2018.
A year when the 35 to 40% of us that are Trumpeteers were challenged again and again, their delusions continually being tested by truth and reality, exhaustedly trying to blow in the ever-changing directions of their fearful leader's contradictory and demeaning tweets.
Deficits soared.
The Stock Market tanked.
Interest rates crept up.
Asylum seekers were vilified as thugs and murderers, and made to look like an army of orcs and trolls straight out of Tolkien. They were caged and families separated, taken to inadequate facilities, where two young children have lost their lives.
The government is suffering under a purposeless shutdown, trying to force a useless, wasteful Wall that will achieve nothing except make us look like the villains of the world. And it's 100% on Captain Bone Spurs.
Every element of Trump's criminal enterprise is under investigation, and criminal wrongdoing is being exposed. The Mueller probe is closing in on him, and Trump is acting like a cornered wounded bear.
And there was the rise to the Supreme Court of this extra-nasty scumbag. It didn't matter what this sneering creep did - the Republicans were going to put him on the Supreme Court. What a disaster. Why did Trump want him so bad? You think it was to criminalize women's reproductive rights and place the government between a woman and her doctor? Oh no, that was just side gravy. The real reason is he was the lower-court judge with the most unambiguous record of not believing a President could be indicted, one who would most consistently side with Trump in any court case involving Mueller or others in pursuit of our criminal President.
The environmental health of the nation is being set back as environmental regulations and enforcement are being chopped away. Global warming is real and already causing damage worldwide, and the USA is leading the way - to an increase in carbon levels and temperature that can only be described as Hell on Earth.
Our President sides with authoritarians over democratically-led countries, even to the point of tolerating the murderous slaughter of an American Resident. I mean, he was just a reporter, anyway. Trumpeteers are constantly confused as to who they're supposed to be liking or hating internationally this week, as their narcissistic leader careens wildly between whoever is kissing his butt the most, or providing him the most graft.
He announces the withdrawal of troops in Syria in such a way that emboldens the dictators of Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, and leaves our allies, the Kurds, exposed and vulnerable to persecution and genocide.
And the Trumpeteers hang in there. Inexplicably. Irrationally. In a way that continues to break my heart and causes me to lose sleep and hope.
And yet, there is hope on the horizon.
The Democrats recapture the house, by the largest percentage margin in the modern era. They gained a mammoth 40 seats, and are led by an exciting coalition of young progressives, including my personal favorite, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House, the most competent and professional Speaker of the last several decades. I may not agree with everything she does, but she knows how to vote count and whip up support. She knows how to lead.
Things won't be easy. They won't be pretty. Trump will blame everything on the Democratic House. He will foam and spittle and incoherently tweet at them. The Trumpeteers will circle the wagons.
But there is hope. So, I can't write off 2018 as a complete loss.
To quote 19th-century abolitionist Theodore Parker in a saying often used by Martin Luther King, Jr. -
“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
It often seems like we are bending away from justice instead of towards it, but I pray that we rebound, and people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez do give me a glimmer of hope that we will one day right our course.
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