Dear America,
I thought that once Donald Trump was inaugurated we would hear, and especially see, less news about him, but it just goes on and on. He is on the front page of the paper every day, and there is also usually some story of autocratic behavior inside each day's edition of, for example, the New York Times, as if his picture on the front page weren't enough. I keep thinking that he is heading for a Hitler-like moment when he will abandon all pretense of freedom from delusions of grandeur and just admit that he isn't the president, he is dictator for life...doing it all for us. Hunter S. Thompson was the embodiment of what he called "Gonzo Journalism," and both the man and the idea were a sort of comic relief from the tensions of the day. But I never thought I would see a Gonzo President; there's no comic relief in that. It's not that it is of any particular significance to me; our life...my wife's and mine...isn't really effected by Trump's madness much. We have a decent income and I am retired while my wife has only about eight years to go. She comes home and closes the door behind her every night and we live a halcyon life. Our kids are on their own and both of them now seem to have good significant others and stable home environments, so we have passed the torch and now we can just concentrate on home improvement projects and vacations--one out of the country each year. But I am a child of the sixties, and I was raised to care about what happens to those around me, so each day when I read about the most recent madness of King Donald, I feel this remotely-present distress.
There are millions of people--tens of millions in fact--who have insurance that they couldn't manage without "Obamacare," but Trump and his newly-enabled acolytes are hell-bent on making it cheaper. That's just a euphemism for taking much of the benefit of the ACA away from the people who need it most so that the people who have plenty already don't have to pay what amounts to nickels and for them in increased taxes. I think it should be a moral imperative to keep the poor from dieing of things for which there are cures that are expensive...too expensive for the less fortunate to buy. That's just how I was raised, but that is getting farther and farther from mainstream thought as each day with Trump in power...President Trump who is now everywhere all the time, right under everyone's nose, or should I say rubbing everyone's nose in his ubiquity. And then thee are all the other issues on which he is now scaring even the voters who voted for him only reluctantly. Tax reform, foreign relations, refugees, immigration, reversing the constraints placed on the financial industry that damn-near ruined the entire planet with its "greed is good" mantra and cognate behavior: those things and many more are all sort of in the wind, and anything could happen from here on out.
The stress is really taxing. I always feel like a need an alprazolam--that's generic Xanax for those of you who are a little more relaxed than I am--and even when I take one, all it does is help me sleep. I still wake up realizing that the nightmares I suffered throughout the night weren't dreams. They were flashbacks, and the whole cycle starts over again. But now I am beginning to fret about the fact that people like Jason Chaffetz, the Congressman from out west somewhere who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee will never do anything about Trump's corruption. The powerful, all Republicans right now and all pandering to the conservative movement by claiming to be conservatives themselves, are turning a blind eye to what Trump is doing. And just to make it clear that I'm not indulging in hyperbole, consider this. Mar-a-Lago--Trump's "winter White House"--is a privately owned country club; Trump is the private owner. Until January, it cost $100,000 to join, and that money went into Trump's pocket. It's his club. But in January, the initiation fee went up to $200,000, and the people who have that kind of money started snapping up memberships like children eating cupcakes, and what are they getting for their money that makes these memberships so desirable? Well, it's been on the front page: Trump in a circle of sycophants holding court on what turned out to be confidential foreign policy matters. And the room was full of feasting plutocrats, all of whom came to try to meet the Prez. All of them needing something, I have no doubt, and all of them hoping to have a private moment with The President and his big ear. If that isn't influence peddling, I don't know what is. The conflict of interest represented by Trump using his ascendancy to line his pockets because he is exempt under the conflict of interest laws is one thing. But his selling access to the office is another. That requires inquiry, but who's going to do it.
Donald Trump and Boss Tweed have something in common, but there is a difference of scale in their levels of corruption. Tweed just had New York and Tammany Hall. Trump has a whole country and Mar-a-Lago. This may sound familiar, but this is what I say. Lock him up.
Your friend,
Mike
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