Trump: The Inevitable Bottom That Never Arrives
Donald Trump. This man has taken over vast swaths of mental real estate. I wake up in the middle of the night, grab my phone to check Twitter and the New York Times. What new outrage has transpired since I fell asleep? I scour news sites and social media during meals, at work, on the toilet. I think about this man, his words, his actions, his facial expressions, his dumb orange face, his supporters, his history, his wife, his ex-wives, his kids, his tax returns and his gilded homes. I want to stop thinking about him. I want America to vote him into obscurity. I want the searing agony of defeat to obliterate his ego, to cause him real, existential pain. I want his over-inflated brand to lose its luster, his bottom line to take an enormous financial hit, leaving nothing for his kids so that they might see their dad for the bloated buffoon that he is.
I realize that I hate Donald Trump. Hate is a cancer. It spreads slowly through your insides, whittling away your kinder instincts as it festers, slowly boiling your blood. I try hard in my life to avoid hatred. But I can’t avoid this man. He is everywhere. He is a nightmare. It’s hard to feel joy in watching his campaign implode. He makes it hard by virtue of his flailing hands, his sharp elbows bruising any detractors in his path. His venom blaster permanently set on “stun,” imposing maximum damage to his so-called enemies. It’s joyless stuff. The more accusations we throw at this beast, the greater the misery he inflicts on our commonality. He cares not a whit about anything but winning, and if he can’t win, he will take us all down with him. And for what?
It’s not funny. It’s not entertaining. It’s sad. Desperately sad. Every day presents another uniquely sad scenario. How to quantify such a dismal pile of human wreckage? Especially in light of the actual human wreckage transpiring in Syria, Yemen and Haiti. Places that need our love and support and money so desperately but can’t break through the noise of all things Trump. A thousand people are killed in Haiti by a storm and it is barely on our radars. Aleppo reduced to near rubble by Syrian and Russian warplanes while the US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia duke it out in Yemen. But let’s not pay attention to the victims of global warming, global imperialism, religious fanaticism, or geopolitical one-upmanship because Donald Trump has something vulgar to say and we can’t look away.
I hope he is trounced in the election. That the people who support him out of anger and frustration because they feel abandoned by elected officials find a better flag-bearer for their cause. That those who support him because he legitimizes their own vile beliefs crawl back into the holes they lived in before they found their omniscient champion. That those politicians who lacked the fortitude to call him out for his racist, misogynistic and xenophobic rants are shown the door. We must never forget that Rudy Guiliani, Chris Christie, Kellyanne Conway, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Mike Huckabee, Roger Ailes et al. aided and abetted this terrible human being because it was politically expedient. They profited from the misery of others. For that, they should not be forgiven. We should remember that Kurt Eichenwald and others took personal risks to investigate Trump’s past when other media outlets cozied up to him because the ratings were too good.
I hope that history remembers this moment. That it reverberates for generations. If it’s all forgotten tomorrow when some new scandal tantalizes us, it will all be for naught. To rubberneck is human. But this train wreck isn’t mere spectacle. We are being dragged into the fire while we watch.
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