19th November 2016

The Trump ascendancy is but a little more than week old and already it seems a farce. People come and go through what seems some a revolving door and the only ones thus far who seem to be in charge are men with very suspect values. Ensconced in the Trump Tower is Trump himself sitting like a Mafia don whose capos bow and kiss his ring and beg for a lucrative and powerful position in the new administration; and the president-elect looks imperiously down from his window on the population below—both physically and figuratively. With no experience in foreign policy, economic matters, or issues of national security, he gathers someone—anyone!—who can offer for him the pretense of competence. And inanely he continues to broadcast his progress and plans with 140 character tweets. I fear what is to become of us. This farce leans now not towards tragedy—no, that would be too noble an end—but towards some unstoppable disaster and then the ship of state will surely sink.
     As Attorney General, an avowed racist, a Republican who in 1986 couldn’t even pass through a Republican Senate committee for a federal judgeship as a result of his statements that the NAACP and the ACLU were un-American institutions; for Chief of Staff a man whose website broadcasts anti-Semitic, racist and misogynistic views; and for National Security Advisor a retired general fired by the Obama administration for his absurdist views about ISIS as an existential threat. And head of them all is a man who boasts of his aggressive sexual behaviors; espouses racist and misogynistic rants; threatens the economic stability not only of the United States and the world; uses language and images impermissible in our schools and public spaces; and who promises to lower taxes for his rich compadres while the rest of us sweat and strain. But a man who as yet doesn’t have a clue what is going on down there on the streets of any city in the United States or the world.
      And where is our supposed Free Press exposing the heinousness of at least Rudolph Giuliani who had no trouble defaming Hillary Clinton for activities he thrived at while circling the globe making speeches which earned him in 2006 almost $10 million dollars? Today the man who in his last divorce whines that he possessed $7,000.00 now owns three expensive homes and has bank accounts that might feed a good deal of the homeless in New York City. Is Paul Krugman the only honest journalist working at The New York Times?

     The sense of doom that pervades the community is overwhelming, and the hard rain that falls today here bodes ill for the next four years, if in fact, under the leadership of these mean and incompetent rulers, we survive those years. The sense of grief many feel mourns the loss of hope and promise.