It’s a Hard Rain

LIfe continues to hum along as if nothing is out of the ordinary is happening.

But there’s a soundtrack in the background of my life that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.  It usually begins with two words:  Donald Trump.  Some new phrases have caught my attention too.  Alt right, anyone?  fake news? false equivalencies?

“Every president has lied,” I heard a Trump supporter announce this morning.

I watched a video of Patti Smith at the Nobel Prize ceremony, sing Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.  There was the Reality, sensed by everyone in attendance, impossible to ignore, a seer’s acknowledgement of the dystopian place we’re now in.  Every day, it’s more unwelcome information.  Donald Trump’s tweets.  Donald Trump’s vindictiveness.  Donald Trump’s non-stop celebration of his own ignorance.  You couldn’t make this shit up if you wanted to.

Where oh where are we headed if this poor excuse of a man with an imaginary brain can create so much confusion and turmoil before he takes office?  An avowed anti-environmentalist heading the EPA?  The foxes are all guarding the henhouses now.  Checks and balances?  Teetering or fallen.

The mainstream media seems to be at loose ends. They know that they’re being manipulated but have no idea how to respond.  What is fairness when truthfulness has lost its meaning?  Why are most  journalists unwilling to demand the truth from politicians?  So many questions.  My anger and disdain at the impotence of the television media is at a rolling boil.

I think I care more about the USA and what we have represented to most of the world than I have realized.  Now, that so much of the legacy seems threatened, I want to protect it.

Mainstream Republicans are keeping their mouths shut when asked to comment on Trump’s most ridiculous pronouncements.  Come’on boys, where’s your spine?  Please consider what’s at stake.

To preserve my own sanity, I’ve cut down on watching television reporting.  Nor, do I find it particularly helpful to listen to the journalists I trust give voice to my own fears.

I am at a loss in knowing what to do that might alter the outcome of the election.But I   hear people grumbling louder each day and preparing for battle.  There’s a sense of growing discomfort in our country.  Maybe the battle lines are being drawn as I write.

Sooner, rather than later, It must be regarded by all Americans as unacceptable for the president elect to lie and distort the truth. There must be consequences. At some point, fake news cannot be tolerated.  We must also look carefully at our educational system which made it possible for millions of Americans to be rendered unable to think critically and discriminate the truth from the fabricated.

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