A Process
Every morning I wake up, and for a brief moment I can focus on my day. Then Atticus, our white Lab (loveable, but not the brightest bulb in the box) realizes my eyes are open. That means, he can go outside, and more importantly, start the breakfast process (there’s four dogs, eating in three shifts, he’s on second). So he burrows into my side, getting me to roll over, get an unexpected kiss (he goes for the lips) then gently shoves me out of bed. The day begins.
Somewhere in the process I turn on the news, and the reality of the Trump Administration crashes down on me once again. Whether their talking about Pete Hegseth (a wholly unqualified candidate for Secretary of Defense), or Kash Patel, (a confused and mistaken intelligence “expert”) leading the FBI: it’s as if leading the Nation is just a Trumpian joke. Sure, Matt Gaetz abandoning his Attorney General bid helped. But it simply made Pam Bondi, another “Fox (animal and media) in charge of the chicken coop”. And two other remaining whack-a-doodles, Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy, quietly proceed to high office.
Normal
Do we have to pick our battles? Maybe give up the FBI to protect Dreamers, or accept a simply brutal and cruel man as “Border Czar” in return for putting responsible people in charge of our intelligence apparatus. Trade off’s – in what America is and should be.
And it’s all been normalized. Senators (even Democrats) walking in the Senate halls, talking about the wonderful conversations they’re having with Hegseth or Patel or Kennedy; folks dragged from the extreme to now appear as “moderate choices”. And in the background, billionaire “enforcers”. Vote for Trump’s guys, or face a multi-million dollar challenge in the next primary election, with Elon Musk’s imprimatur and cash in hand. Musk, Ramaswamy, Zuckerberg, Bezos: are we still a democracy, or have we already descended into a billionaires’ oligarchy, where money talks and the rest of us walk?
Not surprising , it’s the Republican women: Ernst, Murkowski, Collins (don’t trust her though) who are resisting. The men don’t have the cojones to stand up to Trump, or Musk, or the MAGA base. The women may not either (Murkowski is tough), but at least their holding things up for the minute.
And normal: Donald Trump is Times “Person of the Year”. I know, I know; Hitler, Stalin, and the Ayatollah Khomeini were all once Man of the Year too. But the media and seemingly the world has accepted the normalization of Donald Trump. The international world, from Zelenskyy to Prince William to Justin Trudeau doesn’t have a choice. But the rest of us do. And we should look with skepticism at any effort to say this guy and his MAGA crowd are normal. They aren’t.
Distract
We try to change the subject. Luigi Mangione the assassin made a big splash, killing the CEO of United Health Care in broad daylight on the Avenue of the Americas. I guess only Trump can shoot someone on the streets of Manhattan and no one would care. And we all are fascinated with the assassin, his escape, his resume. How did a brilliant, good looking, Ivy League millionaire-child, turn into a hooded figure shooting a man in the back?
Or if that doesn’t provide enough distraction; there’s the drones over New Jersey. Is there really an Iranian “Mothership” somewhere in the Atlantic (isn’t that from Independence Day)? Or are there a bunch of newly minted FAA “Airmen”, drone licensees, having a few afternoon brews and sending car-sized pilot-less vehicles over the New Jersey (and Maryland too) landscape? Be careful, maybe it’s really Santa Claus, with a whole new way of; “He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when your awake!!” Don’t stop the drones or “no presents for you!!!!”.
(Hey – just heard that the US Military has a laser device that can take down a drone. That might be worth the distraction – a green beam knocking a drone from the sky. That is, as long as they don’t drop a six-foot drone on MY house!!).
Your Moment
“Distract, delay, depo…..”, oops, no “d” words in succession; that’s not currently acceptable. But that’s what we’re all trying to do. Does “resistance” mean fighting for every inch, or do we pick our battles? Let Bobby end childhood vaccinations, if we can keep Kash out of the FBI? Who do we sacrifice first?
It’s going to be a long four years. We are going to be asked to sacrifice, to “RESIST”, to do all that we can to preserve our view of the American experiment. As my distance coaches often say, you can’t win the mile in the first 440 yards, but you can lose it. Pace yourself, and pick your moment to stand up. It’s the American thing to do.
