For a while there, before things got as unimaginably bad as they’ve gotten, I somewhat enjoyed writing about the unprecedented incompetence, corruption, scandal, and cartoon-like madness of Donald Trump’s chaos presidency. There was mystery and intrigue and reasons galore for me to vent my righteous outrage about the petty, self-obsessed, lizard-brained conman who had ridden a wave of racism, misogyny, ignorance and greed into the most powerful office on earth … and, most compellingly, there was what, on multiple occasions, appeared to be the very real possibility that damning and richly deserved consequences were about to befall him.
It is adorable that Old Me had the capacity for that sort of optimism. I miss him.
Now? Now I’m just sick of it. All of it. Sick of Trump, sick of the vile, spineless, greedy, Republican ghouls in Congress who’ve spent three-plus years helping him dismantle our democracy, sick of the impunity with which he and his cronies brazenly flout the law, and sick of the seemingly brainwashed lunatics who somehow continue to support this grotesque garbage human whose ignorance, arrogance, and incompetence have caused the otherwise avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens.
Prior to Donald Trump’s presidency, I believed that the world in which I lived was bound by a set of universally shared facts that, collectively, could best be described as “reality.” A world in which, if you were standing in a house with a group of people, and some raving madman barged in and set fire to the place, and the flames began to consume the entire dwelling, and you yelled “Fire!”, literally all of the other people around you would be like, “Yeah, man, shit, that’s a fire! That guy’s crazy! We gotta get outta here!”, and 30-plus percent of those people would not instead turn to you and say, “He’s just trying to keep us warm, you freedom-hating libtard!” before taking a seat on the floor and insisting that a magic sky fairy was going to protect them from the blaze, which probably wasn’t a real fire anyway, but most likely was an elaborate fire-hoax created by George Soros and Bill Gates to distract everyone from the child-sex-trafficking ring that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running out of a pizza-parlor basement.
I am exhausted.
I am exhausted from the endless tsunami of stupidity that, for more than three years now, has washed away any semblance of a shared foundation of indisputable facts upon which all of us, regardless of political beliefs or affiliation, must agree.
I am exhausted from the unapologetic ignoramuses who insist on rejecting science and medicine in favor of the advice and example of a dangerously moronic reality-TV host who could not care less if the people pledging to him their allegiance themselves die horrible, easily preventable deaths.
I am exhausted from the star-spangled assholes parading around in their militia-cosplay plumage while claiming to love America so much that they’d sacrifice everything on its behalf, but who simultaneously are not willing to make the smallest of sacrifices by simply covering their face holes in order to keep from knowingly participating in the negligent homicide of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens.
I am exhausted from bigots, racists, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists, and any number of other vile creatures who, prior to Donald Trump’s election, had the minimal amount of self-awareness required to know that it probably was best for them to keep their repugnant beliefs to themselves, and who now are so emboldened by their garbage messiah’s ascension to the White House that they believe they’ve been given a mandate to publicly spew their despicable prejudices at anyone they deem as “other,” whenever and wherever they so desire.
I am sick to death (and some of us are literally so) of having to rely for our very survival upon a group of fellow citizens who have decided to justify their own ignorance, insecurity, and mediocrity by subscribing to a deadly form of grievance-based politics that redefines intelligence as arrogance, expertise as condescension, compassion as weakness, mindless bravado as strength, fact as fiction, science as hoax, and purely vindictive meanness as a good ol’ fashioned, all-American value. Being awful to people simply because you’re so broken inside that you enjoy feeding on the misery of others is not a political ideology; it’s a sociopathic, psychological ailment.
And I am utterly exhausted from, incalculably frustrated by, and murderously furious at every single person, from Trump on down, whose willful ignorance I now must plan for, anticipate, and worry about every time I leave my house lest my failure to do so result in my family falling prey to a virus that is likely to kill a quarter of a million American citizens — a great many of whom would have lived were it not for the make-believe president who slaughtered them on the altar of his own crippling, narcissistic stupidity.
This has to end. It just has to. And we are the ones who must end it.
I remain hopeful that, in the larger tapestry of history, the Trump presidency will be looked back upon as the thing that spurred the good people of America to finally rise up and reclaim their country. I long ago gave up hope, however, that such a reclamation will be accomplished by any means other than all of us exercising our right to vote — and doing so in such great numbers that, in spite of the inevitable, vote-suppressing fuckery in which Republicans are sure to engage this November, leaves room for no other outcome than the end of the Trump presidency, and the complete and utter repudiation of a party that has so completely lost its way that it elevated to the Oval Office such a worthless, useless, unfit piece of dishonorable filth in the first place.
To quote the last decent, qualified, worthy human to hold the office Donald Trump has now spent more than three years defiling: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Vote. Vote like your very life depends on it … because, based on the way things are going right now, there is a very real probability that it actually does.
I share your exhaustion. So many of us do. I just hope we can make it to November. How will we, as individuals and as a nation, recover from the damage done these last four (please don’t let it be eight) years?
Excellent article & blog site, so I happy I came across it! (Read a few of your pieces.) Will be stopping back by because, like so many people, this gives me hope. Mantra of the day: “Come November, Come November, Come November”.
Your truth is difficult to read for those who feel every bit of it. It’s a feeling akin to your life blood coursing out, or being oxygen depleted.
A lot needs to change, and is changing. I pray that you find enough daily distractions that you don’t think on the cynical side too much. It’s not a mentally healthy alternative.
One of the best most concise and scathingly truthful articles I have read. Thank you for putting into words so many of my own thoughts that I could never pull together as cogently due to the intense emotions that I feel about all this! Keep it up and get this article out everywhere.
Diane Larson
You’ve pinpointed what so many of us are honestly, just too exhausted to say. Working for the Post Office, I get questions daily regarding mail in voting and today’s task is to call the town hall to ensure that if we chose to vote by mail and end up wanting to go to the polls, that that will be allowed. Because if my husband, who naturalized for the specific reason of being able to vote, doesn’t get the chance to vote in person because he’s on quarantine due to our two college age sons, it may actually kill him. Course, in Massachusetts, the state will likely swing the way he wants but still, every vote needs to be cast. My husband is a political junkie. Yesterday we cut the cord for cable. His detox from MSNBC, MTP, CNN, Madow, etc. is palpable, but it had to be done. Politics now are just too toxic to have in the house.
It’s the same things, every day. New crisis, new distraction, new deaths, new controversy. It’s never ending it seems, and we need to do better.
I have so so so missed your voice. I followed you long ago for your Halloween post. I continue for your writing. And now for your political take, And this, I agree, is spot on. Later, since this was before the clusterfuckery that is the RNC of hell and not on a lever Dante thought possible, I apgree even ever more. Please keep voicing your necessarily scathing and yet so heartfelt opinion. We need your words more than ever. No fucking shit here. I love the Halloween shit, but this needs to be heard right the fuck now.
Thanks, Mary. And thanks for for sticking with me all this time!