Unprecedented Damage

In the hours and days following the catastrophic election of 2016, I was telling anyone and everyone with the patience to listen:

 

"Folks, this is going to end very, very badly."

 

In hindsight that statement has turned out to be the understatement of my entire life.

 

As it turns out, the damage that is being done to this once-great nation by this disgusting and vile administration will be present for the rest of the lives of every man, woman, boy and girl who might happen to be reading this. One hundred years from today, the president of the United States - who probably won't be born until at least the year 2069 - will still be dealing on a daily basis with the damage that Donald J. Trump and his accomplices did to the United States of America so many generations before.


 Zelensky

Now we are learning that The Donald attempted to extort the leader of the Ukraine by holding back billions in aid by  forcing them to lunch an investigation into the business and financial dealings of Hunter Biden, the apparently dug-addled son of the former vice-president. He apparently had eight different conversations on the telephone with the leader of that country, Volodymyr Zelensky. Team Trump is dismissing these allegations by saying it's just another left-wing conspiracy. This story is being simultaneously reported by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. American Newspapers are in a healthy and vigorous completion with one another. They don't have much of a history of comparing notes our of "professional courtesy". And besides, no one is going to convince me that The Journal is a hotbed of radical lefties. This is a story that is exploding as I write these words.

We now know that Trump is perfectly willing to persecute his political enemies to suit his perverted political whims. This is nothing new; Dick Nixon did that with gay abandon back in his day. What sets Donald Trump apart from The Trickster is that Nixon only went after the anti-establishment types - like Dick Gregory and John Lennon. Trump tends to go after previously respected members of the FBI and the CIA, trying to turn the American people against the institutions that no president has ever dared to go after before. This reminds me of The Night of The Long Knives in 1934, when Adolf Hitler an attack against  the leaders of the Brown Shirts, the very bastards responsible for the Nazis' rise to power. They were executed because of der furor's growing paranoia that any one of them might have their eyes on his position of power. If you don't think that this could happen in America, then, you're not paying attention. Go back to sleep.

I would like to write more about this but, to be frank with you, I'm drunk at the moment and need to go back to bed. The whole affair is too depressing to even contemplate. As disastrous as George W. Bush was for the USA, I never doubted for a micro-second that we would survive him. Now I'm not so sure.

Ain't these extraordinary times?

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED READING:

Orson Welles
by Barbara Leaming

I read this extraordinary biography about thirty-five years ago. I just picked it off of the shelf and read it again. It is every bit as good as I remember it being. Orson was as great as they possibly come. No matter how further he recedes into the midst of history, his accomplishments cannot be challenged or denied.

I really wish he could have lived forever.