes to Trump and the current state of things.

China retaliates with tariffs of its own, so it is a foregone conclusion that Trump is going to muster his own dumb tit for tat. And China won’t be the only one. It’s all so hard to watch.

To make matters worse, how long will it be before people who show up at these nationwide protests start disappearing? Isn’t that what starts happening—facial recognition software does its thing and your average concerned citizens start not being heard from or seen? Or at the very least, they’re suddenly much less interested in voicing dissent?

Too much? Too dark? Can’t happen here? How can anyone believe that, given what we’ve already seen?

As much as I hope the protests will be enough to sway opinions and effect positive change, I predict the gloves will be coming off shortly. On both sides. Especially once the tariff insanity and market instability start really hitting home.

What the hell is the endgame here? Maybe it’s time for reasonable people to call Trump in for an intervention (insert derisive laughter here).