Business As Usual

Everyone knows the king has no clothes – that Trump is incompetent, and totally unfit for the presidency. When can we stop pretending?

His most diehard supports may never give up the game. But I hope – and that’s all it is, hope – that in time, whatever collective common sense remains in this country will coalesce around the idea that the sitting president is a grossly inept and dangerous lunatic who, for the good of the nation, must be stopped.

I’m still naive enough to believe that good will prevail. I should know better. I do know better.

Yet I have to believe that Trump will get his comeuppance. If I see one more fist-pump by that arrogant fraud, that lickspittle to the one percent, I may scream. It confounds me (and many others) that he’s been thus far unscathed by what would have destroyed any other politician.

As the Trump campaign ramped up in late 2015, his personal physician stated in a letter that Trump “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” – an absurd statement and naked lie, probably written by Trump himself. Certainly, his appearance is unwholesome. Maybe he'll end up dying in office, and we’ll be subjected to 1) a televised state funeral, with all the trimmings, and 2) President Mike Pence.

A televised funeral may not be too high a price to pay. President Pence, complicit with Trump and equally evil, would be. He is a willing collaborator and enabler deserving his own awful fate.

Meanwhile, for Trump, it is business as usual. His lifelong modus operandi has been to destroy whatever stands in his way, accountable to no one. Utterly despicable, it was a winning formula in private life. In an officeholder it is unacceptable.

Lock him up.

Lock Him Up

Trump’s fans love him. I’ll never understand it, but they do – and in that unquestioning way people love invisible deities. Yet the object of their love is no deity. The words Trump and love strike me as mutually exclusive.

We’re a few months into the Trump administration, and nothing about him has changed. He has shown time and again that he has no leadership skills at all. He has no charisma. He is a pathological liar indifferent to truth. He has all the warmth and charm of a spiny-tailed iguana.

Trump, I think, may survive the various crises that have been with him since even before his inauguration. Any one of them would have destroyed an ordinary politician. Trump is not ordinary. He has shown a singular ability to weasel out of tight situations through lying, deflection, and other means that decent people would never stoop to.

Neither is he extraordinary, mind you, in that word’s usual sense. I don’t know what word best describes him. He is in a class by himself, which also has positive connotations that do not apply.

Everything I have thought about this deplorable human being has been reinforced during his first eighty or so days in office. He is transparently corrupt. He is a manifestly unqualified officer-holder, a grotesque caricature of a politician, a national embarrassment and a national disgrace.

Yet somehow, Trump and his government by chaos survive – thus far. Caught in a series of controversies that should have consumed him, he somehow won the election (although plainly, he and it are not legitimate). During the campaign, a lot of what came out of his mouth was self-revealing, a kind of projection: Crooked Donald. Fake news. Lock him up.

It is inconceivable that Trump lasts a full term. Even a full first year is far-fetched. Yet this bastard has so far survived that which no one in public life should survive.

His supporters? I cannot begin to understand them. Surely his base has dwindled since January 20th. Surely, at least some of them have seen through the lies and deceit. It is for this reason that we must resist saying, “I told you so!” Hell hath no fury like one betrayed.

I struggle with conflicting ideas: on one hand, I long ago gave up believing in government as it is taught in high school civics. The apparatus is largely a charade. I do not buy into the idea that Trump tapped into an angry, disillusioned electorate.

I only vote because local issues are more or less legitimate, probably. It matters who sits on the local school board.

My ballot for President? Yes, I fill in a little box in black ink and make sure I don’t go outside the lines. But it is largely pro forma and meaningless. I don’t vote for any candidate so much as against the more objectionable one. It doesn’t mean much.

And yet I’m caught up in the ongoing psychodrama of Trump. It will not end well. Just how it ends, and the price we all will pay, is the troubling, lingering question.

Lock him up.

People, Puppies, and Pills

There seem to be more drug ads on the tube than there used to be – a lot more. I mean prescription drug ads for a host of conditions, some serious, some less so – from sleeplessness to psoriasis to bipolar disorder to erectile dysfunction.

Their blatant deception bothers me. Ads are dishonest by definition, of course, dreamed up by some Don Draper type. But drug commercials cross a line. They invariably present happy people walking on the beach at sunset, holding hands. They swim and sail, do yoga, ride bikes, fly kites, play with their kids – in short, live life to the fullest, unfettered by their malady, all thanks to some fucking pill.

As viewers take in these images, a neutral narrator (nothing ominous, ever!) warns of side effects that may include sleeplessness and irritability, loss of appetite, dizziness, dry mouth, nausea, constipation, unexplained weight loss, skin reactions, muscle aches, blurred vision, internal bleeding, night sweats, blood clots, increased risk of heart attack or stroke, mood swings, suicidal thoughts, and in rare cases, death.

Meanwhile, some kid is playing with puppies.

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I’m reassessing my attitude toward medicine and illness. I think there’s more to so-called alternative therapies than I’ve believed in the past.

My knees have been killing me lately. Or they were: I think I’ve turned the corner. Not because of some drug I can’t pronounce, but because I’ve started taking turmeric supplements and am trying to cut grains from my diet.

I’ve always thought of turmeric as a messy herb that turns stuff yellow, but it appears to be much more.

“Long known for its anti-inflammatory properties,” says some Internet know-it-all, “recent research has revealed that it can be helpful in the treatment of many different health conditions, from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.”

I’ll admit to being skeptical of these claims: revealed, it says. Not suggests. But I’ve been gulping it down, regardless. And my achy breaky knees are responding.

Encouraged by anecdotal evidence, I’ve also cut way back on grains. That too appears to be helping. It means no more baguettes or bagels, no more cookies or cakes, and a host of other stuff I’ve loved for most of my life. Alas.

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It’s nothing new to observe we live in an over-medicated society. That includes over-the-counter and recreational drugs. Big Pharma spends $5 billion a year on advertising. Ask your doctor about dammitol.

I want no part of it. Most doctors are throwing darts in the dark. Perhaps my views will change as I get older: when you’re drowning, you’ll grab the blade of a sword.

Some years back, my friend Lorelei (right) was diagnosed with colon cancer. At first she opted for a natural treatment. When that didn’t work, she went down Chemo Road.

Maybe it was the delay that did it, or maybe there never was any hope. But it became a losing battle.

I spoke with her the day before she died. A nurse held the phone to her ear. She was very weak, her voice the faintest whisper, and I’m not even sure she knew it was me. I didn’t know how to say goodbye, and didn’t want to, so I just told her I loved her – but casually, like I would have said it anyway.

No one ever says it enough.

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For now, I’m taking baby steps. I take my turmeric caps. A flour milled from blanched almonds offers hope that one day, I may again enjoy something comparable to ordinary bread, and other baked goods. What I’m slowly transitioning to is known to some as the paleo diet. Fad frantic folks, take note. A website called Elana’s Pantry has lots of recipes.

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