What are we living? Drama, comedy, soap opera, reality show, tragedy, nightmare?
With hindsight, history will tell us clearly. History will frame this decade as the moment when the United States embraced bigotry and division, or the moment when we as Americans were able to withstand and overcome a direct attack on our basic democratic values. History will record whether a wall at our southern border was ever built or not. History will tell us whether Trump was a temporary blip on our collective democratic tradition of beckoning to immigrants and the displaced (Trump’s antecedents included), or whether we were returning to the police state politics of government that defined the McCarthy era in our not-so recent history.
We, however, don’t have any such perspective. We are patching it together as we go, as best we can on the fly from various news sites, social media contacts, friends, trusted network and print reporters and journalists and whatever we can cull together from wherever we are, on our phones, computers, tablets or TV’s.
How are we doing? What are we to make of our lives since the Tweeter-in-Chief became President?
We’re trying to figure it out tweet by tweet, Supreme Court Justice nomination by Supreme Court Justice nomination, each child separated from her parents by each child separated from her parents at the border of the United States of America, each divisive racist comment by the President of the country by each divisive racist comment by the President of the country, each new week by each new week, each moment by moment.
Our self-questioning is boundless, continuous and relentless. And our questioning of the state of our present governance is daily subject to reevaluation.
So yeah there’s drama. There is drama daily. Will Trump finish his term? Will he be impeached? Will there be a second-term to the Trump presidency?
We can’t speed history up. We can’t know the answers to these questions in real time.
We can only get out there and make our vision for a better America known, support our candidates who embrace inclusion and diversity, and deny the Tweeter-in-Chief the imposition of his view of America.