Confession

     I don't always know what I'm going to write until I write it. That often goes for my fiction because I'm what my fellow writers refer to as a pantser, or writing by the seat of one's pants without a template like an outline or chapter synopsis. Now, no doubt, that may invite some "neener neener" comment by Jailbird Joe Chadwick, a guy who probably pressured the smart kids in his private school in Jerusalem to eat their own boogers then razzed them for it.
     But in all seriousness, I don't know what to say for my inaugural post of 2018 but I trust that I'll eventually come up with something.
     I think part of this stultifying paralysis comes from the fact that I'm haunted by the feeling that, when it comes to Republicans and Trump, I've said it all since 2015, since practically the day the Donald rode an escalator down into presidential history and had an ex KGB goon named Vladimir Putin help him steal the election.
     I've psychoanalyzed this buffoon to the best of my poor layman's abilities but, after a while, one finds oneself with a soured feeling of deja vu, that's it's all been said, to no avail. In violation of the so-called Goldwater Rule, countless psychiatrists and psychologists have analyzed Trump through his actions, speeches and other public statements. And who's to refute them, especially when they're all, seemingly, saying more or less the same thing- That Trump's plainly unfit to lead the nation and the free world.
     Yes, we all know he's lazy, arrogant, megalomaniacal, feckless and shiftless. He's spent 112 days golfing in the first year of his ill-gotten presidency, quite a stat for a guy who attacked former president Obama on the rare occasion he picked up a golf club (However, one must consider that during Trump's youth, the only legitimate reason for a black man to be on a golf course was if he was a caddy or groundskeeper).
     Like a typical Republican, he's bound and determined to hurt poor people, takes no responsibility for his toxic actions and lies, lies, lies like a bearskin rug. He is completely and utterly unaware that he's even capable of hypocrisy let alone constantly indulging in it and when he hears something unflattering about himself or his so-called administration, he waves it off by sneering, "Fake news."
     And the craven, wet-legged Republicans in Congress have a choice to make- After a string of defeats of people who'd chosen to walk off the cliff with Trump or those who'd been given the Kiss of Death by him, Republicans have to decide whether to continue siding with him as they use him for a useful idiot to continue hurting the poor, enriching the 1%, continuing the risky military adventurism bloating the MIC and turning our woefully understaffed diplomatic corps into an international laughingstock.
     Or they could repudiate him, distance themselves from him at the risk of losing Trump's red meat base. This November 6th, all 435 congressional seats are up for grabs, obviously, as well as eight Republican Senate seats in mostly red states. But Alabama used to be a red state and their boy Roy Moore (R-Lolita), who reluctantly got the aforementioned Kiss of Death from Trump as had Luther Strange before him, got his ass handed to him by Doug Jones, albeit a dull Blue Dog if ever there was one.
     So, after Alabama, no GOP seat is safe.
     But I've already said these things. So what should I be saying, instead?
     That the grand jury empaneled by Robert Mueller isn't just searching for irrefutable evidence of indictable crimes- It is searching for the soul of a nation that had allowed so much to get taken from it since Nixon  including the power of the rule of law that had been seriously eroded since Bush II. We have allowed so much to be stolen from us by Republicans and the corporations that benefit so much from their largesse and neverending orgy of deregulation that it only becomes apparent of how much is missing from our lives if you're my age or older and remember the way this once great nation used to be.
     Because what Bob Barr once said still holds true and always will: "If you give the government power, it will use it." And we have ceded far too much power to these people when we can't seem to muster more than electing a few Blue Dogs like Doug Jones every election cycle, so-called Democrats who are alarmingly willing to work with Republicans in the spirit of "compromise" and "bipartisanship" in which Republicans hold no stock while they enjoy the tyranny of the majority.
     Yes, my hopes for a better future hang like a wet, heavy coat on a wooden peg on Mueller's investigation but that alone will not solve our ills. Trump may be heading for the third or fourth shortest term in US presidential history. But even if Pence goes out the door with him, the evil, the moral leprosy that put both in power will be left behind, like the dry rot in the piling beneath the pulled-up rotten carpet.
     Like the salt in the earth beneath the dead grass. We need to switch it all out and it's going to take a hell of a lot more than just one midterm election to do it. It's going to take the complete overhaul of the mindset of the 40% of us who still vote and the well-informed, good-hearted engagement of the other 60% who don't.
     And that's what I fear and that's why it's been so hard to get myself to write anything here because I have to be honest and admit what I've just called for seems out of reach of a lazy, complacent nation that had allowed so many freedoms and so much power to fall into the wrong hands.