Seven and a third months into the whirlwind unleashed by Donald Trump, how have I been affected?
Aside from the depression of watching Trump progressively dismantle democratic values, the social services network, the bureaucratic underpinnings of our government, and our international standing as a nation devoted to the welfare of humanity, I cannot say my life has been materially changed.
My retirement savings have gotten fatter. My Social Security checks arrive on time each month. Anything I have wanted to buy has been available. Gas prices have been stable. No one I know has lost their job. My lawn keeps getting cut by South American workers. At least for the next nine months Stephen Colbert will be around to skewer Trump on CBS. None of my children or grandchildren are in college and subject to campus antisemites. As a senior citizen I can get a Covid vaccine. I still watch the 6:30 pm national news, read The New York Times (at least the headlines) and keep abreast of most national and International affairs.
Yet, life is not pleasant. Why? Because I am a product of the last half if the 20th century when America tackled inequality at home and abroad, when treaties were signed and legislation was passed to protect lives and the environment; when borders were opened for the free exchange of ideas, when medical advances suppressed, even eradicated, diseases that for millennia destabilized humanity; when we sought to right the wrongs of society within our country and other continents; when we believed in a collective responsibility to create a just and noble existence throughout the world, with America as a shining example of what every nation could someday attain.
Brick by brick Donald Trump is dismantling what America has meant to its citizens, to the world. And, more sadly, half of our country is complicit in accepting his selfish, inward-looking, autocratic view of what America should be. Trump’s congressmen and senators have forsaken their responsibilities, willingly accepting his usurpation of powers the Constitution enumerated for the House and Senate. Judges and justices have enabled an imperial presidency.
One wonders why we need legislative and judicial branches of government if they simply ratify despotic rule? Why are they collecting salaries when our national debt keeps rising?
Don’t look to me for remedies. A return to normalcy, to decency, awaits the awakening of Trump’s America from its cultish miasma. Hopefully, it will happen before it is too late to reverse his excesses, before the pain of reduced health care, fewer job opportunities, lower incomes, more inequalities make MAGA a nightmare of the permanent present.
