The Donald J. Trump Memorial WHAT???

FRANKIE!

 I live less than forty miles from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York. It is the place where he was born in 1882 and was his home all of his life. As I've stated on this site too many times to count, I go there often. It's a place where, no matter how desperate our national affairs may look at any given moment, I always walk away from feeling a little better about my country. Roosevelt was a flawed man and  not always a foresighted leader, but you knew in your heart that the man  always strived to do what was best for most Americans (citizens of Japanese ancestry would rightfully beg to differ I'm sure). Still, the legacy which FDR left this country reverberates nearly three-quarters-of-a-century after his sudden death, in office, in April of 1945. There are more than a few memorials to this great man in cities and towns all across the United States. In 2018 he continues to make a difference in our lives. If you or a loved one receives a monthly check from Social Security, you have Mr. Roosevelt to thank for that.
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Recently while visiting the place, I was standing quietly before the two graves in the rose garden where Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt today sleep side by side. While I stood there, the thought occurred to me about the possibility of a Donald J. Trump Memorial Library and Museum. What would it look like? I imagined that the entranceway would be a tacky facsimile of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. How would the rangers who give the guided tours explain the Donald to happless sightseers? And how would the pencil-pushers who administer the joint be able to put a smiley-face on the most incompetent, unhinged and dangerously corrupt president in American history? After a few short minutes of speculation, it hit me that such pondering was a lesson in futilely. There won't be any memorials to the memory of Donald Trump. 
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There will be no Donald J. Trump Schools - public or private. There will be no Donald J. Trump Memorial Highways. There will be no Donald J. Trump National Parks. There will be no Donald J. Trump Airports. There will be no Donald J. Trump Hospitals. There will be no Donald J. Trump Centers for the Arts. There will be no statues erected to the memory of Donald J. Trump. There will be no Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum.
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There's never going to be a Donald J. Trump Memorial Anything. Okay, I'll compromise: perhaps they might one day dedicate a Donald J. Trump Memorial Rest Area in the center of the Long Island Expressway; a place where weary motorists might stop to relieve themselves. Yeah, that would possibly work; but other than that....

And as for the presidential papers of Donald J. Trump? I suspect that they will be eternally stored in some windowless room deep within the bowels of the National Archives, where scholars, biographers and historians might go to scratch their heads in wonder and amusement.

November 1963

I imagine that when death finally comes to Donald J. Trump (as it must come to all men - and most women I'm told) he will not be interred in some ornate sarcophagus stately mounted on a marble pedestal surrounded by fountains of running water - like Martin Luther King. I don't believe that his body will lie in some serene, private mausoleum at the end of a majestic, marble-lined hallway - like President James A. Garfield. I don't even think he will be placed in a public cemetery next to the final resting place of his parents. What I suspect will happen is that the earthly remains of Donald J. Trump will be put into a secret and unmarked grave - The Tomb of the Unknown Donald. Either that or he'll be cremated with his ashes scattered into the East River off of Queens where he was raised; or maybe they'll be scattered on the grounds of the New York Military Academy in Cornwall, NY where he attended high school - and which is less than twenty miles from where I live - that is, if the faculty of that institution will allow it (which is doubtful. Those military types don't look too kindly on traitors). I only hope that the guy doesn't die in office. The last thing our national consciousness needs is to send this bloviating jackass off into eternity with a grand military funeral - ala Jack Kennedy. Spare us please.

Within a year or two, there will be a telephone poll of a broad cross-section of the American people, asking one question: For whom did you cast your precious ballot for on Election Day 2016? I'll bet the freakin' farm that close to eighty percent of the respondents will answer, "Hillary Clinton". Although Trump's poll numbers are down this week (37% according to the latest count) I don't expect them to get much lower - not in the foreseeable future anyway. It's going to take an earth-shattering event of seismic proportions for these silly Americans to lift their heads out of the sands of indifference and finally wake the hell up.

No, most Americans will not one day be stricken with a sense of collective, teary-eyed nostalgia for the reign of this unexplainable president - as they are now for the era of Barack Obama - and even George W. Bush (somebody shoot me please). There will never be an annual Donald Trump National Holiday, where the masses are bequeathed a nifty excuse for unlimited orgies of barbequed chicken and reckless inebriation during a three day weekend. The companies that manufacture those posters which portray the portraits of our presidents that are placed in school rooms across the land, will more-than-likely be forced portray Donald J. Trump as a blacked-out silhouette. When impressionable students of future generations innocently ask why this is so, the embarrassed teachers of future generations will have to awkwardly answer that question. I don't envy them one bit. No sir.

We won't ever be able to erase the Donald from our national memory bank. He's here to stay and we're going to have to deal with the embarrassment as best we can: that a so-called "civilized" people were deluded into believing that elevating so unqualified a man to the presidency was a noble idea. Perhaps the people have finally learned a lesson they should have learned over a century ago, but I really doubt it.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

AFTERTHOUGHT:

I'm on my way to the post office to pick up my copy of "Fear" by Bob Woodward. I cannot wait to sink my teeth into that one!

PostScript: 

The Woodward book wasn't there. Two days too late. Damn you, Amazon.com!